A bell is a struck idiophone, generally cast in bronze, whose sound is produced by the impact of a metal pendulum, known as the clapper, against the inner wall of the instrument. As the community sound par excellence, the ringing of bells has, throughout Christian Europe, encoded for centuries a true language at a distance, capable either of calling people together (a centripetal function) or of warning, dispersing and signalling (a centrifugal function): announcing religious services, marking the hours of the day, warning of danger and proclaiming deaths. For the peasants of central Italy, bells were the “voice of God”. At the same time, the sound of consecrated bronze was long believed to possess protective and apotropaic powers against lightning, hailstorms and other natural calamities.

In Fano Adriano, on the Teramo side of Gran Sasso, the parish church of Saints Peter and Paul houses in its bell tower, dating from 1658, a peal of four bells: the grossa (great bell), the mezzana (middle bell), the campana che accenna (“leading bell”), and the campana a tocchetti (“small-timekeeping bell”), differing in size and weight and tuned together in G major. The oldest, the grossa, was recast in 1760 and, according to tradition, cast in the village itself in a pit dug in Piazza Prato. The other bells were recast between 1935 and 1994, while today the maintenance of the mechanisms is entrusted to bell founders from Molise.

The “language” of the bells of Fano Adriano is rich and highly codified. Four principal ringing techniques — a tocco, a martello, a distesa and a fuoco — give rise to a wide repertoire of ringing patterns, each carrying a precise meaning. A morto (the funeral ringing) is performed from below, by measured tolls, and concludes with the great bell alone: two tolls indicate the death of a woman, three that of a man, ensuring that the entire village is informed of the bereavement. A fuoco (“fire ringing”) was performed by making the clapper rotate against the inner wall of the bell to signal the outbreak of a fire. In the past, the bells also structured the rhythm of everyday life: the Mattutino at dawn, “varying the hour from season to season”; the Angelus at midday, announcing the time to pause from work; the Ventunora, three hours before dusk, recalling those scattered across the mountains in their daily activities; and the first and second Ave Maria, inviting the community to silence after sunset.

Many of these signals reflect the village’s dual identity, at once settled and transhumant. Until the first half of the twentieth century, Fano Adriano was a community of livestock owners, shepherds and high-altitude farmers, and many of its men spent the autumn and winter months with their flocks in the Roman Campagna and in Apulia. For this reason, the feast of the patron saint on 14 February, deeply felt by the community, was effectively celebrated again at the beginning of September, before the departure of the transhumant shepherds. This custom survives today in the celebration of two annual feast days, the second held on the last Sunday of August and invariably accompanied by festive bell ringing. The climax of the celebration is the ad allegrezza ringing, once reserved for the greatest solemnities and today preserved specifically for the feast of Saint Valentine. Described with remarkable precision by Nello de Arcangelis in his study The Language of Bells from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century, it is a ringing pattern requiring the cooperation of several performers in the bell tower and perfect synchronisation, acquired through experience and by observing older bell ringers at work. It begins with a trembling movement of the clappers against the inner walls of the bells, followed by a succession of precisely timed blows a martello (or a carillon), repeated five or six times under the direction of the bell ringer of the great bell. It then moves into the second phase, known as alla fratina, during which the great bell is rung a distesa — in dialect abbendà, “to launch” the bell — while the other three keep the rhythm. Coordinating bells of different weights, while synchronising with the clapper of the great bell as it swings back and forth, is physically demanding. During the a distesa phase in particular, the bell ringers often relieve one another in turn, striving not to lose the rhythm established for the performance.

Alongside the festive peal, there also survives, as its ritual counterpart, the custom of “tying” the bells during Holy Week, from the Gloria of Holy Thursday until the Easter Vigil. In the past, the bells were replaced by the tric trac, a wooden-and-metal direct-struck idiophone operated by the village boys as they walked through the streets. “If the bells were not tied,” de Arcangelis explains, “they would ring by themselves, foretelling misfortune because of Christ’s death.”