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TechnoratiNEW YORK – Barack Obama and his message of change will get a ringing endorsement on Inauguration Day from 12 bells at a church near ground zero.
(Photo: AP Images / Seth Wenig)Bell ringers Tony Furnivall, left, and Jeremy Bates, demonstrate how to ring the bells at Trinity Church in New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009. Each of the ropes hanging from the ceiling leads upwards to one of twelve different bells. Barack Obama and his message of change will get a ringing endorsement on Inauguration Day with 12 'change ringing' bells at the church, which is near ground zero.
The full peal, which lasts 3 1/2 hours, rarely has been heard in New York City since the "change-ringing" bells were installed three years ago at Trinity Church.
"Change ringing is a way that we express the joy of our community, and I think much of the nation is joyous about this inauguration," said Jeremy Bates, a Manhattan lawyer and former Obama campaign worker who will be among the 12 ringers pulling on sturdy ropes in the church's bell tower to mark the historic occasion.
Change ringing is far more common outside the United States. Most cathedrals in England have sets of 12 bells like the one at Trinity, the largest in this country. The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., has a set of 10.
On Tuesday, the ringers will climb 100 steps of a narrow, spiral staircase and a 20-foot ladder to a tiny change-ringing room, 20 feet below the belfry of the church near the World Trade Center site.
In the sanctuary below, several hundred people will watch the swearing-in of the nation's first black president on a giant television. When the ceremony ends, the ringers will begin the peal.
Unlike stationary bells known as chimes or carillons, the change-ringing bells swing or rotate 360 degrees on a wheel as ringers pull on ropes. It's a maneuver even an 80-year-old can perform though the bells weigh from 500 pounds to 2,500 pounds.
"It's a question of finesse, coordination, not brute strength, and listening to where your bell is," master ringer Tony Furnivall said.
The centuries-old method produces a rich, complex combination of sounds with endless permutations of tonal patterns that have no recognizable melody.
The more bells means the longer they can be rung without repeating a row or change. Eight bells, for example, have 40,000 permutations while 12 bells offer a staggering 480 million patterns.
Full peals consisting of at least 5,000 changes and lasting more than 3 hours traditionally are performed on special occasions.
Trinity's band of ringers last performed one on Dec. 20, both as a concert and a rehearsal for Inauguration Day. Before that, the bells rang a full peal in 2006, the year they were installed with a $1 million gift from a British bell enthusiast.
Although bells are commonly associated with churches, Furnivall said they are primarily used for civic and state events to give news to the community.
Performing the peal for Obama's inauguration has special significance for Bates. He was a student at the University of Chicago's law school in 1999 when he had to introduce the state senator as a guest speaker to a group of Chicago law school Democrats.
"He was somebody who could both talk to law students in the legal language and talk to voters in a language that would make sense to them," the 40-year-old lawyer said. "That's a quality that he has obviously shown throughout this campaign."
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