Patek Philippe Ref. 6301P Grande Sonnerie: A Humble Masterpiece

No astronomy or calendar complications — all the emphasis in Patek Philippe's new model is on music.

In September 1839, just four months after the company Patek, Czapek & Cie. was founded by Antoine Norbert de Patek and François Czapek, news of the first chiming watch was published in the company's journal describing a pocket watch with a repeater. Since then, the manufacture has been constantly working to perfect their pieces by increasing the number of complications and improving the sound quality.

Visitors to the Patek Philippe Watch Art Grand Exhibition in 2015 were able to catch a glimpse of the famous Duc de Regla watch from 1910, featuring a grande and petite sonnerie as well as a minute repeater which plays the same melody as London's Big Ben. The new Patek Philippe Ref. 6301P Grande Sonnerie released this fall has a similar set of melodic features. Yet they have gone further than Patek has ever gone before!

Hiding beneath the exquisite black enamel dial that gives the watches a deliberately minimalistic appearance is a true mechanical masterpiece comprised of 703 components. The dial has a chemin-de-fer or "railroad" minute scale, Breguet-style Arabic numerals, delicate white-gold hands and just three additional elements: a "dead seconds" hand on the jumping seconds display at 6 o'clock and two energy-level indicators — one for the movement and one for the strikework.

These allow you to keep an eye on the pair of mainspring barrel between which these two functions have been divided. The first mainspring barrels stores energy to keep the watch going for 72 hours, and the second ensures 24 hours for the striking mechanism. The watch has another hidden function inside — a slide switch for selecting the strikework mode on the side of the case at 6 o'clock, opposite the tastefully discreet diamond set in the caseband at 12 o'clock.

The GS 36-750 PS IRM movement is the custodian of traditions inherited from the Caliber 300 housed in Grandmaster Chime, the most complicated Patek Philippe wristwatch ever made.

The movement has been reworked, and its three gongs have been complemented by a jumping seconds wheel consisting of wheels and a release lever that unblocks the wheel train every second. This approach has allowed more energy to be saved. For all its abundance of components, the GS 36-750 PS IRM is so well thought-out that the engineers have managed to keep the caliber compact, which is just 7.5 mm in height and 37 mm in diameter.