Bells on the Hill

EVERY CHRISTMAS EVE, hundreds of people from all over New England brave the cold and the lack of parking to pack the streets around Beacon Hill’s Louisburg Square for a ritual tintinnabulation. At 8 p.m., a single silvery note cuts through the chatter, its bright chime reverberating in the dark. Voices rise, and the spectators become a chorus crooning familiar verses of holiday carols: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Joy to the World,” “Silent Night.” People hold hands, embrace friends, smile at strangers. In the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas. 

Like the flickering gas lamps or the garlands that deck the grand 19th-century brownstones of this storied neighborhood, this outdoor concert by the Beacon Hill Ringers, an ensemble of handbell musicians and enthusiasts, is a Boston tradition now in its 101st year. In that time, the group has missed only two performances—one during WWII, and the other in 2020, during the pandemic.

Pamela Madigan, the ensemble’s current director, calls the music transformative. “There’s a reason

there are bell choirs and groups all around the world, in every culture. The bells create an otherworldly sound, a naturally spiritual sound. It’s impossible to ignore.”

Though the event is not widely advertised, Madigan estimates that somewhere around four hundred people showed up to last year’s concert.

Madigan has kept the tradition alive for the last five decades, traveling from her home in the suburbs to Boston to play with her fellow musicians, all of whom sacrifice or delay Christmas Eve with their families each year to do the same. Madigan has only missed the concert three times in 58 years: once in 1991 when she was heavily pregnant, once during the pandemic when public gatherings were forbidden, and once two years ago when both she and her daughter came down with COVID. “We’d have to be incapacitated or dead not to show up,” she says cheerily. 

The group has five members, including Madigan, all of whom share a deep love and knowledge of music, though only one is a professional handbell ringer. Graphic designer and orchestral musician Chuck Gibson has been playing alongside Madigan since 1966. Thirty years later, they were joined by percussion teacher Bob Johnson, who plays drums, handbells, and tone chimes for various theater productions around town. In 2014, Madigan recruited Griff Gall, the only professional handbell musician, who is also a music teacher and the founding director of the Back Bay Ringers, an advanced handbell group in Boston. The fifth member of the ensemble is Madigan’s daughter, Victoria, a molecular biologist and postdoctoral fellow at MIT, who first played alongside her mother on the jingle bells at age four.

PLAYING BY EAR

Traditional handbell music scores resemble piano music, but instead of one musician controlling many keys, there are many musicians, each controlling their own bells. Each player has to be acutely aware of how their bells function in a complex melodic line.

The Beacon Hill Ringers, however, play purely by ear. “When Pamela asked if I would ring with the Beacon Hill Ringers, I was excited. This is something handbell musicians talk about. It’s handbell legend. 

When I was in college, my teacher would talk about the Beacon Hill Ringer tradition, so to be asked to be part of that was really exciting for this handbell geek,” says Gall.

Madigan sent him a booklet that listed lyrics, starting notes, and flats and sharps, a far cry from the sheet music Gall was accustomed to.

“Practicing two notes by ear went horribly,” he says, “but when we’re all there together, since we know the carols, it’s amazing—it just works. We’re standing in order, so it’s kind of like looking at a bar of music visually.”

BEACON HILL’S ORIGINAL RINGER

Margaret Shurcliff was Beacon Hill’s original bellringer. Born Margaret Nichols in 1879 at 55 Mt. Vernon St., Shurcliff grew up in what is now the Nichols House Museum, a historic Arts and Crafts-era gem featuring furniture built and carved by the Nichols children. Athletic, intellectual, and artistic, Shurcliff was a dynamo most remembered today for popularizing handbell playing in America. 

In her memoir “Lively Days,” Shurcliff recounts how her father took her on a trip to England to indulge his hobby—ringing church tower bells. Nichols was an accomplished ringer who had restored the bells in the Old North Church and who would later install bells at the Perkins School for the Blind.

“She resisted the trip,” says Gall. “She wanted to go play tennis in New Hampshire, but instead she went to England, and she fell in love with the bells.” Shurcliff became the first American woman, and the second woman ever, to ring a complete peal by pulling the ropes on large tower bells to produce a long, complex series of notes, an ancient practice known as change ringing—or more popularly “ringing the changes.” She was gifted an octave of London Whitechapel handbells to take back with her to Boston.

Back home, she and a few friends began ringing on Christmas Eve for the pleasure of her immediate neighbors around Mount Vernon Street.

BELL RINGING TAKES OFF

Shurcliff would go on to form The New England Guild of English Handbell Ringers, which still exists as The Handbell Musicians of America. People began writing to her for advice about starting handbell groups. Old South Church bought its own set of bells. A stone quarry in Quincy formed its own ensemble for the entertainment of the workers. 

“People said that if Margaret met you, she would put a handbell in your hand,” says Gall. “She was very passionate. But she never meant it to be high-performance art. It was about a sense of community and joy at music making.”

Life Magazine ran a feature on Shurcliff in 1947, helping to entrench and popularize the tradition. Madigan’s mother, who had become acquainted with Shurcliff briefly before her death in 1959, was determined to continue her legacy. 

Madigan first played the handbells in public at age 12 in 1966, when her mother brought her to Beacon Hill for a Christmas Eve concert at the home of Angela and Raymond Mryers, a wealthy couple who were in the ensemble. The ringers played outside on the Mryers’ stoop for about 15 minutes, according to Madigan. Then they headed inside for a longer private concert and lavish holiday party.

“It was quite a spectacle. Angela Mryers had a magnificent house with a huge Christmas tree in the bow window, with real candles. I remember watching as their maid lit them one by one,” says Madigan.

In 1967, the group released an album of holiday hits under the record label Beacon Hill Garden Club. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Madigan organized, expanded, and popularized the tradition, recruiting more members and turning the event into what it is today. She has introduced new elements. Now, kids can play along on small sets of hand jingle bells, and the group hands out printed programs with song lyrics. 

Madigan thinks there’s something timeless about the sound of bells. She had bells played at her mother’s funeral and at her daughter’s wedding. She believes in their power to bring people together.

“I don’t think there’s anything better to do on Christmas Eve,” she says. “It gives you hope for the future, and we need that hope.