The AHS Blog
A horological playlist
This post was written by Tabea Rude
I thought it would be fun to have a horological playlist.
Maybe it will come in handy for a 'clock-y' party someday, or just for everyday use if we feel we don't have enough horology in our lives.
Hopefully this playlist can be expanded to cover the full length of a party, or two!
The Spotify app can be downloaded from the Apple app store or Google Play (Android).
Feel free to add your own horologically themed songs.
The most perfect of Swiss watchmakers
This post was written by Helen Chapman
St Mary-at-Hill church, across Lovat Lane from the Society’s office, recently hosted a wonderful recital by the pianist Yuki Negishi, who performed a programme of work by Joseph Maurice Ravel in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Aside from the music, what caught my attention was Yuki’s comment that, unlike the stereotype of artists inspired by the natural world, Ravel was a man fascinated by the machinery of modernity, by factories and, indeed, clocks.
'The most perfect of Swiss watchmakers' is an often-cited description of Ravel made by Igor Stravinsky, most likely referring to the exquisite precision which characterises much of Ravel’s music.
The comment could be seen as particularly appropriate, however, as Ravel’s great-great-grandfather Denis Gabriel Rousset (1735–1803), from Versoix, Switzerland, is indeed recorded as ‘Maître-horloger’.
Moreover, both Ravel’s father, Pierre, and brother, Edouard, were engineers and he clearly shared their love of the mechanical, saying in 1927: ‘in my childhood I was much interested in mechanisms … I visited factories often, very often, as a small boy with my father. It was these machines, their clicking and roaring, which, with the Spanish folk songs … formed my first instruction in music!’
This interest in mechanical sounds has been noted by many critics of Ravel’s music, and indeed he wrote an entire opera based in a clock shop, as featured in this blog by Peter de Clercq – which begins with metronomes representing three clocks ticking at different speeds, their beats coinciding at a precise interval.
From the program at St Mary-at-Hill, the haunting ‘Le gibet’ from Gaspard de la Nuit is notable for the persistent tolling of a distant bell throughout and, most famously, there is Bolero, the orchestral arrangement for which is dominated by the unwavering and ‘robotic’ snare drum.
Having attended the recital as a break from my desk, it was an unexpected bonus to learn about such an interesting link between the musical and horological worlds.