Midnight Chimes

I’m proud to say I was a major factor in getting this old clock back in working order. A product of the New Haven Clock Co., it’s about 100 years old and deserves to be displayed prominently on a mantel and doing its job; which is twofold: telling the time and chiming its little heart out every quarter hour.

I’m also, with relief, proud to report that it is not sitting on my personal mantel because I think it would drive me crazy. The sound it makes is charming and, in its own way, beautifully delicate. But, here’s the rub—it chimes, as stated above, every quarter hour. My grandmother had one of these clocks and, invariably, it would have to be silenced whenever she had houseguests because no one could sleep through it, including me.

The tune is the famous one you hear from Big Ben in the tower of the Parliament building in London, the volume of which is just a tad louder than this one. Now I understand why the British are so antsy most of the time. Of course the question came up about the origin of the melody and here’s the WikiLeak on that:

This melody is traditionally, though without substantiation, believed to be a set of variations on the four notes that make up the fifth and sixth measures of Handel’s Messiah. It was written in 1793 for a new clock in St. Mary the Great Church, the University Church in Cambridge and is attributed to any one of the following people, depending on your source. The Rev. Dr. Joseph Jowett, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, was given the job, but he was probably assisted by either John Randall, who was the Professor of Music, Cambridge University, or his brilliant undergraduate pupil, William Crotch.

Being the type of irreverent person I am and if I had to vote I would, naturally, tend to lay the accolade (or the blame) on Crotch.

The notional words of the chime, again derived from Great St Mary's and in turn an allusion to Psalm 37:23–24, are: "All through this hour/Lord be my guide/And by Thy power/No foot shall slide". Not nearly as good as a limerick but, hey, one man’s doggerel is another man’s poetry. The words are written on a plaque on the wall of the clock room of the Big Ben tower. Earplugs optional.