Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes

Subject: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 01 Jun 20 - 08:28 PM

Hi all,

Some of you may have seen the thread asking for information on the seven clock tunes on a music mechanism on a clock made in Oxford in 1834.

Identify clock tunes - 1834

When the thread was first opened the only way to hear the tunes was to watch the videos and listen to the sound of the hammers hitting the bells and there was a lot of sustained ringing after each bell was struck which made it difficult to isolate each melody from the sea of sound.

Since the original post there have been a few other things added to the thread which made it easier to hear the melody of each tune.

One change is that the OP added links to extra videos of some of the music mechanisms before they were cleaned so the melodies were slower and possibly more easily identified.

Another significant addition to the thread was that a pianist friend of the OP did some magnificent work on transcribing the melodies from the 4 so far unidentified tunes.

From her transcription I then created 4 MIDI files and there are links in the thread so that you can hear each tune.

So far three tunes have been identified: an English tune, Begone Dull Care, a Welsh tune, Codiad yr Ehedydd/The Rising of the Lark, and a hymn, Illsley, also known by other names.

I know it's not accepted protocol to start a completely new thread, but apart from continuing to refresh the original thread and hope that some of you will check it out again, I don't know of another way to excite interest in identifying these peskily elusive tunes.

Please, would you mind going in to the other thread and listening to the MIDI files to see if any tunes sound familiar?

Thanks, Helen

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 01 Jun 20 - 08:31 PM

https:/mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=167868&messages=83

I don't know what the trick is to stop the blickifier (i.e. blue clicky link maker) from doubling up on "mudcat.org" on links to Mudcat threads. I'll just keep on going in and redoing the links until someone tells me the trick to prevent it happening in the first place.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 09:11 PM

If you think about it, hearing tunes "recorded" in 1834 is pretty special, even if the recording mechanism is a music box style of cylinder with little hammers hitting little bells. It wasn't until 43 years later that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.

And also, these tunes were collected in some way by people. The books published around that time were the compilations of tunes and/or songs passed around from person to person and then "recorded" in written form using music notation which could then be used by musicians to "reproduce" the music on their own instruments or with their own voices with the caveat that each person could reinterpret the music to suit themselves or they could misremember the music as it was written, or as they heard someone else perform it, and from then on there was more than one version of the tune or lyrics. So tunes and songs evolved over time and distance like hybrid plants which could trace their origins back to plant-zero, but which have identifiable differences from that first plant.

You can listen to a music box, and these days they are a dime a dozen, and not even think twice about this method for transcribing music in a format which reproduces the sound of the music. You hear music everywhere these days, in a lift, on the radio, on your phone or iPad, on TV, on your computer, as digital media or the more antiquated forms like vinyl records or CD's. You probably don't think about the ubiquity of recorded music because it is all around you whether you want it or not.

But, here we have a fairly unusual opportunity and a challenge in trying to identify tunes which had some sort of significance either to the clock maker or the potential owner of the clock and the tunes were frozen in time 186 years ago.

The tunes may be called the same names as current versions of the tune, but they may be different to the accepted versions we know about now. That adds to the challenge because they can sound tantalisingly familiar and yet be just out of reach of our conscious ability to pinpoint their identities.

Fellow Mudcatters, please bring your considerable and broad musical knowledge to this quest and visit the other thread to try to identify those clock tunes frozen in time.

Note: the link in my first post is not quite right because mudcat.org is repeated, but the text version of the link in my second post is correct.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: cnd
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 09:46 PM

Sorry Helen, I've tried my hand at it and turned up naught.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 03 Jun 20 - 10:15 PM

Yes, thanks cnd. You have been on the trail like a determined bloodhound.

I'm feeling a bit disheartened, but every time I think about giving up, Tune 3 just keeps going around and around in my head.

I'm really hoping that other people will listen to the MIDI files and maybe recognise some of the 4 mystery tunes straight away.

If no-one else pops in to the thread, then I guess that will be the end of the quest from the Mudcat standpoint.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Rex
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 03:31 PM

Helen, I have been following the progress of tracking down these tunes from the beginning. It is an unexpected window into popular music from that time, a significant gift from long before any means of recording existed. I applaud the work that has gone into it and that two tunes have been identified. Converting the tunes to midi files has helped greatly in learning the melody. But unfortunately I do not recognize the tunes. I remain hopeful that someone will.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 04 Jun 20 - 04:48 PM

Thanks for your interest, Rex.

One of the issues is that the tunes on the clock mechanism are very regular rhythm but if the rhythm is changed slightly a tune could be a jig or a strathspey or a reel, so I think a little bit of lateral thinking is needed. That adds to the challenge.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 05 Jun 20 - 06:11 PM

An example of an early music playback device:

About 50 years ago I saw one of these in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, NSW. I was fascinated. They were invented in the late 1890's, so 60 years after the clock with the tunes we are trying to identify.

The Polyphon disc changing Music Box

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 01:15 PM

Helen - creating a Mudcat link with the blue clicky page :

just paste the end section of the URL

e.g.
thread.cfm?threadid=167868
or
thread.cfm?threadid=167868#4056547

creates

thread.cfm?threadid=167868
and
thread.cfm?threadid=167868#4056547

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Help needed to identify clock tunes
From: Helen
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 04:43 PM

Thanks FreddyHeadey, I knew there was a trick to it but couldn't remember what it was.

I'll save this for future reference.

Helen