The Song Menu

The Bell Anthem


The Bells of the Angels

“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."

The song, Twenty Six Bells, contains a "bell anthem" that was composed to allow the ringing of a separate bell for each "angel." It was noticed shortly after the tragedy of Newtown that every name of the twenty six angels is different. This fact became the original inspiration for the song since it produced the idea of ringing twenty six different bells.

Then came the task of selecting the twenty six different bells and arranging them in such a manner that they created a beautiful melody when played together. It was decided that the six adults should be represented with larger, lower sounding bells and the twenty children should be represented with smaller, higher sounding bells.

The next step was essentially a mathematical equation that involved the arrangement of the larger versus the smaller bells. The pattern that seemed to be the most symmetrical was a 2-10-2-10-2 pattern that involved playing two larger bells, ten smaller bells, two larger bells, ten smaller bells, and then ending with two large bells.

The easiest choice of a bell was the C-3 bell which is the largest bell in the St. Stephens Episcopal Church's bell inventory. That is the bell that needed to be rung last in whatever manner the anthem was composed. Getting to that point was another story.


The Bell Anthem and Credits

Over the course of a few days, Lloyd Solon sat down at a keyboard and constantly played different patterns to find something that would produce a melodic sequence with twenty six different notes. He began by breaking the ten high bells into a sequence of 3-3-4 which created a feeling of "climbing stairs" during the first ten bells and then the subsequent feeling of "rolling down a hill" during the second ten bells. For the most part it seemed to work, but the two large bells in the middle of the anthem just didn't seem to bridge the two halves.

Eventually the anthem was given to Ann Long, who is an accomplished pianist, and her first problem was also with the two middle bells and how they didn't fit into "music theory." She attempted some complete rewrites of the anthem by utilizing "black bells" (bells with sharps and flats) and using different sequence patterns for the large and small bells. Eventually she came back to what Lloyd had written and altered a few notes at the end of the first sequence of ten small bells and the two bells in the middle to make an adequate bridge between the two halves of the anthem.

She then took the simple one bell pattern of the anthem and composed a beautiful introduction to the song using the twenty six different bells and blending them with a multitude of other bells. The one bell pattern of the bell anthem is played in the middle of the song, Twenty Six Bells, and after each bell is rung, the angel's name is spoken.