The chimes of our clocks

Almost all our clocks play the Westminster chime every quarter hour. Some have three melodies, others tubular bells, and on request we also fit classical pieces. Listen to them below.

The chimes of our clocks

Pieces on request

Westminster

It is the melody of Big Ben in London, and the chime of most of our clocks. It grew out of a phrase from Handel's Messiah and, before Big Ben, it was played by the bells of St Mary the Great in Cambridge. We also make it on small bells: the notes are the same, only the timbre changes.

St Michael's

It comes from the bells of St Michael's Church in Charleston, in the United States, cast in England in 1764. During the American Civil War the bells were destroyed and then recast in England from the same moulds, which is why the melody has come down to us unchanged.

Whittington

It is the melody of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow, in the heart of London. It takes its name from Richard Whittington, who lived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and was four times Lord Mayor of London.

Westminster, St Michael's and Whittington together are the "three melodies": you will find them, for example, in our curio cabinet clocks and corner clocks, and you choose which one plays.

On request

• Ode to Joy: from the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), on the ode Friedrich Schiller wrote in 1785. Today it is the anthem of the European Union.
• Ave Maria: Franz Schubert's, for those who prefer a gentler sound.
• The Magic Flute: Papageno's aria from the opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

Silent nights

On models with a night silencer the chime goes quiet at night, usually from 10 pm to 7:15 am, and starts again by itself in the morning. Meanwhile the clock keeps telling the time.