“Gamelan” writing

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Boydell & Brewer Boydell Press

Chapter Title: Java Chapter Author(s): Neil Sorrell

Book Title: The Other Classical Musics Book Subtitle: Fifteen Great Traditions Book Editor(s): Michael Church Published by: Boydell & Brewer, Boydell Press. (2015) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt155j3zb.8

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Gamelan gongs are made from an alloy of ten parts copper to three parts tin, and are filed to a golden colour. The exception is the biggest gong (left) which is left in its black state, with the marks from the hammer blows still visible.

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2 JavaNeil Sorrell A crowd of men, women and children are gathered in a courtyard, and more are in the street, squeezing into the gateway and sitting on the walls, or in rickshaws which have stopped for the show. An array of instruments – large and small gongs, xylophones, keyed metallophones, a bowed instrument, a bamboo flute – is spread out on the raised stone floor of a pavilion where a woman sings; players not absorbed in the music smoke and chat on the fringes. The only real light on this hot dark night is projected onto a white sheet stretched on a carved wooden frame at which a man sits, moving flat leather puppets of fantastical shapes while speaking their parts and singing songs; he also directs the gamelan, as this collection of instruments is known. At times one single instrument creates a shimmering background; at others the group produces loud snatches of repetitively-twirling melody. The musicians don’t use notation but watch the screen, laughing uproariously with the audience at the comic bits. Shows like this traditionally last all night without a break, with the puppeteer being the only one never to leave his place. The spectators come and go freely, knowing the story and format so well that they can decide which parts to watch, and when to go somewhere to doze, lulled by the background music which fuses magically with the buzzing and humming of insects.

On a visit to Java in 1971 I stayed with a cultured and musical family. The father listened for hours to gamelan music on the radio, and extolled its subtlety and power. Among the many beautiful ways he found to describe it, the most memorable was ‘like raindrops falling from leaves after a shower’ . Writing in 1937, the Dutch author Leonhard Huizinga gave a similarly poetic description:

‘There are only two things one can compare it with: moonlight, and running water. It is pure and mysterious like moonlight; it is always the same and yet always changing, like running water. ’ 1 The aquatic metaphor common to both descriptions is not far-fetched, as at least one sound in the gamelan actually has an aquatic origin. One of the drums derives its name, and many of the sounds it produces, from ciblon,2 a game in which children slap the surface of water. Despite being a percussion orchestra, the gamelan produces sounds that are essentially fluid, with legato holding sway over staccato. The documented history of the modern gamelan begins in the eighteenth century, but its history is commonly held to stretch back to mythological times, when the god Sang Hyang Guru allegedly made a gong to summon the other gods. To permit further messages, two more gongs were added, and this three- note ensemble formed the nucleus of the first gamelan (Lokananta). The word

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the other classical musics

‘gong’ may have originated in Java, but the instrument almost certainly did not, although its origins are uncertain: locations as far apart as China and Greece have been proposed. What is beyond doubt is that gongs have reached an unsurpassed state of refinement in Java, with the gamelan including gongs of all shapes and sizes, and the largest being the most revered. What sound could be more grave, majestic and portentous than that of a large gong? But ‘gamelan’ refers to many different kinds of ensemble in Java, Bali and other parts of Indonesia and Malaysia. And within Java there are significant differences between the ensemble from Central Java3 discussed in this chapter, and the smaller Gamelan Degung of Sunda (the region of West Java around the city of Bandung). Meanwhile Bali, the much smaller island to the east, vibrates to the shimmering sounds of its own huge variety of gamelans including the Gong Kebyar, Semar Pegulingan and Angklung ensembles. Despite a shared Hindu-Javanese culture until the sixteenth century (when Muslim rule in Java led many nobles to resettle in Bali) the Javanese and Balinese styles have evolved to be immediately distinctive, with enormous changes over the past hundred years. Balinese gamelan music tends to be loud and fast, and it relies on rapid interlocking rhythmic patterns that require great skill and accuracy. The Central Javanese gamelan, variously referred to as Gamelan Jawa, Gamelan Ageng, and sometimes even Gamelan Klasik, is the best-known in the world, with a core repertoire of ‘classical’ pieces plus a variety of recent popular compositions. The gamelan exists in royal courts and the poorest villages; it is played by amateurs and professionals, children and adults; it is used for the most refined and spiritual of ceremonies, and for the bawdiest of parties. In its full form it is probably the world’s largest instrumental ensemble after the symphony orchestra, but there is a crucial distinction between the two. As is often observed, the orchestra is an ensemble of players, but the gamelan is an ensemble of instruments. When a symphony concert has ended, the stage is bare, but the gamelan remains in its place after the players have departed. Moreover, the same gamelan will be played by different musicians over several generations, but it retains its sound, appearance and character. This helps explain why it functions as a cultural emblem, telling us much about Javanese concepts of ownership and communal artistic activity. The performance described at the start of this chapter is called a wayang, and it brings Javanese people together in a way which transcends all barriers of social class. The foundations of Javanese culture were laid down 1,700 years ago, with a thousand years of Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms establishing much of today’s language, mythology and religion. The ancient Hindu-Buddhist civilisation is still proudly visible: the Buddhist stupa of Borobudur and the Hindu temple complex at Prambanan – both well over a thousand years old – are in their general shape and detailed carvings almost indistinguishable from their Indian models. Moreover, Javanese wayang and dance draw on the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the great Hindu epics which are as well known in Java as they are in India. Some of the terminology of Javanese gamelan music (for example nada or note, rasa or feeling) as well as the names of some pieces (for example,

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Puspawarna, meaning kinds of flowers) is derived from Sanskrit, which influenced both the modern Javanese language and also the archaic form used in a wayang. The arrival of Islam in the fifteenth century, and the subsequent European trading contacts – Portuguese, then the Dutch colonialists attracted by the spice trade – caused significant power shifts in Java, from whence the migration of nobles mentioned earlier helped ensure that to this day Bali remains a predominantly Hindu island. Even in modern Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world, the Hindu-Javanese legacy and the indigenous

1 Kenong 2 Kempul 3 Gong 4 Kempyang 5 2 Kethuk instruments 6 Saron 7 Peking 8 Demung

9 Slenthem 10 Gambang kayu 11 Gender Panerus 12 Gender Barung 13 Kendang (drums) 14 Clempung 15 Bonang Panerus 16 Bonang Barung

The Javanese gamelan ‘Kyai Telaga Rukmi’ at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a key to the instruments

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the other classical musics

animist religions pre-dating the advent of Hinduism still permeate the arts. And this applies to Java, with its Muslim majority and sizeable Christian minority as well. Some of the surviving ceremonial gamelans in Javanese palaces are used only for specific rituals and ceremonies, or dates in the religious calendar, with the best example being the Gamelan Sekatèn, which is reserved for commemorations of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth and death. These gamelans comprise far fewer instruments than the typical Central Javanese kind, but the instruments (larger gong chimes and keys of the metallophone group) are bigger, supporting the theory that the gamelan evolved from a small ensemble of large instruments to a large ensemble of relatively smaller ones. Wayangs accompanied by the modern gamelan are often closely connected with birthdays, weddings and inaugurations of important enterprises, but they also celebrate Java’s distant past, going back beyond the Hindu period to animist worship of spirits and ancestors; in villages they mark key stages of the agricultural cycle. In 1755 the Dutch instigated the partition of the Mataram kingdom, last of the great independent Javanese empires, which took its name from the region around present-day Yogyakarta. With partition came the establishment of the Javanese kratons (courts) of Surakarta (Solo) and Yogyakarta (Jogja), just thirty- five miles apart. Later two additional minor courts were created, one in each city (the Mangkunegaran in Solo and the Pakualaman in Jogja) and all four survive to the present day. As military and political power passed to the Dutch, the Javanese

This photograph, taken by Kassian Cephas at Yogyakarta in 1888, shows a traditional gamelan set up for a shadow-puppet performance at the annual Sekaten festival.

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courts devoted their attention to the arts, and much of what is performed to this day derives from these centres of patronage. The rivalries between them served as catalysts of artistic excellence and prevented standardisation, the avoidance of which is still a key feature of gamelan music. Although the political influence of the courts never recovered after Dutch rule, the remarkable fact is that all four courts have survived under the modern Republic of Indonesia. They now thrive both as tourist attractions and as centres of performance, and remain significant centres of patronage for gamelan players, whose other sources of income are independent performances, radio work and teaching. There are noticeable differences of instrumentation and performance practice even within the typical Central Javanese gamelan, and the expert eye and ear will immediately tell the difference between a set from Solo and one from Jogja: the instrumentation may be different, as may the shapes of the wooden troughs of the metallophones (raised at the ends in Jogja, but flat in Solo), though the sound will remain roughly the same.

▪ Form, shape, function The gamelan is mostly comprised of knobbed gongs of two main shapes, plus families of keyed metallophones, which is how instruments that are more like xylophones are usually described. These are sets of thin plates or thicker bars, suspended respectively over tube or trough resonators. Those of the thick bar and trough resonator family are played with a single, uncovered tabuh or wooden mallet, whereas all other mallets in the gamelan (used for thin plates over individual tube-resonators, as well as all gongs) are padded, mostly with cloth rings or string, but with thicker padding for the large hanging gongs. The preferred gamelan metal is a special bronze alloy called gangsa which is usually ten parts copper to three parts tin, and the craft of manufacturing instruments, especially the gongs, is as steeped in Javanese tradition as the music itself. Cheaper metals like iron are often used, though these do not require the unique skills essential to bronze-working. Unlike bells, the gongs cannot be cast, but must be hammered into shape from a disc hardly wider than a dinner plate. Nowhere else are these instruments produced with such precise mixtures of copper and tin, and with such carefully calibrated heating in a furnace, hammering for hours, and finally tuning by further hammering and filing; the protracted filing process transforms the black bronze, pock-marked from the hammer-blows, into its beautiful golden colour. In many gamelans the largest gong is left in its black state, with the marks from the hammer blows clearly visible, except for the central knob which is filed to a smooth finish. Fine tuning is mostly achieved by cold-hammering, a highly skilled process, plus further filing. The craftsmen making gamelans and the players of the finished instruments have much in common, with the same men sometimes fulfilling both functions; both skills depend on teamwork, and craftsmen and gamelan players routinely exchange jobs. Some craftsmen take names according to their particular job, or use ones from Javanese mythology (a notable example being Panji, a legendary

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the other classical musics

Javanese prince, for the man who has the very important job of turning gongs in the fire), so the work may take on the aura of a ceremony. ‘Gamelan’ can literally mean hammering, or handling,4 a fact which further connects manufacturing process and musical product. The instrumental groups of a gamelan perform specific functions, and their dense polyphony is created from just one melodic strand, drawing from a repertoire of patterns peculiar to each instrument. (An example of how this occurs will be provided later.) The whole gamelan can be divided in various ways. Two binary divisions are made according to tuning (to be examined later) and dynamics (‘loud’ and ‘soft’ instruments), but these criteria give little sense of how the music works, or of the function of each instrument. For that purpose a division into three broad functions is usually proposed: a central group of around five metallophones, which plays a simplified outline of the core melody – the balungan, or skeleton – on which the entire piece is based; a group of horizontally and vertically suspended tuned gongs at the rear, which mark the phrase structure of the melody; and a diverse group of instruments at the front, collectively referred to as the panerusan, which elaborate the melody by performing faster patterns around it, each pattern derived from the repertoire of the individual instruments, and dictated by the structure and motion of the main melody. The bonangs (double rows of small gongs supported in bed-like racks) perform the main elaborations in loud music, and also play in soft styles. Elaborating instruments tend to anticipate the balungan, rather than follow it: the destination of a phrase is in the minds and music of the players long before the balungan reaches it. The principal elaborating instruments (panerusan), which give the music its subtle polyphonic density, are nearly all soft instruments (incapable of playing loud), and are thus placed at the front of the gamelan to enhance their audibility. As the loud instruments may also be played softly, the full gamelan texture will include them regardless of dynamic, while soft panerusan instruments will drop out of loud music. Within this group are the bronze gendèr barung, or simply gender, with its smaller version gender panerus, metallophones that delicately trace intricate parts using two padded mallets. The soft group also includes some important instruments which are neither metal – such as the gambang (wooden xylophone) – nor classified as percussion (i.e. instruments struck with mallets), such as the suling (end-blown bamboo flute), celempung and smaller siter (both plucked stringed instruments). The set of hand-beaten drums (kendhang) which directs the tempo and cues transitions is not part of the panerusan, and plays in all gamelan music, whether loud or soft. Prominent within the panerusan is the two-stringed bowed rebab, which often functions as melodic leader of the ensemble: despite its importance in the modern gamelan, this is a relatively recent addition, and – retaining its Arabic name to this day – probably arrived from the Middle East in the sixteenth century, as Islam gained ascendancy in Java. The subsequent combination of soft and loud instruments created the modern full gamelan, with the rebab centre-stage. Another reason for the rebab’s special status is the centrality of vocal lines, for which it is the ideal companion. The typical line-up of singers consists of three or four men singing a pre-composed chorus (gérongan) with which

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the gamelan players may join in, plus a female singer (pesindhèn) who weaves quasi-improvisatory lines. The voice gained steadily in importance alongside the rebab: the pesindhen is now the nearest thing to a soloist, and is usually the only performer to be named. Not only does her solo line stand out (often with the aid of amplification), but she is also the only woman in a traditionally male environment. These days women increasingly play gamelan, and a small team of pesindhèn often take it in turns to sing, so the lone female is a less common sight. All instruments played with mallets require damping, except for the largest gongs. This is easily achieved if only one mallet is used, with the free hand damping the key by pinching it between the forefinger and thumb as the next one is struck, or holding the gong steady while gently pressing the mallet against the central knob that has just been struck. The gambang requires no damping as the sound from the wooden keys decays rapidly. In the case of the genders, the thumbs, little fingers and the side of the hand (whatever is not used to hold the mallets) must control the damping, so that four things happen simultaneously: the two mallets produce two lines of music while the rest of the hands damp each line. While the gamelan is usually thought of as an egalitarian ensemble, where all contribute to the sound and none should dominate or even be considered more important, some instruments make greater demands on the player’s technique and musical knowledge than others. But this enhances the gamelan’s attractiveness as a mixed-ability ensemble: novices can join in and, when ready to face greater challenges, can graduate to other instruments. The formalised sonic architecture of the full gamelan gives acoustic cohesion to the music, and the fixed relationship between instrument and function helps memorisation of an entire repertoire. It also gives the sound and texture of gamelan music a particular stability: once the piece begins, it maintains its texture with very limited dynamic changes; there are almost no silences in gamelan music.

▪ Performance Palaces and wealthy households have pendhapa, special pavilions designed to house gamelans. With their concave roofs and hard marble floors these create the ideal acoustics, in which the sounds blend well and with no instrument or voice predominating; it is sometimes said that a gamelan is one instrument played by many, and that is how it should sound. But now gamelans are mostly played in more modest, less reverberant surroundings, from village halls to little more than shacks. Gamelan concerts do take place – though these tend to be more of an informal playing session, klenèngan, than a Western concert – but the main function of this music is to accompany a ceremony or theatrical performance involving dance or puppetry. The combination of the gamelan’s mythological origin – as a signalling system invented by the gods – with residual animist beliefs in which objects may have spirits, helps explain why gamelans may be revered, and why some, especially in the royal courts, are regarded as pusaka, or sacred heirlooms. This

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sacred element should not be over-emphasised – lest the gamelan be falsely regarded as symbiotically tied to a specific religion – but respect for it must also be shown by non-Javanese players, who are instructed to remove their shoes and never step over instruments (which would imply an uncouth individual dominion over a communal object). And in Java such considerate behaviour is not reserved for the gamelan: it is expected in everyday comportment. The word alus (smooth) lies at the heart of Javanese ideas of culture, education and self-control: it denotes refinement, calm, restraint, subtle allusion and understatement rather than brazen directness. It can be seen in Javanese dances and wayang shadow plays, where the alus hero will remain calm, engage in periods of meditation and preserve his inner strength by avoiding excessive outbursts or losing control. This principle governs most of the gamelan

The metallophone (right, in its Balinese form) is at the heart of the gamelan: sets of thin plates or thicker bars, suspended over tube or trough resonators.

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repertoire, although it also includes more raucous and catchy items. The general term for gamelan music is karawitan, which is closely related in meaning to alus. Another ideal, linked to the importance attached by the Javanese to meditation, is iklas, a kind of detachment and mental repose. These qualities are reflected in the music, where abrupt contrasts and harsh noise are usually avoided, and they make ideal criteria for ‘classical’ in the Javanese sense, as does another Javanese term, adi luhung (beautiful and glorious).5 Yet since the dramas have their clowns, ogres and villains, the music must sometimes erupt into raucousness.

▪ Tuning Systems Each gamelan has its own spirit and personality, and many sets are given names. Some of these are enigmatic, like the famous old Gamelan Kyai Kanyut Mèsem (‘Revered and moved to smile’) in the Mangkunegaran palace in Solo; others are more explicit, like Gamelan Sekar Petak (‘White flower’), made in 1981 to reside in the English city of York. The age, appearance and quality of the carving of the metal and wood – and even the colours or oils applied to the wooden frames – can vary considerably, but what gives a gamelan its acoustic personality is its tuning. The two unique tuning systems of Java (laras sléndro and laras pélog) are consensual rather than standardised, thus no two gamelans are tuned identically. These tunings define karawitan (gamelan music) even more than the instruments themselves. Laras sléndro is a pentatonic tuning in which the intervals are more or less equidistant (between a whole tone and minor third), thus distancing it quite radically from the pentatonic scale produced on the black notes of the Western keyboard. Laras pélog is also conceived as pentatonic but has seven available notes, from which three pentatonic sets can be extracted.6 The intervals of the pélog heptatonic set vary quite widely, from ones little bigger than a semitone to others close to a minor third. A gamelan in just one laras (tuning) is perfectly viable, though what is commonly described as a complete gamelan is generally assumed to have both, necessitating a set of instruments for each laras. To work as an integrated set, the two tunings must coincide on one pitch, which can serve as a pivotal note (tumbuk) when changing from one tuning to the other. Within each tuning are three sub-tonalities or pathet, a word suggesting constraint or limitation, and the constituent notes of the two tunings are organised into three pathets per tuning: pathet nem, pathet sanga and pathet manyura in sléndro and pathet lima, pathet nem and pathet barang in pélog. Pathet is one of the glories of karawitan, focusing the available pitches of the gamelan and giving them nuance, depth and subtlety, but its complexities make it the hardest aspect to define and describe. Even the Javanese have difficulty in explaining it, if not in grasping it intuitively: it must be absorbed over time, so that it becomes more instinctive than intellectual, but it is based on the principle of hierarchy. If the tonic can shift from one note to another (and with it the dominant) the whole character of the pentatonic set will change. Javanese theory does have a concept equivalent to tonic and dominant, and the Javanese ear is finely tuned to these different ways of organising the notes so that their

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the other classical musics

relative strength changes. We should therefore talk of a pentatonic mode (varied according to pathet) rather than the pentatonic scale. The tonal shift just described, affecting the hierarchy of pitches, impinges on extra-musical features such as mood and time of performance. The pathets reflect the passage of time through the day or night, and even the life cycle. First comes sléndro pathet nem, with its corresponding pélog pathet lima, representing youth; then sléndro pathet sanga, with its corresponding pélog pathet nem, reflecting the transition to adulthood; and finally sléndro pathet manyura, with its corresponding pélog pathet barang, for the wisdom of old age. The attendant moods, however, do not progress in the same way – in fact they seem to reverse what one might expect: sléndro pathet nem/pélog pathet lima have a low tessitura and fairly sombre mood; sléndro pathet sanga/pélog pathet nem have a higher tessitura and brighter mood; sléndro pathet manyura/ pélog pathet barang have the highest tessitura and brightest mood. In short, while pathet may seem to behave like tonality it is actually much closer to a modal system, in which note hierarchies, moods and times of performance are significant. Different keys (Western tonalities) depend on emphasising different notes from within the twelve semitones; sléndro uses exactly the same five pitches but, as it were, alters the viewing angles and perspective. A similar notion applies to the pathets of pélog, though the process of taking different pentatonic sets from the available seven notes makes the task of distinguishing between the pathets much easier. In fact, the five-note set within sléndro can be expanded by adding ‘chromatic’ notes to certain pieces; such notes, absent from the basic pentatonic set to which most instruments are pre-tuned, can only be produced vocally or on the rebab. This practice, known as barang miring (oblique), is restricted to a few pieces, and its effect is to change the mood from happy to sad.

▪ The canon Just as terms like ‘symphony’ and ‘concerto’ automatically suggest classical music to Europeans, in Java the word gendhing fulfils a similar role. It can be a generic word for a gamelan piece, but it is also used to describe the largest and noblest compositions, as opposed to the shorter forms in the traditional canon and the catchy, popular pieces that have come to occupy an important position in the repertoire. The large gendhing are also closely associated with court music, as they mostly originated in the palaces; they are nearly always in two main sections, each repeated several times. A common practice is to attach shorter pieces to the initial large gendhing to make a kind of continuous suite which can last from twenty minutes to over an hour. The most important determinant of duration is tempo, and what in Javanese gamelan music is known as irama, which is not quite the same thing as tempo but rather a system of tempo relationships. The simplest way to understand this is to consider simply the core melody (balungan). As its tempo slows down, the time-gaps between its notes lengthen, allowing the elaborating instruments to fill in the gaps with more notes. Thus

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in the faster irama (where the balungan is moving most quickly) an elaborating instrument may only have time to play two notes per one of the balungan. When the music slows down to the next irama, the same elaborating instrument will play four notes per one of the balungan; in the next irama eight, and so on. There are essentially five irama, working in this system of ratios. Each can move within a wide range of tempi; it is only when the ratios change that the irama changes. A useful analogy can be made with the gears of a car: a range of speeds is tolerated in one gear, but at a certain point in slowing down or accelerating a change of gear – hence ratios within the mechanism – becomes necessary. Moreover, while some gamelan instruments may be playing four notes per one of balungan, others may be doubling that to eight, yet the whole ensemble is still playing in the same irama, since two or more are not recognised as occurring simultaneously. How the musicians respond to irama, but also to pathet and everything else that is fundamental to the organisation of gamelan music, is a key aspect of performance. In the absence of scores and parts, the musicians must know not only the balungan but also how to create their parts and relate them to it. This practice of realisation is known as garapan, or ‘process of working’ . While admitting a certain amount of freedom, this is not quite improvisation, as the player of each elaborating instrument must choose an appropriate pattern according to the pathet and irama from the available repertoire for that particular instrument. Another feature of gendhing is sung poetry. (A small but important group of gendhing, using relatively few instruments, have no singing, but the bulk of classical pieces feature parts for the solo female singer and male chorus.) Vocal music has influenced the composition of many instrumental gendhing, and Javanese gamelan music has come to feature singing more and more, with the female soloist emerging as a star. Song texts are based on the old Javanese poetic metres and deal with noble and elevated topics. Perhaps the most famous of all begins with the line ‘Parabé Sang Marabangun’ (‘The name of the noble king Marabangun’). Another frequently sung text begins

‘Nalikanira ing dalu wong agung mangsah semedi’ (‘In the night a great man meditated’). Around midnight, at a crucial point in the wayang shadow play, the dhalang (puppeteer) sings a chant containing the words roughly translated as ‘the prayers of the wise priests grace the witching hour’ . The status of many texts and melodies is further enhanced by their ascription to the rulers of the Javanese courts. For example, the well-known Puspawarna (mentioned earlier for its Sanskrit-derived title, with a notated extract given later in this chapter) is attributed to Mangkunegara IV (reigned 1853–81), and is still used in the Mangkunegaran palace to announce the ruler’s entrance. The modern, popular style of gamelan music, characterised by shorter pieces with catchy tunes, by contrast uses humorous texts or ones that deal with everyday life, and may even carry government propaganda. Such pieces are great favourites in wayang performances, especially in clowning episodes.

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the other classical musics

▪ Notation Gamelan has always been an oral tradition. Although notation systems emerged in the nineteenth century, with a more recent one found throughout the global gamelan diaspora, notation is never used in performance by experienced Javanese musicians, who rely on their memory and spontaneous creativity. They will have learnt the art in childhood by observation and imitation. One often sees children taking over a gamelan when the adults have left, and trying to reproduce what has just been played. Notation is used to teach beginners in schools and music colleges, and also to preserve a canon of melodic outlines and complex patterns, but it is never used for anything like a full score.7 Even with unfamiliar modern compositions that disrupt the traditional functions of the instruments and other stabilising forces such as pathet, musicians will either learn the work orally or, if they must use notation, dispense with it at the first opportunity. The more competent they are, the more they will memorise everything they need, including the balungan. This ability enhances the process of mutual listening, which in turn ensures cohesion and a refined sense of ensemble. The peripheral status of notation is also reflected in the fact that the cipher system ubiquitously encountered for gamelan is only one hundred years old. Its name, kepatihan, comes from the compound in Solo serving as residence for the equivalent of prime minister to the court. The musician and theorist R. L. Martopangrawit (1914–86) said that before notation was invented, musicians would learn gendhing through humming.8 In fact they still do, and it is common to hear a musician hum the main melody (or a kind of composite line that brings as much of the ensemble together as humming can achieve) while playing another part against it.9 The greatest virtue of the kepatihan system is simplicity, and it can be mastered in minutes. By assigning a number to each pitch, the music can be speedily notated without further need to specify precise intonation (which would not work in a musical culture that prides itself on pitch variability from one gamelan to another). But complex rhythms are harder to capture, and dynamics and tempo are not usually indicated. Above all, the notation is confined to what can most easily be notated: it acts as a reference point from which to construct a whole piece. Earlier a ‘core melody’ was mentioned, on which the entire piece is based: this corresponds to the European cantus firmus or ‘nuclear melody’ . The Javanese term balungan has found almost universal acceptance, partly because its literal meaning (skeleton) captures the essence so well. But debate has focused on the nature and role of this melody, and the mistakenness of assuming it to be the main melody. In some contexts, especially very slow music, it is barely recognisable as a melody at all, and is better described as points along the path of more complex melodic strands. But because it outlines the melodic flux, and gives musicians a basis on which to construct their parts – and is the only line

Gamelan tradition has shown remarkable continuity, as evidenced by this eighteenth- century manuscript (above left) and by photographs of K. P. H. Notoprojo, a renowned Javanese performer (above right), and the Sunda gamelan led by Uking Sukri and Ono Sukarna in 1972 (below).

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the other classical musics

played by more than one instrument – it is the part that is notated and preserved to represent the piece. In the kepatihan system, each note is given a number. In the examples below, the numbers refer to the notes in the sléndro tuning. The pélog heptatonic set is simply numbered from 1 to 7; the five sléndro notes are numbered from 1 to 6 (low to high), omitting note 4. (The reason is that the notes also have names which predate the cipher notation system: for example note 2 is called gulu, note 3 dhadha and note 5 lima in both sléndro and pélog. Thus the numbering and nomenclature correspond, and note 4 is treated as a feature of pélog alone.) The balungan melody can thus be shown as a sequence of numbers. Dots between notes can be rests, but usually double the duration of the previous note; dots below notes indicate the lower octave; those above indicate the higher octave; those without dots, the middle octave. This information is necessary for the elaborating instruments, though not for the ones actually playing the balungan, as they must fit it within their one-octave range. Thus no one actually plays the balungan exactly as notated below. The simplicity of the kepatihan system and the minimal nature of what is chosen for notation mean that several hundred pieces can be preserved in as many pages or less. Housed in the music academies from which they emanated, and also online or on the shelves of gamelan enthusiasts around the world, this body of pieces has assumed the status of a canon.

▪ Notation and theory in practice: a case study To demonstrate briefly the workings of melody, formal organisation, and other theoretical concepts discussed, as well as the kepatihan notation, the following examples give a snapshot from a well-known traditional gamelan piece, Ketawang Puspawarna (mentioned earlier in this chapter).10 The title gives the formal organisation (ketawang) found in several pieces, and also the Javanese name of this composition, which is from Sanskrit: pushpa (flower); varna (variety or colour). It is a kind of love-song to the harem of the ruler (Mangkunegara IV), as the different flowers listed in the nine verses of the complete text celebrate feminine virtues and attributes, though this can be extended to human ideals in general, and even to the nine rasas (sentiments) of ancient Indian aesthetics. Example 2.1 shows the extract in the kepatihan notation, as it might appear in collections of gamelan pieces: normally this would be just an outline, showing the balungan (by numbers) and main phrase-marking instruments (by symbols).

ex. 2.1 Ketawang Puspawarna laras sléndro pathet manyura: the opening of the second section (ngelik) in kepatihan notation

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While simple and instantly intelligible to gamelan players, this pared-down example requires further explanation for the lay reader, which is given below in the fleshed-out version. In kepatihan notation, the balungan melody is set apart in four-beat units (which flow on in the same tempo). Each unit, or gatra, forms a crucial structural element in the music, enabling musicians to work out their parts from its shape and its final, cadential note. For that reason, the gaps between gatras assist reading and analysis. The representation by numbers has only one disadvantage (apart from its unfamiliarity to those outside the gamelan community) compared with staff notation: a series of numbers cannot convey the shape and contours of melodies graphically. Thus an adapted staff notation has been devised to show the same extract from Ketawang Puspawarna (Example 2.3 overleaf), with the addition of some of the main elaborating instruments and voices. As the piece is in the sléndro tuning, its five notes fit conveniently on to the five lines of the staff, and even their (approximate) equidistance is maintained. The principle also applies to ledger lines, preserving the equidistant pattern, though without the octave equivalents of a normal staff. No clef is given, however, in order to avoid an association with precise pitches of the European system, and drawing attention to the anomaly just mentioned. Example 2.2 shows the pitches required for this extract.

ex. 2.2 Sléndro pitches on a staff

2 3 5 6 1 2 3 5 6 1 2 3 . . . . . . .

lower octave middle octave upper octave

To save space and excessive detail, this extract is presented as it might be performed by the chamber gamelan known as gadhon, comprising one balungan instrument (slenthem) and the main soft elaborating instruments: the rebab; the gendèr barung (a metallophone played with both hands); the gambang (a xylophone, also played with both hands). While greatly reduced, the ensemble preserves the main layers of the music (the central balungan with its supporting phrase-marking structure, and overlay of different elaborations, plus a simple vocal line) and adequately conveys the essence of the music. Note that the balungan is written as it would be played (on the one-octave slenthem) rather than in its true register as shown in Example 2.1 above. The phrase-marking instruments would probably be restricted to just the large gong ageng but in this example the others – kenong, kethuk-kempyang and kempul – have been added as they require so little space in the notation. They are indicated above or below the balungan by the following symbols:

( ) gong ageng (largest hanging gong)

^ kenong (gongs supported from beneath)

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the other classical musics

balungan

rebab

gendèr barung

gambang

gérongan

/ 0

(con 8ve)

Kem -

bang- ken cur ka car yan

/ 0

ang gung- - - - ci na tur

ex. 2.3 Ketawang Puspawarna laras sléndro pathet manyura: the opening of the second section (ngelik) in modified staff notation

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v kempul (smaller hanging gongs)

+ kethuk (smaller gongs supported from beneath)

O kempyang (paired with the kethuk)

The gong ageng (with the kenong) marks the end of each cycle or main section (comprising sixteen beats in the ketawang form); the kenong also marks the halfway point, which the kempul subdivides in the second half of the cycle; the kethuk sounds on the second beat of each gatra, sandwiched by strokes on its higher-pitched companion, the kempyang; the male chorus (gérongan) is also included. The words of this extract translate as ‘Flower of the kencur [possibly to suggest a young girl or virgin] always spoken of with enchantment’ . The irama of this extract is irama dados, in which the balungan moves quite slowly (about one beat every two seconds), allowing the gendèr barung to fit four notes per one of balungan and the nimbler gambang twice that number. This shows the complexity of gamelan polyphony, which is often described simplistically as heterophony, meaning different versions of the same melody occurring simultaneously at different speeds. The lines of the rebab, gendèr barung and gambang show how much more it is than that; at the same time the relationship between the rebab and gérongan shows the occasional heterophonic imitation. Otherwise what happens is a series of lines which converge with the balungan at important structural points, but otherwise diverge in varying degrees from it. The extract starts and ends with a stroke on the gong ageng, marking the principal section endings, and all parts meet on the gong notes 6 at the beginning and 3 at the end. These notes of special emphasis are also most prominent in the hierarchy of the pathet (manyura) of this piece. All parts again converge on note 1 at the kenong (^) which marks the halfway point, and also on note 5 when the next most significant phrase-marking gong, the kempul (v) sounds. A pair of kendhang (drums) would normally be included, but since they are not melodic and their part is notated as a series of symbols unfamiliar to the non-player, they have not been included in Example 2.3.

▪ Music theory Despite its long and rich literary tradition, Java has no comparable legacy of musical studies, and those texts that do enjoy quasi-classical status do not delve deeply into music theory, and are mainly of recent origin (since the early nineteenth century). Music theory gathered momentum in the early twentieth century, when Javanese intellectuals formulated an equivalent to the European music theory of the Dutch colonialists. In the independent Republic of Indonesia (proclaimed in 1945) the establishment of music schools and academies created an even more fertile ground for the theoretical study of music as well as its practice. The process of garapan – creating a piece from just the balungan (a line that at times becomes so sparse that one may wonder how it can be used as the basis for such rich polyphony) – points to the existence of accepted

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the other classical musics

conventions, which can be described as a kind of music theory. The performers are thus not only players and singers but also analysts and theorists in action, and vice versa: analysts and theorists are expected to perform. This gives rise to an interesting issue in gamelan music. At the beginning of my studies I was taught that the monumental Music in Java (first published in 1934 as De toonkunst van Java) by the Dutch scholar Jaap Kunst (1891–1960) was marred only by the fact that the author did not play the gamelan and was thus basing his information on the written and spoken words of others. His student the American ethnomusicologist Mantle Hood (1918–2005), who coined the term ‘bi-musicality’ , placed learning through playing at the heart of his gamelan program at UCLA, and his ideology has become the norm. The criticism of Kunst did not take into account the fact that he was a fine musician; what prevented him from playing was the attitude prevalent in that colonial era – a Dutch official could not sit down with the Javanese and play their music. This kind of criticism also ignored the contribution of Javanese ‘non-playing captains’ who, around the same time as Kunst, spearheaded a nationalist music theory. In their work, the noun ‘classicisation’ (a conscious, active process, motivated by national assertiveness as well as intellectual curiosity) is perhaps of greater significance than the familiar and relatively inert adjective ‘classical’ . Furthermore, theory and notation can empower those who formulate and use them, as they imply a literate elite, and even intellect over intuition.11

▪ Today Javanese gamelan music has achieved a longevity comparable to that of the classical music of Europe or the Indian subcontinent, and the tradition is being sustained by the growth of music academies and the worldwide gamelan community. The ancient craft of gamelan manufacture is also being supported by the demand for new sets, often for export. But the process of transplanting music from a royal location to an urban milieu and public concert hall, as happened with other classical musics, only applies in limited ways to Javanese gamelan music. The Javanese courts remain important cultural centres, maintaining high standards in music and the other arts and cross-fertilising with more modern institutions such as the radio stations and music academies. And gamelan still flourishes at village level: it is scarcely more an urban tradition than it was in the heyday of the royal courts in the century leading up to independence, though the growth of teaching institutions in large cities such as Solo and Jogja has drawn young players from the villages to study in an urban environment. This limited migration has had some effect on the selection and training of musicians. Some come from families of hereditary musicians, and some small towns are known as artistic centres: for example, Klaten, midway between Solo and Jogja, is famous for its families of puppeteers. From this head- start of childhood training, many students move on to the urban academies and

Above: Wayang (shadow puppets) from central Java, in a scene from ‘Irawan’s Wedding’ in the mid-twentieth century

Below: A shadow puppet performance of the story ‘Gathutkaca Winisuda’ by the celebrated master Ki Manteb Sudharsono at the Bentara Budaya Institute, Jakarta

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the other classical musics

continue their training in more formal surroundings. What is now the largest academy of the arts in Indonesia started in an annexe of the main court in Solo in 1965, shifting to its own greatly enlarged campus in the 1980s, and has drawn students from all over Indonesia and the world. Experience of gamelan in the West has drawn on its value as an ideal mixed ability ensemble, with great educational benefits. These have long been understood in Java, where the gamelan is open to a wide spectrum of ages and abilities and has also acquired a new social dynamic thanks to the growth of women’s groups which play for pleasure. Other clubs existing for social reasons are drawn from the ranks of bankers, doctors, army officers and Chinese merchants. Expert players routinely rub shoulders with novices, and competitions between amateur groups are common. Radio Republik Indonesia has become a major patron of professional groups, while the schools and academies offer teaching employment to expert players, and extra income can be earned through performances at weddings and wayangs.

▪ Influences There are two main reasons for the gamelan’s global fame. One is that ethnomusicologists spearheaded the incorporation of gamelans, along with Indonesian teachers, into American universities, with their example being followed thirty years later in Britain; meanwhile the Netherlands already had a significant home-grown gamelan tradition from its colonial past. Many other European countries, as well as Australia, New Zealand and Japan, have also adopted the gamelan. The other reason lies in the interest shown by leading composers: from Debussy to the present we can trace a continuum, starting with limited understanding and involvement, and moving towards total immersion. Debussy’s encounter with the gamelan (and dance) of Java at the 1889 Paris universal exhibition is well known, but whether he imitated the gamelan, even in a stylised and indirect way, is debatable. There is a big difference between his hyperbolic written remarks about Javanese music, on the one hand, and his compositions, especially the piano piece ‘Pagodes’ (the work most cited as his response to the gamelan), on the other. ‘Pagodes’ is certainly an example of musical Orientalism and is largely pentatonic, with deep – some would insist gong-like – resonances and filigree patterns. But to relate such vague resemblances specifically to Javanese gamelan music, without any evidence beyond Debussy’s admiration for it, is stretching the point.12 Leading figures from the next generation of French composers made matters clearer by acknowledging their use of gamelan elements. Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) did so in his Turangalîla-Symphonie of 1948, and Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) imitated the Balinese music he heard at the 1931 Paris exhibition so closely that it approaches transcription, notably in his Concerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestra of 1932. Benjamin Britten (1913–76) achieved a similar effect in his ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1957), but there the relationship to the Balinese source was even clearer, as the composer had visited the island during his tour of Asia (1955–56) and had made transcriptions of some of the

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music he heard. But neither he nor Poulenc learnt to play gamelan instruments, and Britten’s first encounters with Balinese music were through playing transcriptions by the Canadian composer Colin McPhee (1900–64) at the beginning of the 1940s during his stay in the United States. McPhee is better known as a pioneering ethnomusicologist than as a composer; his studies of Balinese music and culture from the 1930s remain among the most extensive and penetrating available in English. Moreover, these composers imitated the gamelan by using Western instruments rather than gamelan ones (making Britten’s orchestral imitation of a Balinese gamelan in his ballet a challenge extraordinarily well met). As field trips to Indonesia became common among ethnomusicologists, performers and composers, attempts at total immersion were made, leading to compositions for the real gamelan following traditional principles. Not surprisingly, a rift developed between performing groups dedicated to the pursuit of traditional gamelan music, and those who sought to use the gamelan as a stimulus to a new kind of composition. Yet some managed to combine the two harmoniously, most notably the American Lou Harrison (1917–2003), who combined field trips, playing experience and composing for the gamelan (of his own construction). He followed traditional Javanese models, earning criticism from some Javanese musicians and praise from others. The British composer Michael Nyman (b. 1944) has epitomised a diametrically- opposed approach. He was commissioned to write a piece for the 1983 UK tour of the English Gamelan Orchestra (which existed from 1980 to 1983 under my direction), though he had not studied gamelan as Lou Harrison had. The resulting piece, Time’s Up, had nothing to do with balungan, pathet, garapan and Javanese phrase-structure, but was instead ‘echt-Nyman’ . The Javanese musicians involved in its performances, clearly baffled by a work that followed none of the methods to which they were accustomed, nevertheless committed it all to memory between the first rehearsal and the next a few days later. Everyone seems to love the sound of a gamelan, but what draws people from all over the world to attempt to play it? The answers include the beauty of the instruments, the gentle ordering of sounds, the refinement of the music and the conduct of the players: it is all a lesson in restraint, and a check on inflated egos. One of the attractions lies in there being no pressure of expectation: one does not have to be trained in music, nor does one have to be able to read it. Moreover, the gamelan’s openness to new influences and its sheer versatility (even to the extent of mixing different tunings and extraneous instruments) protect it from accusations of being a ‘museum culture’ , or even an elitist art. The Indonesian word klasik – neither the exact equivalent of ‘classical’ nor used anything like as frequently – can be used to distance gamelan music from pop, but tends to be used more to distinguish between strands within gamelan music, for example between the traditional models (klasik) and various modern types (kontemporer) which admit influences from pop music and even from the Western classical avant-garde.13 But what may appear simple on the surface conceals a wealth of subtle detail. The variety of non-Javanese responses to gamelan may be dazzling, but they have often tended towards a standardisation that is contrary to the whole spirit of the gamelan, and of Javanese creativity.

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the other classical musics