A lot of the time, being a fan of mechanical horology is like being a fan of classical ballet, or classical music. Absent a time machine, you do not expect anyone to make any revolutionary new contributions to the art; instead, you go to see, say, La Bayadère, to see how well someone's executed a well-known and well-established part of the repertoire. So it is with fine watchmaking – delight is often to be found less in innovation and more in how well you, as a connoisseur, can judge the execution.
Both the minute repeater and the tourbillon fall into this category. While it's true that there have been a lot of innovations in minute repeaters and tourbillons over the last 20 or so years, often they feel like an attempt to move away from the past rather than honor it – as if classics aren't classics for a reason. The Carl F. Bucherer Manero Minute Repeater Symphony does something much more difficult – it innovates, both aesthetically and technically, in a way that deepens (rather than breaks with) a connection to the past.
Carl F. Bucherer is probably best known for introducing the peripheral winding mechanism in the caliber CFB A1000, back in 2008. It was, and remains, one of the relatively few calibers to use a peripheral winding system, in which the oscillating weight is on the same plane as the movement plate, rather than sitting above it. This has the same advantages as a micro-rotor in terms of flatness. But what it has over a micro-rotor is a wide range of possibilities in how you arrange the rest of the movement components, since you don't have to move everything out of the way of the micro-rotor and its associated gearing.
CFB has, since 2008, made a point of using the basic aesthetic advantages of the peripheral rotor to make visible parts of the movement which ordinarily would be partially obscured by a conventional rotor – the Manero Peripheral Tourbillon is one of the most notable examples – but the Manero Minute Repeater Symphony demonstrates the potential of the peripheral rotor system more ingeniously than any expression the brand has produced so far.
To understand the construction of the Manero Minute Repeater Symphony, let's look at a more conventionally constructed minute repeater.
Currently, the thinnest minute repeater in production is the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater, with the caliber BVL 362. It is a remarkable movement, an expression of the state of the art of a classic minute repeater caliber. The image above shows the back of the movement – what a watchmaker would call the top plate, as, to a watchmaker, the top of a movement is what most of us would call the back. This is what you see through the transparent caseback. On the lower left are the mainspring barrel and ratchet wheel, and at about 11:00 are the two hammers, positioned to strike the gongs, which are the circles of steel wire around the perimeter of the movement.
The other critical component is the regulator, which controls the speed at which the gongs strike the time. There are two basic regulator systems for chiming watches. One is an anchor escapement system, in principal like the anchor and escape wheel that controls the rate of any watch with a lever escapement. This is the oldest system, and while it's very precise, it has the disadvantage of making a faint but audible buzzing noise when the repeater is sounding the time. A newer system, and one preferred by many modern manufacturers, is a centrifugal governor. The centrifugal governor has two arms which, as the governor rotates, extend outward and create inertial drag on the repeater train, slowing it to the desired tempo. In the caliber BVL 362, the governor can be seen at the upper left quadrant, at roughly the 10:00 position.
Most of the rest of the repeater works are cadrature – that is to say, under the dial.
Above is a 19 ligne, ultra-thin minute repeater chronograph caliber from Jaeger-LeCoultre, which was completed in the early 1900s. The chronograph works are on the other side of the movement; what you're looking at is what would be hidden under the dial in a completed watch. The system of racks, cams, and and levers reads the time off the position of the gears that drive the hour and minute hands, and how far the levers fall on the cams (which rotate along with the gears that drive the hands) determines how long the hours, minutes, and quarters chime. Despite the fact that the movement is a century old, this remains the basic system for repeating watches.
You'll see, then, that the Manero Minute Repeater Symphony is an unusual kind of repeater. The gongs and regulator, rather than being situated on the back of the movement (the top plate side) are instead on the dial side. The hammers are visible at 5:00 and 7:00 and the regulator is at the 6:00 position. This is unusual – in a tourbillon watch with an open dial, this is where the tourbillon would normally go, and secondly, in a conventional repeater, it's where you would find the small seconds subdial.
The watch has a safety system, which prevents the crown from being pulled out when the chimes are activated (and which also blocks the chimes from striking if the crown is pulled out). The tourbillon cage is fitted with a stop seconds mechanism, for more precise time-setting (the one-minute tourbillon's gold pointer functions as a seconds hand).
Another unusual aspect of the watch is the angularity of the components. This gives the watch a pretty idiosyncratic appearance but it's one which is, if unusual for a tourbillon minute repeater, consistent with the aesthetics Carl F. Bucherer has used for its other peripheral rotor calibers, particularly the original CFB A1000 from 2008.
The caliber CFB MR3000 in the Manero Minute Repeater Symphony (which is also a COSC certified chronometer) has the racks, cams, and levers for the repeating system on the top plate/back of the movement. This is not the only minute repeater caliber to reverse the usual arrangement but for the CFB MR3000, there is a reason beyond aesthetics – putting the gongs, hammers and regulator on the dial side means they are not in the way of the peripheral rotor system.
Viewed from the back, the logic of the arrangement of the movement becomes apparent. The peripheral winding mass is visible on the lower half of the outer edge of the movement. The fact that it is on the circumference of the movement, rather than mounted on a pivot at the center, means that it allows an unobstructed view of the repeater system occupying the lower half of the caliber, and also gives a view of the tourbillon, at 12:00. CFB calls this a triple peripheral system. The winding system uses a peripheral rotor, and the tourbillon cage is peripherally driven as well, rather than at the center of the carriage. This means that there are no visible bridges supporting the tourbillon, which appears to float inside the movement. Like the tourbillon and automatic winding rotor, the regulator is peripherally mounted as well.
The watch, which is a limited edition of 88 pieces, is delivered with a wooden resonator which works on the same principle as the soundbox of a violin or any other stringed instrument. It looks a little bit like a Klingon sonic disruptor from the original Star Trek series from the 1960s, but for this nostalgia-bedeviled watch writer that's a feature, not a bug.
The CFP Manero Minute Repeater Symphony is a very traditional minute repeater in a lot of respects. But in its movement engineering, and also in the angularity of the movement design, it stakes out new territory in the very well-worn realm of chiming complications. It's not exactly revolutionary, but I think that is actually part of its charm – a new version of two time-honored complications in which the signature peripheral winding system of Carl F. Bucherer's in-house movements, serves to create a surprisingly unexpected, and unexpectedly interesting, branch on the ancient tree of horological chiming complications.
The Carl F. Bucherer Manero Minute Repeater Symphony: case, 18K rose gold, domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective treatment on both sides, caseback with sapphire crystal and anti-reflecting treatment on both sides, water resistant to one bar (10 meters), diameter 43.8 mm, height 12.47 mm. Dial, grained white gold with red gold hands and indexes.
Movement, Automatic with 18 k rose gold oscillating weight, Carl F. Bucherer manufacture caliber CFB MR3000, COSC-certified chronometer, diameter 35.70 mm, height 8.59 mm, 47 jewels, power reserve 65 hours.
Limited edition of 88 pieces; price, EUR 340,000 or CHF 380,000. More info at Carl-F-Bucherer.com.
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