Looking inside a Barrel Organ.

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Whilst browsing the other day,

I came on this video of a movement out of a 'Flute Clock'.

It is a very good example of the workings of barrel organs.

At the very bottom, you can see the cranked bellows

pumping air up into the 'reservoir' sitting on top of it.

From here the air will be admitted to the correct pipe,

at the correct time,

by a valve being lifted open,

when a 'pin' or 'bridge' on the rotating barrel

passes under it.

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Normally only one tune is played on one revolution of the barrel.

However, in this case the barrel is 'pinned' on a spiral

to produce a longer playing time.

Just thought you might like to see how they work.

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German Flute Clock plays Mozart

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Restoration of a German Flute Clock (Flotenuhr) from the early nineteenth century.

It is playing Mozart from cylinder No. 3.

You can also hear it playing from cylinder No. 2 here.

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Flotenuhr for Musical Clocks

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Just three of the many delightful tunes that Joseph Haydn wrote for Organ Clocks.
I do not know which these three are. I have a list showing thirty two in all.

Black Forest Flute Clock

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I was going to do another in the series on arranging....but have not found time this weekend, however, I have found another bit on Flute Clocks for Derek.

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Please don't think this is my clock, it is not. The following is taken from the description on YouTube.

"It is by an unknown maker (possibly Mukle of Neukirch) playing eight unknown tunes.
The thirty-nine pipes were missing when found in 1985, so all of them had to be reconstructed (using the holes in the windchest and the note names on the keyframe as a clue)"

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‘Singing Chickens’

‘Singing Chickens’ are very hard to find these days. I’ve come across ‘Singing Nuns’ and even ‘Singing Hinnies’ ......but chickens?.......

Until I remembered Strasbourg.

Now, in Strasbourg Museum they have the oldest ‘singing chicken’ in the world.

It is all that is left of the very first clock built for Strasbourg Cathedral in 1350.

All that is known of this clock, is that it was very large....over 38 feet high !

Two further replacement clocks have been built for the cathedral, but there are no remaining parts of this first clock ....except the ‘chicken‘.

It was actually referred to as “The Great Cock” and it sat on top of the clock and ‘sang’ every day at 12 noon.

At that time, it would open its beak, put out its tongue and flap its wings.

One of the engineering miracles of the bird, apart from the gearing and bellows, was that each separate primary feather on its wings, splayed out when the mechanism was working.  You can see the details in the bottom right of the above drawing.

There is no record of what it sang or indeed even sounded like.

After-thought One:      Singing Hinnies.

A Bakestone Cake using flour, butter, lard, currants, milk & sour cream.

‘The Singing Hinnie’ was so called as, when the butter and the cream melted during the baking it sizzled on the hot girdle and was thought to be singing.

After-thought Two:      The ‘Singing Nun’.

Belgium-born Jeannine Deckers shot to fame in 1963 when she released a song in order to raise money for her convent.

The song was entitled 'Dominique' after the 13th-century saint who founded her order. The track sold millions of copies worldwide and to this day she remains the only Belgian to have had a United States hit at number one. 

She never repeated her success and her life ended sadly with suicide, following her depression, poverty and addiction to alcohol and painkillers.

A thing almost endowed with life.

I have just been watching a DVD sent over from Derek in Australia.

It shows how he built his organ clock and it finishes with a full recital of all the tunes.

So, in admiration of his work, I post the following.

Of all the products of man’s hands

A clock’s the finest ever wrought;

A thing that moves and gives out sounds

As though it had both life and thought.

It tells its maker how the hours

Go by, which else he could not know

With surety, when skies are dull

And all is mist and murk below.

It makes the craftsman feel the thrill,

By travail earned and patient strife,

Of having made, by his own skill,

A thing almost endowed with life.

Annette left an interesting comment after the “Grandfather’s Clock” post.

So this little verse may answer her question?

“My Grandfather’s Clock”

Following on from Sunday’s clock theme, I thought I’d mention “Grandfather’s Clock”.

Now I do actually have my grandfather’s clock. It is late Victorian alarm clock…and how do I know? Two reasons, firstly, a repairer has put a date inside when he worked on it and secondly, it plays “Soldiers of the Queen” as an alarm instead of a bell.

The Queen of course, being Victoria.

Now I expect everyone has heard the song “My Grandfather’s Clock”, the one that ‘stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died’.

It was of course not a mantle clock but a Longcase clock.

The song was written by the self taught composer and lyricist Henry C Work (1832-1884). The story goes that in 1874 he was visiting England and stayed at the George Hotel in Piercebridge near Darlington. He noticed that the Longcase clock in the hall was not going and found out from the proprietor the story of why this was so.

Early, that century, the Hotel had been owned by two brothers called Jenkins. The clock had been bought to mark the birth of the eldest son, some 90 years earlier.

The clock had an eight-day movement and had always been extremely reliable, however when the younger brother fell ill and died, the clock started to lose time.

It got worse and worse until it was losing over a quarter of an hour a day.

Then a couple of years later, the other brother, who was nearly 90 was taken ill and died at five passed eleven.

At this exact time the clock downstairs stopped.

New people took over the George but the clock defied all attempts by experts to get it going again.

Henry Work was so intrigued by this that he thought of writing a song about it.

The rest is history, as they say, but since Work published his song, most people refer to Longcase clocks as “Grandfather Clocks” and I believe this old clock still does not go and still shows the time, as five passed eleven.