Gamelan is the generic Indonesian word for an ensemble of tuned percussion instruments that may vary greatly in size, constitution, musical style, and function. Originating from the regions of Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Malaysia, gamelan may include bronze gongs, gong-chimes, keyed metallophones in single octave and multi-octave sizes, xylophones, drums, bowed and plucked stringed instruments, and solo and choral singers. The sound of a gamelan ensemble has been variously described as magical, delightful, and something that puts the listener into a state of enchantment, or a different musical universe.
The historical origins of gamelan can be traced back to the early ninth century. Images of early gamelan instruments have been found on Javanese carvings and temple reliefs dating from that period. Other findings of bronze drums dating from as early as the 3rd century B.C., although unlike the bronze instruments of gamelan, indicate that forging and metal working in Sumatra, Java, and Bali had, by that period, developed to a refined level.
Gamelan music differs slightly in each region where it is played. The key regions are Bali and central Java, and two basic types of gamelan developed: the loud-sounding ensemble of Bali, consisting of gongs, drums and other instruments, intended for outdoor ceremonies or processions; and the soft-sounding ensemble of Java, consisting of softer wind instruments, xylophones and metallophones, used for indoor occasions. From about the 16th century, the loud and soft types were combined into a single large ensemble, as in modern Javanese gamelan.
The gamelan of central Java is divided into two separate sets of instruments, each with its own tuning system. One set is tuned in slendro, a five-tone system, and the other is tuned in pelog, a seven-tone system, with a few instruments being able to double in both tunings. Instruments in pelog are positioned at right angles to those in slendro, allowing players to move quickly from one instrument to the other. The five-tone slendro system divides the octave into five basically equal intervals that correspond—loosely—to major seconds and minor thirds in Western music. The pelog system divides the octave into seven small and large intervals, these include two intervals close to a Western minor second. A piece rarely uses all seven tones of the pelog scale, but rather various combinations of five-tone scales can be derived from the seven available tones. Each of these tuning systems is divided into three modes or patet that are distinguished by such features as pitch collection, recurring melodic patterns, and cadential formulas. However, because there are no pitch standards for the slendro or pelog scales, no two gamelan ensembles are tuned exactly alike, giving each its own distinctive tonal quality.
The typical central Javanese gamelan is comprised of different types of instruments in several sizes. These include three sizes of vertically-hanging gongs in varying numbers: up to twelve of the smallest, called a kempul, three to nine mid-sized gongs, called suwudan, and two of the large gong, called ageng. Each of the gongs has a protruding boss in its centre that is struck with a padded wooden beater. The horizontally-mounted gongs also come in three sizes from the kenong, the largest, to the mid-sized ketuk, and the smallest kempyang. A typical gamelan will include one kenong for every note of the scale, and a pair each of the ketuk and kempyang. The smallest of the gong-type instruments is the bonang, or gong-chime, which consists of a double row of small gong kettles, and which has a range of two or more octaves. A gamelan may include up to three sizes of bonang, each overlapping the other by one octave.
The saron family of metallophones consists of three sizes of instruments: the large demung, the medium-sized barung which is pitched an octave higher, and the smallest saron, the panerus. A gamelan includes from four to eight saron. Another metallophone is the gender, a two and a half octave instrument the keys of which are suspended over resonating tubes, and a similar-looking instrument, the gambang, a four-octave instrument with wooden keys laid over a wooden trough-like box. A gamelan will typically have two or three of each of these percussive instruments.
The string instruments of the gamelan include the celempung, a zither-like instrument, the siter, a smaller zither, and the rebab, a two-string spike fiddle held vertically. Only one wind instrument is used, the suling, a type of bamboo flute. Other instruments include three sizes of double-headed kendang drums, ranging from the largest gending, to the medium-sized ciblon, and the smallest ketipung. Occasionally, a pesinden, a female vocalist, and a gerongan, a male chorus, will be part of the ensemble.
The music for gamelan exists primarily as an aural tradition. Kepatihan is a numerical notational system that may be used to notate the lagu of a piece, its “fixed melody,” but is used only for teaching purposes and to publish the traditional works and new compositions. No written music is used during a gamelan performance. Each player in the ensemble interprets the lagu according to the technique for his or her instrument, its sonic characteristics, the structural form of the piece, and the mode, embellishing the melody in prescribed patterns. Although there is no conductor in gamelan, such directions as tempo changes and repeats of sections in a piece are indicated by the single kendang player. The large gong ageng punctuates the end of sections with a single stroke.
Gamelan music is played as musical entertainment in itself, to accompany ceremonial rituals, and to accompany theatre and dance. One of the most respected of the dramatic forms is the wayang kulit, the classical puppet play, accompanied by a gamelan ensemble. A similar dramatic form that uses the same story plots as wayang kulit, but is performed by human actors and dancers, is the popular wayang orang. It is accompanied by a complete gamelan.
The universities and academies in Indonesia have become important cultural centres for the preservation of gamelan, offering advanced performance practice, new teaching techniques, and general encouragement and promotion of interest in this rich musical tradition.
Gamelan ensembles are also increasingly popular outside of Indonesia. Many universities in Europe, Great Britain, the U.S., and several other countries, own gamelan instruments and employ resident Javanese musicians to teach its rituals and performance.
The influence of gamelan on Western composers was initially one of sonority or instrumentation. Composers as diverse as Claude DEBUSSY, Maurice RAVEL, Olivier MESSIAEN, Steve REICH, and Harrison Birtwistle have mimicked the gamelan’s metallic sonorities in their orchestral works (often by using vibraphones and glockenspiels together with harps). In addition to gamelan having influenced the above named Western composers, it has also inspired other contemporary composers to write new pieces of music specifically for the gamelan ensemble.
A deeper and far more important influence has been that of gamelan time sense. The Javanese people have a cyclical sense of time: this is peculiarly apparent in their language, which has few past or future tenses; and particularly in their calendars, which, unlike the Western calendar, revolve in endless cycles of varying lengths of time that overlap.
Harrison Birtwistle has made extensive use of such cyclic techniques, particularly in his multi-dimensional opera The Mask of Orpheus. The “moment form” adopted in the 1950s and 1960s by composers such as Pierre BOULEZ, Olivier Messiaen, and Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN, also owes much to the non-directional or non-discursive sense of time present in the gamelan musics of, among other countries, Java and Indonesia.
The effects of this oriental time sense on Western music can not be overstated, as it has served to contradict the discursive nature of the whole European musical tradition, and in doing so opened a completely new direction in the production of, and thought about, Western music.
David Brock
SEE ALSO:
OPERA; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC; SOUTH EAST ASIA.
Becker, Judith. Traditional Music in Modern Java
(Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1980);
May, Elizabeth. Musics of Many Cultures
(Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1983);
Titon, Jeff. Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples (New York: Macmillan, 1992).
The Music of Bali, Vol. 2; Music of Indonesia 14: Lombok, Kalimantan, Banyumas; Palais Royal de Yogyakarta, Vol. 3; Saron of Singapada; Javanese Court Gamelan.