Great Tom Is Cast: A Song History

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Great Tom, the great bell of Christ Church, Oxford, once belonged to Oseney Abbey; Christopher Hodson recast it in 1680.[1] Its home, the gatehouse now called Tom Tower, was partly rebuilt and completed in 1681–82 to Sir Christopher Wren's designs, with Christopher Kempster of Burford in charge of the work.[1] Christ Church records that the bell first sounded from Wren's tower on 29 May 1684, and it chimes 101 times at 9:05 pm, which is nine o'clock by the old local "Oxford time," kept five minutes behind Greenwich.[2]

A small bronze bell hanging from a rectangular inscribed frame

Bell, bronze and wood, German, 1599. A bell only 14 cm tall, shown for the round's subject; it is not Great Tom.

The round predates that 1680 recasting: a 1667 edition of Catch that Catch Can: or the Musical Companion, printed in London for J. Playford, gives it on page 80 as a catch for three voices, credited to "Mr. White."[3] A Singing Histories education booklet on Oxfordshire song credits the round to Matthew White, organist at Christ Church, and dates it to 1611, though the sources consulted here could not confirm those details.[4] By contrast, the band Magpie Lane's sleeve notes for its recording of the round, track 11 of The Oxford Ramble, name Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, as the composer.[5] That album came out in 1993 on Beautiful Jo Records.[6] Aldrich's Oxford DNB biography gives his birth as January 1648 and his appointment as dean as 1689, and while it singles out his 1673 catch on the "bonny Christ Church bells," it does not mention this one.[7] Sources differ on the composer, but by the Oxford DNB's dating Aldrich was 18 or 19 when the 1667 book credited the round to White.[3][7]

Mark Gilston includes it, next to "Christ Church Bells," in Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, his self-published 43-page collection of 28 rounds, canons and circular songs for several players who enter one after another.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Great Tom Is Cast"

Sources

  1. British History Online: "Christ Church," An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Oxford (1939).
  2. Christ Church, University of Oxford: "Things to see".
  3. Internet Archive: "Catch that Catch Can: or the Musical Companion" (London: J. Playford, 1667), p. 80.
  4. Sing London / EFDSS Resource Bank: "Singing Histories: Oxfordshire".
  5. Magpie Lane: "Sleevenotes: Great Tom is Cast".
  6. Magpie Lane: "The Oxford Ramble".
  7. MacTutor History of Mathematics (reproducing the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography): "Aldrich, Henry".
  8. Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
  9. Image: Bell, bronze and wood, German, 1599. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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