There’s a theme to be discerned amongst the watches that Bulgari is officially presenting this year at Geneva Watch Days, and you should brace yourself for a multisensorial horological experience. If we were encountering these watches for the first time on a social media platform, this is where we’d see a little flashing sticker GIF telling us to turn the phone “VOLUME UP” — because for these watches specifically, if you can’t hear them, you miss the entire point. That’s right, the theme that Bulgari is exploring at Geneva Watch Days 2024 is music, and a Bulgari sonnerie is always something to get excited about.
First up on the playlist is the Octo Roma Grande Sonnerie Tourbillon, a stunning display of technical expertise and a testament to the profundity of watchmaking savoir-faire at Bulgari. The Grande Sonnerie Tourbillon is a four-gong horological colossus, making it a prestigious carillon, a term that describes any chiming watch with more than two gongs. Although Bulgari have made four-gong sonneries before, this new model distinguishes itself in one crucial sense — through its melody. Unlike previous four-gong Grande Sonnerie watches from Bulgari, which featured the famous Westminster chime (the melody chimed by London’s Big Ben), the new Octo Roma Grande Sonnerie Tourbillon plays a custom melody devised by Swiss orchestral conductor Lorenzo Viotti, a melody featuring the musical interval otherwise known as the tritone.
On the diatonic music scale, an interval spanning six semitones occupies an interesting position in musical theory; being at once symmetrical and dissonant. Its symmetry arises from the fact that the six-semitone interval perfectly bisects a full octave, whilst its dissonance stems from its auditory qualities. Although we might associate symmetry with harmony, the tritone is the musical exception to this rule, since harmony is detected in the interval known as the fifth, which spans an additional semitone compared to the tritone. The difficulty that musicians historically had with the tritone led to it being nicknamed the “Devil’s interval”. The diabolism of the tritone comes entirely from its dissonant and challenging nature, however, not any ecclesiastical reasons (as commonly assumed).
This concept of challenge and complexity obviously lends itself extremely well to the practice of building a horological sonnerie, and Bulgari have reinforced this idea with their second carillon release for Geneva Watch Days — the Octo Roma Carillon Tourbillon. The Carillon Tourbillon has an impressive history at Bulgari, first released in 2011 and widely acknowledged to be one of the finest sounding repeaters on the market at the time. The Octo Roma Carillon Tourbillon also adopts the tritone as its acoustic motif, delivering a chime that may strike the ear in an unfamiliar (perhaps even slightly perturbing) way. However, that is of course entirely the intention behind this unsettling chime — keeping us aware of the fact that such levels of watchmaking expertise are never easy to attain, and that sonnerie savoir-faire is not something to be taken for granted.
Still on the same musical track, but in a slightly different gear, is Bulgari’s collaboration with legendary guitar brand Fender, starring the Bulgari Aluminium watch that was reintroduced exactly three years ago. The Bulgari Aluminium GMT x Fender is a limited edition of 1,200 watches that celebrates iconic design and the spirit of craftsmanship, with a golden-brown sunburst dial that evokes the classic Fender Stratocaster aesthetic.
Whilst not a completely new reference, strictly speaking, the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater Carbon is freshly available in its recognisable carbon-fibre composite housing, now with titanium case accents that accentuate its monochrome splendour. Although by now we may be used to the idea that Bulgari’s in-house capabilities well encompass such feats of virtuoso watchmaking such as ultra-thin chiming watches, we should remember that it wasn’t too long ago when the first Octo Finissimo timepieces caused no small amount of seismic shock in the watch world. The Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater Carbon serves as a slim, but powerful, reminder that audacious high complication is here to stay at Bulgari — a message we’re hearing loud and clear.
