The Peal As An Extent
Following the discovery of Grandsire Doubles, the term peal or “full peal” was applied to the ringing of sequences including each permutation of the set of bells exactly once. On five bells (Doubles), there are 120 permutations taking about four minutes to ring on tower bells. These figures rapidly increase as more bells are added.
The term extent is now preferred to peal in this context, excepting performances on seven bells where the terms peal and extent are synonymous.
The extent on eight bells comprises 40,320 changes, and would be referred to today as a long length peal. Despite this, it has been successfully rung as a continuous performance both on tower and on hand bells, 17 hours in duration on tower bells.
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Famous quotes containing the words peal and/or extent:
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