Introduction and C. Clay Musical Clock
By Leonardo Perretti
Hallo to you all; excuse my bad English.
I am Leonardo Perretti, restorer of pipe organs, specializing in ancient organs (up to half XIX century), operating in South of Italy. I am very interested in automatic music; in my career I have restored some auto- matic instruments, and I became enamoured of this kind of instruments, although they are not so easy to find in this region, so it is difficult for me to have a great experience.
I have a problem with a restoration I am executing; I hope someone wants to help me.
I am restoring an interesting musical clock belonging to an important museum in Naples. This instrument was made by Charles Clay in England in 1730, and incorporates a pipe organ with three ranks of 17 wooden pipes each; ten pieces are recorded on a brass roll with iron pins. It was found in the store of the museum some years ago in a very bad condition; at indeterminable date (at least 70-80 years ago), inexpert operators opened the instrument unduly, causing great damage and the loss of gears, levers, pipes and so on.
Restoring is conducted by a team composed by me (as an organ-restorer), a watchmaker, a restorer of artistic objects, and a musicologist. At present we have restored the case of the instrument, the clock, the wind chest, the pipes and the bellows of the organ, and we have reconstructed the missing pipes. We are analyzing the musical pieces now by means of a specially developed computer-based system, in order to obtain the scores, individuate the pieces and their author, and to establish the size of lacking pins to be reconstructed. Early results seem to hint English unpublished music.
Our problem now is to complete the connections between the organ and the clock, and between the organ parts. We think we have technical skills to rebuild whatever part is needed, but until now we have not been able to determine the exact original configuration of the instrument; remaining traces seem to suggest a sophisticated system of compensation of forces which makes constant the rotation of the roll despite the irregularity of forces introduced by the alternate movement of bellows.
We found out some documentation about C. Clay and musical clocks, but nothing helpful; we know some articles by A. Ord-Hume appeared in the review "Music & Automata", but we have not been able to find them. If someone want to help us, any documentation, reference or suggestion is welcome.
Greetings
[ Editors note:
[
[ Welcome to the Digest, Leonardo. Whew, that's quite a project!
[ Your task is especially interesting because it needs so many skills.
[
[ It seems to me that you need (1) books, and (2) an expert advisor
[ with whom you can discuss the mechanical architecture. I have
[ great confidence that our Digest readers will help you find the
[ resources you need! :-)
[
[ Perhaps someday you can tell us about your method of analyzing the
[ music. I believe that the museum in Seewan, Switzerland, somehow
[ did a similar analysis of the music of a large flute clock.
[
[ Please keep us informed of your progress, and good luck!
[
[ Robbie Rhodes
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(Message sent Thu 23 Jan 1997, 22:33:15 GMT, from time zone GMT+0100.) |
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