Benjamin Willard (American, 1743-1803)
Musical Tall Clock
Grafton, Massachusetts, ca. 1789
American cherry and white pine
91 7/8 x 21 x 12 1/2 in. (233.4 x 53.3 x 31.8 cm)
Mabel Brady Garvan Collection
1930.2284
Tall clocks were among the most extravagant possessions owned by the elite in colonial America. Multiple craftsmen were involved in their manufacture: a clockmaker assembled intricate works, often using imported gears and parts, and a cabinetmaker fitted the works into custom-built cases. Some clocks were more than timepieces-they were also musical instruments. Musical clocks were complex and costly to produce, and only about 150 American examples are known to survive. This clock in the Gallery’s collection was made shortly after the American Revolution by Benjamin Willard while he was working in Grafton, Massachusetts. When the clock strikes the hour, it triggers a mechanism hidden behind the clock face: a cylinder studded with pins rotates and causes hammers to hit a series of bells and produce a recognizable song. Remarkably, we are able to hear the music much the way it sounded to an eighteenth-century listener because the tone is determined by the pitch of the bells and the rhythm is set by the mechanism that drives the cylinder. Willard’s unusually sophisticated clock plays seven songs-a different tune for each day of the week. In this short video, the clock plays a popular fife march called “Marquis of Granby,” which was first published in London in 1760. Words were added a few years later, with the opening line, “To arms, to arms, to arms, my jolly grenadier.” These lyrics may have resonated with the original owner of the clock, who had just witnessed the young nation’s call to arms.
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artgallery.yale.edu/collection...