Banjos and Clocks

The subject of Patek Style Banjo (whereby the player frails or picks his open-tuning tenor banjo in the manner of a 5-string) has already been discussed by my esteemed Plunkthumping colleague, but since I am a lover of all things Czech (esp my wife) I feel compelled to bring it up again, with specific reference to Miroslav Patek's musical clock.

I don't pretend to entirely understand music theory, (though I believe I would if only I'd been handed a banjo at age ten instead of a trumpet) but I do find it aesthetically very satisfying that the city of clocks has bred a banjo-playing musical clockmaker, or rather a maker of musical clocks.

Above is the famous old Astrological clock in Old Town Square. Below are before-and-after pics of the site of the giant metronome, constructed to replace a truly appalling monument to Stalin, the biggest in the world, in which Josef was depicted leading a throng of workers.


(And why is Stalin smiling? Because he's at the front of the bread-line!)

It was situated at the highest point of the city - Letna - where everyone would see it, where ancient armies traditionally camped the night before they stormed. The sculptor's wife committed suicide while he was building it. The sculptor himself committed suicide when he'd finished, reportedly leaving his entire estate to a school for the blind because he knew they would never have to look upon his work. As it happened, no one had to look at it for very long.



Stalin died and Kruschev pulled it down, leaving intact the bunker underneath. Decades later, Havel commissioned the Metronome. The city-dwellers don't love it, no more than they love the alien babies crawling up and down the TV tower, no more than they love the dancing Fred & Ginger building. But I always liked it. A metronome is a clock that doesn't tell time. Only keeps it. And there's much to be kept and contemplated where the passage of time in Prague is concerned.

But what does all this have to do with the banjo? Miroslav Patek and his four-stringed five-string, that what. And his musical clock. A clock that won't tell time and a banjo that can't count but doesn't have to. These are mysteries fit for the mystical city of Prague.

(It would of course be fitting to classify this post under the Banjo Banjart files, if only they actually existed.)

One more thing. This man



is Rudolph II, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor (reign: 1576 to 1611), largely responsible for the city's mystical reputation. He had a weakness for the company of alchemists. Below is a portrait of him by his court painter, Arcimboldo. See what I mean?




And finally, a third clock, in the Moravian town Olomouc, courtesy of Pane Patek in the Comments section. And a clockman to play us out.