102 WATCHES & TIMEPIECES
dissonant interval has still played a crucial role in compositions ever since, typically giving its nuances and colours to the structure of blues music.
Roger Dubuis has also implemented one other advanced function in this Minute Repeater complication. For extra security, the“ all or nothing” mechanism requires the pusher to be pressed all the way in. Only then can the chime be activated, eliminating the risk of harming the mechanism by accidentally triggering it.
Invented as a means of telling the time at night before the advent of electric lighting, the Minute Repeater is considered one of the most challenging horological complications and requires the watchmaker to act like a musician – carefully adjusting and fine-tuning the sounds as if the timepiece were an instrument.
Here, the tritone chime is activated via the pusher on the left-hand side of the case. The information on each cam is mechanically read by the Minute Repeater’ s main feelerspindle system, which passes it on to the racks enabling the hammers to strike the gongs.
Just like the Excalibur Diabolus in Machina, which was released in 2020, Roger Dubuis’ Minute Repeater is distinctive for its musicality, and the special attention paid to its melodic arrangement.
The sound produced is a rather unsettling interval that does not conform to expectations. Known as“ the devil’ s chord” or the“ diabolus in musica” during medieval times, the tritone chime rings a low pitch for the hours, a high pitch for the minutes, and two tones for the quarter hours. Consisting of three tones, or six semitones, the devil’ s chord was strictly prohibited in religious compositions. Yet that
THE ART OF LUXURY ISSUE 71 2025