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Clip description
The bells can be heard at the beginning of the compositional arc in section 3: Prophecy. They ring out against the backdrop of the reader speaking text from The Dead Sea Scrolls.
Curator’s notes
The ring of the bells sounds strangely unnatural as they have been electronically distorted by the audio technicians. They have recorded the full note of the bell ring, then reversed it and recorded it just short of the impact of the clapper and ball on the sound bow of the bell. Usually we hear bells in rounds, which are in descending order of pitch: from treble to tenor. However, we are hearing the reverse ('back-rounds’): bells ringing in ascending order of pitch, from tenor to treble.
The technique employed by the engineers is an example of radiophonic techniques at work in the piece. Butterley commented that this created ‘a sound with a strange metallic resonance, something to do with bells and yet not bells.’
