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Piano sheet music for kids · Round · Level 3: Notes below middle C
The Bell Doth Toll
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 12 bars and a pickup. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
A slow bell round in three parts of four bars each, written one after the other. It sits in C position with the thumb on middle C. Part 1 starts on a pickup on G, the little finger, and stretches up to A once; part 2 sits lower and dips to the B below middle C; part 3 is the bell itself, long Cs and one drop to the G below. “Bell doth” and “love its” are long-short, a dotted crotchet and a quaver (eighth note), and “ring-ing, for it” runs in even quavers. The left hand plays C, F and G chords.
Practice tip: Play it slowly and let the long notes ring for their full length. As a round, a second player starts at the beginning on the first player’s “I”, the pickup into part 2, and a third when the first player reaches part 3, the long bell notes.
The words
The bell doth toll, its echoes roll, I know the sound full well; I love its ringing, for it calls to singing, with its bim, bim, bim, bom, bell. Bim, bom, bim, bom, bell.
A short history
The Bell Doth Toll is an anonymous round that has been sung in schools for well over a century. Its words, “The bell doth toll, its echoes roll”, are already in Lowell Mason’s Boston School Song Book of 1841, and the round was printed in Home Songs (Oliver Ditson, 1906) and in Twice 55 Community Songs (1919), whose version is followed here, with its three parts numbered 1, 2 and 3.
The first two parts are about a church bell whose sound the singer knows and loves, because it calls people together to sing; the third part is the bell itself, “bim, bom”, low and slow underneath.
As a round, the second voice starts as the first begins part 2, and the third as the first begins part 3, so all three lines sound together over the same chords.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (round; words printed by 1841)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 12 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Slowly, crotchet = 76
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 59 of 201)
- Type
- Round
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
Questions and answers
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