Westminster Quarters — Wikipedia

Audio file

Westminster bells

A MIDI file playing the Westminster Carillon melody, here at six6 o’clock (but not in the original tone of the MI in major).

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Known in English under the name of Westminster Quarters (quarters of an hour of Westminster) This melody is used on many clocks or chips to ring every hour and even all quarters of hours (famous and very widespread air, in particular on clocks and mechanical chips). But it is best known to be the melody of the Westminster Palace.

It is also often called Westminster Cairons ( Westminster Chimes ), or Cambridge Carillons Because it is in this city, in St Mary the Great church, that the melody has its origin.

Tradition also wants the fifth and sixth air measurements I know that my redeemer liveth (“I know my Redeemer lives”) of Messiah by Georg Friedrich Handel served as a basis for the composition of the carillon air at the end of XVIII ^{It is} century.

There is in fact a different melody (variation) depending on the quarter of an hour and each has as many measures as a quarter of an hour already sold (therefore from one to four measurements, from the first quarter of an hour to the ‘time battery). In a tone in E major, the four notes of music used are so ₃ . We ₄ , FA♯ ₄ and sol♯ ₄ (corresponding to four bells in mechanical clocks). The whole is based on five patterns (five permutations of these four notes).

The five patterns are frozen and always played as follows:

1. SOL♯ ₄ , FA♯ ₄ . We ₄ , and ₃
2. me ₄ , sol♯ ₄ , FA♯ ₄ , and ₃
3. me ₄ , but # ₄ , sol♯ ₄ . We ₄
4. SOL♯ ₄ . We ₄ , FA♯ ₄ , and ₃
5. and ₃ , FA♯ ₄ , sol♯ ₄ . We ₄

Each pattern is played at the rate of three blacks then a pointed white and is used exactly twice per hour.
The battery time is also followed by as many strokes as hours sold by Big Ben (each blow is a mi ₃ ). A blow to point out that it is an hour, two strokes to two o’clock … Until twelve strokes for noon. The sequence in detail:

first is fifteen minutes :	motif (1)
Half an hour:	Motifs (2) then (3)
3 It is fifteen minutes :	patterns (4) (5) and (1)
Time battery:	Motifs (2) (3) (4) and (5) followed by Big Ben (example: 3 hours)

In other words, these five reasons are played in this order (1), (2), (3), (4), (5) and this is repeated a second time in the same order. It is a technical tip of mechanical clocks. Already, there are only 5 sequences to make while 10 are played. Then these sequences are always played in the same order and in a loop (you can imagine a cam on a gear turning to play these melodies). This facilitates manufacturing.

In musical terms, the first and third quarters of an hour ended with the dominant Si, while the second and fourth quarters of an hour ended with the Mi tonic. This is what contributed to the success of this melody but its success is obviously propagated also by Big Ben …

Note, thanks to the audio recording on the English version of the article, that Big Ben plays this melody in 5 times (5/4 instead of 6/4) to shorten the duration. By finishing with a white (not pointed). Carillons in general make various choices on this rhythm, sometimes linked to their technical limitations. The end hours are sometimes played at a rate that is still different from the rest of the melody.

• A Caconge video in Carillons Right 11 hours right first then the first three quarters of an hour … This carillon plays in 5/4 hour the quarters of an hour but in 4/4 the last strokes indicating the full hour (which amounts to accelerating the pace on the end).