The Westminster Quarters: the most-heard tune nobody can name
The Westminster Quarters are the four-note chime that marks the quarter-hour on clocks all over the world, and they were written in 1793 for the clock at Great St Mary's — the university church in Cambridge. London borrowed them a few decades later, which is why the same tune answers to two names: the Cambridge Quarters and the Westminster Quarters.
Four bells, five arrangements
The tune needs four bells. At Big Ben they sound G sharp, F sharp, E, and a low B. From those four notes come five short arrangements, always played in the same order, and the count tells you where you are: one arrangement at quarter past, two at half past, three at quarter to. On the hour, all four sound in sequence — and then the big bell counts the hour out.
Hum it badly and you've got it. It was never meant to be listened to head-on; it was meant to be recognised from streets away, by people who owned no watch.
How to hear where you are in the hour
Here's the part worth knowing. The first and third quarters end on that low B — the note that sounds unfinished, a sentence waiting for its verb. The half hour and the hour end on E, the note the whole tune sits on, and it lands like a chair when you sit down. So with your back to the clock you can feel where the hour stands: an unsettled ending means it's still off; a settled one means it's here or just gone.
Who wrote it
The job was given to Joseph Jowett, Cambridge's Regius Professor of Civil Law — presumably for his learning rather than his counterpoint. He probably had help, from John Randall, the Professor of Music, or from Randall's undergraduate pupil William Crotch, who was still a teenager. The records never settled it, so the honest answer is "one of those three."
You'll also hear that the four notes come from Handel — the phrase in Messiah, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." It may even be true; the evidence never quite firms up. Pass it on as what it is: a good story with no receipt.
From Cambridge to everywhere
In 1851 the chime was chosen for the new clock at the Palace of Westminster — the clock that holds Big Ben — and fame followed the tower. Doorbells took the tune. Grandfather clocks kept it. Schools across Japan and East Asia play it to mark the end of class. If you haven't heard it today, you'll hear it tomorrow.
Our Westminster voice plays the same five arrangements — quarters on if you want them, off if you don't, and the hour counted either way. Where the tune went after Cambridge: Big Ben, and how to hear it from your desk, or why recordings of it always show their seam.
Read next: The grandfather clock at your grandmother's house