A Look at the Grande Sonnerie of Daniel Roth

By Su JiaXian

The Gérald Genta Grande Sonnerie was conceived nearly 20 years ago. At the time, the Gérald Genta brand was arguably the most avante garde watchmaker in the world - independent watchmakers as we know them today did not exist - responsible for a host of revolutionary complications complemented by an exotic array of dial and case materials like lapis lazuli and even yttrium (which dissolves in water and didn’t quite work out).

In the early eighties, the company unveiled the world’s thinnest automatic minute repeater, a feat still unequalled today. But the most significant achievement is undoubtedly the company’s automatic Grand Sonnerie of 1994. Based on an old pocket watch ebauche which was miniaturised into wristwatch proportions, the Grand Sonnerie was the work of Pierre-Michel Golay, one of the industry’s great unrecognised talents. Now with the Franck Muller group, Mr Golay has successfully created for Franck Muller, you guessed it, an automatic grande sonnerie.

Eighty-two jewels

Composed of over 800 parts, including an amazing jewel count of 82 (all functional), the Grand Sonnerie takes over 1000 hours to manufacture and assemble. Although the movement is incredibly complex, the lucky few owners of the watch will find it easy enough to use. The Grande Sonnerie has three modes of operation - grand strike, small strike and silent. In grand strike mode, the watch will strike the hours on the hour and the hours as well as the quarters on the quarter, as they pass. In small strike mode, hours are struck on the hour and the quarters on each quarter, also en passant. Each of these can be set with slide buttons on the side of the watch case.

Slide to set strike or silent mode

And grand strike or small strike mode

Fourteen years after its birth, the Grand Sonnerie still remains of the most complicated watches in the world. It has the following features (not all are complication functions):

1. Grande et petite sonnerie
2. Westminster chime à la Big Ben Four hammers and four gongs, thus it can be called a carillon
3. Tourbillon regulator
4. Bi-directional automatic winding which winds the timekeeping mainspring in one direction and the striking mainspring in the other
5. A few of the early Gérald Genta Grande Sonnerie watches were also fitted with a perpetual calendar and dual time zone function

An intimidatingly large number of parts

The movement is 11.05mm high

All that is even more extraordinary considering that this movement was designed and manufactured in an era where the tools available for design and production were primitive compared to what is used today. Imagine designing a movement like that with pen and paper!

Today this movement is shared by the Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth brands. Nearly all the components of this movement are manufactured in-house, including plates, bridges and also the all important hammers and gongs; although unsurprisingly the hairsprings come from Nivarox. Despite the movements are structurally identical whether in a Gerald Genta or Daniel Roth watch, the decorative finish is very different, reflecting the divergent aesthetic of each house.

Gerald Genta Grande Sonnerie movement; note the extravagant engraving

Daniel Roth Grande Sonnerie

Regardless of what brand it is destined for, each Grand Sonnerie movement is created in a special atelier in the Le Sentier manufacture. Formerly the workshop of Mr Daniel Roth himself, this wood-panelled room is now the birthplace of each Grande Sonnerie. The work here is supervised by Monsieur Aeschlimann, a master watchmaker who is a decades-long veteran of the company.

For an ordinary watch, manufacture, assembly and quality control tests (water and temperature resistance, check of the finishing et al) are all that is required. But for a Grande Sonnerie and other striking watches, the sound has to be tested rigorously. Many striking watch models suffer from the problem of inconsistency between various samples and Daniel Roth was no stranger to this problem.

Thus an empirical system of testing the sound quality of each completed striking watch is now in use at the manufacture. Decibels, octaves and the tempo are all carefully measured and compared against the ideal. Watches that fail to meet the standard are sent back to the hapless watchmaker. Each watch that passes will then be sold with a certificate detailing the results of the test, a similar concept to COSC and Grand Seiko except on a whole different level.

Late last year Daniel Roth unveiled its latest masterpiece, a watch that is one of the most beautiful striking watches ever made, in my humble opinion. While largely similar to previous iterations of the Grande Sonnerie, this watch has the addition of a moon phase display.

Daniel Roth Grande Sonnerie with Moon Phase

Creating a moon phase display is not mechanically daunting, but this oversized moon phase is beautifully executed. Crafted of solid gold with a lifelike relief of the moon, the disc is then enamelled to achieve the deep blue sky. That level of quality extends to the rest of the dial too; the main dial is silver-plated solid gold, with three different engraved guilloche motifs, while the date, power reserve and strike mode indicators are mother-of-pearl.

And for those wondering about the dirty details of this masterpiece, the retail price in Singapore is 1,366,650 Singapore dollars, which is about 950,000 American dollars. The manufacture only makes five to eight Grande Sonnerie watches each year for both Daniel Roth and Gérald Genta, so delivery of the watch will not be immediate - prospective buyers will have to be patient.

- SJX