s), while the Harfenuhr, from Berlin, had a
fully chromatic compass of up to 50 notes). C.P.E. Bach composed at least two
minuets for the Harfenuhr, and W.F. Bach wrote music for a Harfenuhr
in Köthen Castle, which was destroyed during World War II.(Ger. Flötenuhr, Wälzenuhr, Hackbrettuhr, Harfenuhr, Spieluhr, Spielklok).
A clock combined with one or more forms of Mechanical instrument which plays music at regular time-intervals. Unlike the chiming clock (see Chimes, §2), with which it is frequently confused, the musical clock’s performance is normally separate from the hourly chiming sequence, and can be selected automatically or manually (sometimes a choice is offered) from a repertory of tunes provided on a pinned wooden or metal barrel or cylinder as in the Barrel organ or Musical box.
The five principal types of musical clock are those fitted with: a carillon (with bells made of glass or metal); an organ (with either wood or metal flue pipes, and occasionally reeds); strings (struck like a dulcimer or plucked); a glockenspiel (of wood or metal bars on metal tubes); or a comb or combs of tuned steel teeth (as in a musical box). The ‘compound’ musical clock takes two of these types (very rarely three) and unites them into one mechanism. Compound clocks most frequently combine the carillon and the organ, or the organ and strings.
The earliest musical clocks were an extension of the Carillon, connected with tower clocks in the 13th and 14th centuries. The first application of a music-producing mechanism to time-indicating clockwork is unknown, but in 1321 the abbey of Ste Catherine near Rouen possessed ‘an iron time-keeping mechanism with a musical train’ which could play the hymn Conditor alme siderum. Strasbourg Cathedral possessed a musical, astronomical and automaton clock by 1352. A similar musical clock at the cathedral of St Jean in Lyon (restored 1992–3) was described in 1379. It plays the hymn Un queant laxis on a carillon of six bells.
By the 16th century, smaller carillon clocks were being made for domestic use: the oldest of these to survive was made in London in 1598 by Nicholas Vallin, and the brothers Isaac and Josiah Habrecht (who made parts for the second clock at Strasbourg Cathedral) were making examples by the last decades of the 16th century (one is in the British Museum). Augsburg was an early centre for the making of extraordinary musical automata, usually associated with clocks. At the end of the 16th century, under the encouragement of patronage from the nobility and royalty of the Holy Roman Empire, makers such as the Bidermanns, Langenbucher, Runggells and Schlottheim produced exotic musical clocks. One surviving compound table clock by Veit Langenbucher and the younger Samuel Bidermann plays a choice of three melodies on a 16-note pipe organ combined with a spinet (Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois). The Thirty Years War brought an end to sponsorship, and Augsburg declined in musico-horological significance.
In the 18th century the manufacture of clocks was concentrated in London. There these instruments were made by outstanding clockmakers, including Barbot, William Carpenter, James Cox, R. Fleetwood, Fox & Sons, Fromanteel & Clark, Henderson, George Higginson, Thomas Larrymore, Marriott, Eardley Norton, Robert Philip, Robert Sellers, Tomlin, and Williamson; musical clocks built by all these clockmakers are now in the largest collection of musical clocks, in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
Organ-playing clocks are more complex in construction and musical programme, and in London there were only a small number of makers, including Cox, J.J. Merlin and Charles Clay (for whose clocks Handel composed a number of pieces). If London favoured bells, Vienna concentrated on pipes: very few carillon clocks were made in Austria, but Vienna became the manufacturing centre of an organ-playing clock called the Flötenuhr (‘flute-playing clock’). This used a special form of wooden pipe, the so-called ‘Vienna flute’, which had a reversed embouchure and a circular mouth. Some of the most important makers of the Flötenuhr were Christian Möllinger, Roentgen & Kintzing, Johann Elffroth, Kleemeyer, I.C. Knoop, D.N. Winkel, Pehr Strand and Joseph Niemecz (for a full list of makers see Ord-Hume, 1995). During the ‘golden century’ of the Viennese musical clock (c1720–c1820), the instrument underwent dramatic improvement. Flute-playing clocks played arrangements of music (overtures, arias, parts of the flute concertos and sonatas, marches and dance music), but also compositions written exclusively for them. There are 32 compositions and adaptations attributed to Haydn, which he wrote for flute-playing clocks constructed by Joseph Niemecz, Prince Esterházy’s librarian. Four instruments by Niemecz with the ‘Haydn’ barrels are extant; these were discovered between 1948 and 1996. There are also three compositions for clocks by Mozart and three by Beethoven. The London carillon clock industry was eventually overtaken by the Swiss. In the 1760s Frederick the Great invited watchmakers from Switzerland to establish the manufacture of musical clocks in Berlin. Among well-known Berlin manufacturers are Konrad Ehrbar, Möllinger, Elffroth and the court watchmaker Pohlmann; the cylinders were pinned by the musician Kummer.
Two
forms of string-playing clock (also called dulcimer- or harp-playing clocks)
were also made in Germany. The smaller, less sophisticated Hackbrettuhr,
made in the Black Forest, had a compass of about 18 notes (c'–d'''
with the addition of two bs), while the Harfenuhr, from Berlin, had a
fully chromatic compass of up to 50 notes). C.P.E. Bach composed at least two
minuets for the Harfenuhr, and W.F. Bach wrote music for a Harfenuhr
in Köthen Castle, which was destroyed during World War II.
A small but rich musical clock industry also existed in Stockholm (nurtured by King Gustaf III), and organ-playing clocks by Pehr Strand and also I.C. Knoop are of the highest order. Makers in the Low Countries produced a significant number of carillon-playing musical clocks, often with changeable cylinders, and generally playing a longer melody on the hour and a shorter one on the half-hour.
The era of the musical clock had closed by the end of the first quarter of the 19th century, although there was a brief revival at the end of the century and during the first decade of the 20th, when disc-playing Musical box movements were incorporated in some clocks. These, however, were novelties rather than serious musical interpreters.
The musical watch is a variety of musical clock, invariably in the form of a pocket watch. In the earliest form only very simple tunes could be played using five or seven small saucer-shaped bells nested together. The case was necessarily bulky and the sound high-pitched. Antoine Favre of Switzerland was probably the first to apply the tuned steel tooth of the musical box mechanism to the musical watch (1796), making it possible to build much smaller watches with a greater musical compass. Flat disc musicwork enabled elaborate music to be set on a mechanism nor more than 5–6 mm thick. Later watches had tiny pinned-cylinder musicwork.
G. Kinsky: ‘Beethoven and die Flötenuhr’, Beethoven-Almanach, ed. G. Bosse (Regensburg, 1927), 320–29
A. Chapuis and E.Gelis: Le monde des automates: étude historique et technique (Paris, 1928/R)
E.F. Schmid: ‘Joseph Haydn und die Flötenuhr’, ZMw, xiv (1931–2), 193–221, addns 335–6
A. Chapuis: Le Grand Frédéric et ses horlogers (Lausanne, 1938)
A. Protz: Mechanische Musikinstrumente (Kassel, 1939)
A. Orel: ‘Andante für eine Walze: sekundäre Quellen zu Mozarts KV.616’, Acta Mozartiana, iii/4 (1956), 3–9
A. Buchner: Hudební automaty (Prague, 1959; Eng. trans., 1959)
E. Simon: Mechanische Musikinstrumente früherer Zeiten und ihre Musik (Weisbaden, 1966/R)
K. Borman: Orgel- und Spieluhrenbau: Kommentierte auf zeichnungen des Orgel- und Musikwerkmachers Ignuz Bruder (1829) und die Entwicklung der Walzenorgeln (Zürich, 1968)
G. Holzhey: Flötenuhren aus dem Schwarzwald (Stuttgart, 1969)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Clockwork Music: an Illustrated History of Mechanical Musical Instruments (London, 1973)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Joseph Haydn and the Mechanical Organ (Cardiff, 1982)
J. Brauers: Von der Aolsharfe zum Digitalspieler: 2000 Jahre mechanische Musik, 100 Jahre Schallplatte (Munich, 1984)
J.J.L. Haspels: Automatic Musical Instruments, their Mechanics and their Music, 1580–1820 (The Hague, 1987)
H. Jüttemann: Schwarzwälder Flötenuhren: Kostbarkeiten aus der fruhen Uhrenindustrie des Schwarzwaldes in historischer und volkskundlischer Sicht und ihre Technik (Waldkirch, 1991)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: The Musical Clock, Musical & Automation Clocks & Watches (Ashbourne, 1995)
ALEXANDR BUCHNER/ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME