Home “Gamelan” writing

“Gamelan” writing

“Gamelan”Written assignment: write dialogue for one scene of “White Snake”2-3 pp.

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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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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▪ 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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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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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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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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