Very common information, but I confess I did not know it. I knew about eagles and stars on the Kremlin towers, but I didn’t even guess what the chimes on the Kremlin’s Spasskaya tower were like in the distant, distant time. Do you know?
Look …
From time immemorial in Russia there was a special attitude to the Spasskaya Tower, formerly called Frolovskaya. The townspeople considered its front gate to be holy. It is no coincidence that the main clock of the state was installed on it.
To date, historians have not come to a consensus when exactly the clock appeared on the Spasskaya Tower. Most likely, this happened immediately after the tower was rebuilt by order of Ivan III - in the 90s of the 15th century. The very first written mention of the main clock of the state dates back to 1585 - contemporaries indicated that watchmakers worked in the Kremlin.
According to historians, at that time the old Russian (Byzantine) way of counting time was used on the clock. Day in Russia in the old days was divided into "day" hours and "night", and since the duration of daylight hours during the year varied, this was taken into account when calculating the time.
The appearance of such a watch is incomprehensible and unusual for a modern person: one fixed hand was located not on the dial itself, but slightly higher. The dial itself rotated under this hand. Old Slavonic letters were depicted on it, each of which meant its own number, for example, "A" is "1", B - "2" and so on.
There were only 17 such letters - that is how many hours, according to the observations of our ancestors, the longest day of the year lasted.
Promotional video:
Preserved image of the old 17-hour dial of the Frolovskaya (Spasskaya) tower.
The watch mechanism itself is curious, which consisted of gears, levers, ropes and shafts. The watchmakers who served at the Spassky chimes closely followed the work of the mechanism and regularly adjusted the clock. At dawn, as well as at sunset, they manually turned the dial so that the arrow representing the sunbeam pointed to the first letter ("A"). To make it easier to navigate, they were given special tables indicating how many light hours will be on a given day. Thus, these keepers of the chimes were not only repairmen-watchmakers - they were in fact responsible for the course of Moscow time.
Alas, due to frequent fires, the Spassky Clock, no matter how carefully they were treated, periodically fell into disrepair and broke. The mechanism of the chimes was especially badly damaged during the fire of 1624 - so much so that they were no longer restored and sold for scrap to the Yaroslavl monastery.
The very first watches were replaced in 1625 by new ones - larger in size (about five meters in diameter), with a beautiful strike. They were commissioned to manufacture an English mechanic named Christopher Galovey, and Russian blacksmiths-watchmakers helped him.
On the oak dial of the new watch, the old Russian version of time counting was also displayed. The inner circle was azure blue, representing the firmament. Gold and silvery stars were painted on it, as well as the Moon and the Sun. The letters on the dial were copper with gold plating.
Kremlin chimes of those years (modern reconstruction).
At the top of the tower wall there was another circle on which the text of the prayer was located, as well as the signs of the zodiac. By the way, their fragments are still preserved under modern clocks.
To install a new clock, it was necessary to build on the tower, increasing it by four tiers. It has a beautiful arched brick edging with carved decorations. The dial was placed in the upper hip part, at the level of 7-9 tiers, and small bells for chimes - at the 10th. After certain periods, they called back the melody. It is this watch that is considered the prototype of modern chimes.
I must say that the new watch also suffered from fires and they also had to be periodically repaired, but, nevertheless, they served for decades. When Peter I issued a decree on the transfer of Russia to a new countdown, the need for an "outdated" clock disappeared. The tsar brought new ones from Holland, already with 12 digits, and ordered to hang them instead of the old ones. Now the chimes struck every 15 minutes and also rang the melody.
To service the new watches, the Kremlin maintained a staff of watchmakers, most of whom were foreigners.
Before the transition to modern day time, the Kremlin chimes looked exactly like this. Reconstruction based on the images of A. Meyerberg (museum in the city of Alexandrov, Vladmir region)
From Catherine's times to the present day
And again a fire intervened in the fate of the clock on Spasskaya. In 1737, he damaged not only them, but also the wooden parts of the Kremlin tower, including the chime shaft. The bell music of the main Russian clock ceased to sound on Red Square, and after Peter moved the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the attitude to the chimes was no longer so careful - no one needed them. The clock was constantly breaking, and it was poorly repaired.
When Catherine ascended the throne, she decided to give the watch a second life. But it turned out that by this time they were in such a bad condition that there was simply no point in restoring them. Then the Empress ordered to replace the Peter's clock with another - "English" (this is how contemporaries wrote about them), which they managed to find in the Faceted Chamber. They were installed by the domestic master Ivan Polyansky and the German watchmaker Fatz.
In 1770 the chimes rang out their first melody, and it was "Ah, my dear Augustine." Why did you choose her? Yes, just this song really liked the foreigner Fatz. The melody about Augustine sounded regularly in Moscow for almost a year, and this did not bother any of the Russian nobility.
In the middle of the 19th century, as a result of a thorough examination of the chimes, it turned out that they were "completely upset." The watch has undergone a serious repair, the company "Butenop Brothers" was engaged in it.
The craftsmen replaced the gears and wheels (this time they used special alloys that are resistant to sudden changes in temperature), the chimes got a new pendulum and a more modern move. Other dials (6 m in diameter) were also made for each of the four sides of the tower - black with gold-plated edging and copper numerals with minute divisions. The hands of the watch were also gilded.
As for the musical part of the chimes, additional bells were added to the existing ones, which had to be removed from other Kremlin towers. There were 48 bells in total. The musical mechanism was completely redesigned.
In 1917, as a result of shelling at the Kremlin, the chimes were seriously damaged: the shell hit one of the arrows and damaged the mechanism of their rotation.
Only a year later, Lenin ordered to restore the clock. The Kremlin chimes got a new pendulum, the mechanism of rotation of the hands started working again. With the help of the musician Mikhail Cheremnykh (better known in the Soviet years as a graphic artist), we managed to understand the bell system …
In the last century, the chimes underwent two major restorations - in 1974 and 1999. In our time, the chimes occupy from 8 to 10 tiers of the hip part of the tower. Externally, the dial is exactly the version that the Boutenop brothers made in the 19th century.