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The Influence of Gamelan Music on Western Composers

From 1889 to Present
Introduction
• The music of the gamelan tradition has had a widespread influence on
composers of the 20th century, e.g. Debussy, Cage and Vivier.
• How has this music impacted cultures outside of Indonesia, and why?
• More specifically, has the music been integrated successfully?

Chou Wen-Chung
• Chou Wen-Chung states in his article Asian Concepts and Twentieth
Century Western Composers:

“The adaptation of Indian, Indonesian, or Japanese melodic or rhythmic

treatment to Western notation and Western instruments, neglecting such
life-giving elements in the original models as constant subtle modifications
in pitch, rhythm, and timbre, the emphasis on the production and control
of tones, the value placed on the expressive as well as the structural
functions of single tones, is not, in any true sense, different from the
nineteenth-century practice of forcing an oriental melody into tonal
harmony.”

The Development of Gamelan

• Western influence on traditional Gamelan music.
• Contemporary Indonesian composers, e.g. I Nyoman Windha.

Origins of Gamelan Music

• Geographical Origins: Java
o Island located in the Malay Archipelago, which is part of present-
day Indonesia
o On the border of the Indian and Pacific Oceans between Asia and
Australia
o In this location, Java is subject to diverse influences from the
surrounding areas.
• Cultural origins:
o Instruments developed into their current form during the
Majapahit Empire (1293-1500).
o Confluence of religious practices and musical rituals of Asia and
the music and dance of the South Pacific islands.
o Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic philosophies.

Geographical Origin
• Indonesia

Cultural Context
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• In Indonesian traditional thinking, the gamelan is sacred and is

believed to have supernatural power.
• Both musician and non-musicians are humble and respectful to the
gamelan. Incense and flowers are often offered to the gamelan. It is
believed that each instrument in the gamelan is guided by spirits.
• Thus, the musicians have to take off their shoes when they play the
gamelan. It is also forbidden to step over any instrument in a
gamelan, because it might offend the spirit by doing so.
• Some gamelan are believed to have so much powers that playing them
may exert power over nature. Others may be touched only by persons
who are ritually qualified.
• In Javanese gamelan, the most important instrument is the Gong
Ageng. The Javanese musicians believe that Gong Ageng is the main
spirit of the entire gamelan.

What does ‘Gamelan’ mean?

• The word Gamelan comes from the Javanese word Gamels, meaning
‘to strike or hammer’, and the suffix an, which makes the root a
collective noun.
• Technically, Gamelan refers to a set of instruments.
• A Gamelan is a set of instruments that operates as a distinct entity.
They are built and tuned to stay together. Instruments from different
Gamelan are generally not interchangeable.

Distinctions within the Genre

• There are three varieties of Gamelan music that are differentiated
through geographical region and playing style:
o Balinese Gamelan
o Javanese Gamelan
o Sundanese Gamelan
• There are also a many varieties of Gamelan music that have developed
outside the core Bali and Java area, through migration and cultural
interest.

Distinctions (cont.)
• Sub-Varieties
• Balinese Gamelan is generally associated with virtuosity and rapid
changes of tempo and dynamics. Gamelan gong kebyar is its best-
known style. Other popular Balinese styles include Gamelan and
kecak, also known as the "monkey chant.”
• Javanese Gamelan was largely dominated by the courts of the 19th
century Javanese rulers, each with its own style. It is known for slower,
more meditative styles than that of Bali. Two examples of this style
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are Yogyakarta and Surakarta.

• Sundanese Gamelan is associated with the style Gamelan Degung. In
this style, the musical ensemble utilizes a subset of modified gamelan
instruments with a particular mode of the pelog scale.

Listening Examples
• Balinese: Gamelan gong Kebyar (video) and Cremation Gamelan
• Javanese: Wedding Gamelan “Welcoming the Guests”
• Sundanese: Gamelan Degong “Sabilinguan”

Sundanese Ensemble

Sizes of Gamelan Ensembles

• A typical gamelan performance requires 20-30 players and is usually
accompanied by flute, vocals or strings.
• Balinese and Javanese Gamelan ensembles tend to be larger in size
while Sundanese Gamelan ensembles tend to be smaller.
• Gamelan Instruments
• The Gamelan can be divided into three groups of instruments:
o punctuating instruments
o balungan instruments
o elaborating instruments
• The largest instruments are situated at the back of the ensemble.
These are the punctuating instruments. They play periodically to divide
and subdivide larger phrases.
• The mid-sized instruments, situated in the middle of the ensemble,
play the balungan at a medium speed. The balungan is the essential
melodic material of the Gamelan composition.
• The smallest instruments such as the suling and rebab elaborate on
the balungan in faster rhythms. This texture, with lower instruments
moving slowly and higher instruments moving progressively more
quickly, is an important characteristic of Gamelan music.

Individual Instruments
• The largest instrument of the Gamelan is the Gong Ageng -- the origin
of the word “Gong” in English comes from this instrument.
• The kenong is a smaller pot gong.
• The bonang is a series of medium sized bronze kettle gongs. Two
bonang often work together to play complicated interlocking patterns.
• The saron is a metallophone.
• The gender is a higher metallophone.
• The gambang is a wooden xylophone.
• The suling is a bamboo flute.
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• The rebab is a bowed stringed instrument.

• The celempung is a zither.
• The kendang are drums. The kendang are particularly important in
giving signals to the rest of the group.

Individual Instruments (cont.)

Gamelan Rhythms
• The melodic lines of Gamelan music interlock rhythmically. These
interlocking parts, known as kotèkan, require excellent rhythmic and
ensemble playing skills.
• The two parts of a kotèkan, which are thought of as male and female,
are known as nyangsih and polos.
• The main accents of the nyangsih is usually on the offbeat, while the
main accents of the polos is usually on the beat.
• There were four types of melodic kotèkans that were recognized by
Colin McPhee in his documentation of Balinese music in the 1930s:
chandetan, tutugan, ochètan, and semi-ochètan.
• These four types serve as a good starting point for study in the
musicianship required to perform interlocking rhythms.

Chandeton
• The chandetan is an alternating rhythm in which the nyangsih melody
differs from the polos

Tutugan
• The tutugan is an alternating rhythm.
• The nyangsih melody follows the polos:

Ochètan
• The ochètan is an interlocking rhythm in which two separate voices are
created where the parts meet:

Semi-Ochètan
• The semi-ochètan is an interlocking rhythm in which the two parts
meet on a unison:

Gamelan Laras
• The two most common laras (scales) in Indonesian Gamelan music
o Pelog
o Slendro

Gamelan Laras (cont.)

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• Pelog - a seven note laras

o Many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches
o Even in ensembles that have all seven notes, many pieces only
use a subset of five notes
o The seven-note pelog of Central Java has been described as a
subset of 9-tone equal tempered tuning
• Slendro - a five note laras
o Called salendro by the Sundanese
o Slendro tunings in Java vary less from gamelan to gamelan than
in Bali, where ensembles within the same village may be tuned
very differently
o The five pitches of the Javanese slendro are roughly equally
spaced within an octavisten to Pelog and Slendro

Tunings
• Since tunings vary so widely from village to village, and gamelan to
gamelan, it is difficult to characterize tunings in terms of intervals.
• Although tunings vary from one gamelan to the next, the intervals
between notes in a scale are very close to identical for different
instruments within the same gamelan.
• It is common in Gamelan that instruments are played in pairs which
are tuned slightly apart so as to produce interference beatings, which
are ideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of notes in all registers.
• It is thought that this contributes to the very “busy” and “shimmering”
sound of Gamelan ensembles.
• In the religious ceremonies that contain Gamelan, these interference
beats are meant to give the listener a feeling of a God's presence or to
act as a stepping stone to a meditative state.

Notation
• Traditionally Gamelan music was not notated, as it began as an oral
tradition.
• However, in the 19th century, the kratons (courts) of Yogyakarta and
Surakarta developed distinct notations for transcribing the repertoire.
• These were not used to read the music, which was memorized, but to
preserve pieces in the court records.
• The Yogyanese notation is a checkerboard notation, which uses six or
seven vertical lines to represent notes of higher pitch in the balungan,
and horizontal lines which represent the series of beats, read
downward with time.
• The fourth vertical line and every fourth horizontal line (completing a
gatra) are darkened for legibility.
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• Symbols on the left indicate the phrase structure of gongs and so forth,
while specific drum features are notated in symbols to the right.
• “Changes in the performance practice, use of types of gamelan … and
the development of music notation from the early middle to the latter
parts of the nineteenth century are documented in various sources.
They include substantial tracts on Javanese court music and traditional
practices, and scattered pieces of information in court documents.” --
Margaret Kartomi

Forms
• The formal organization of traditional gamelan music is cyclical, or
colotomic with constant repetition of a basic musical idea.
• The last note is also the first note of the next cycle.
• Traditionally gongs play the basic pattern of each cycle while other
instruments vary the melody from one cycle to the next.
• A simple form might be based on eighth beats, with a large gong
playing on beats four and eight of every cycle, and a smaller gong
playing on beats five and seven.
• Some forms have a cycle even simpler than this. Others can be very
long, with a complex pattern that unfolds over a cycle that is over 200
beats long.

Forms (cont.)
• Colotomy is a term coined by the ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst to
describe the rhythmic structures of the Gamelan.
• It refers to the use of specific instruments to mark off nested time
intervals, or the process of dividing rhythmic time into nested cycles.
• There are a number of different structures, which differ greatly in
length and complexity; however, all of them have colotomic
characteristics.

Migration
• The turn of the 20th century is considered the Golden Age of Javanese
Gamelan music.
• Various sultans and princes had the financial resources at their
disposal to support the arts in an extravagant way.
• Gamelan ensembles from Java made appearances at several “world
fairs” that various cities hosted during this time.

1889 Paris Exposition

• The 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle featured the first truly popular
Gamelan concert in France.
• Satie, Saint-Saëns, and Debussy heard an ensemble - mainly
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Sundanese, joined by a few Central Javanese artists - play music,

dance and excerpts of theater.

1889 Paris Exposition (cont.)

• The cultural events that took place in the Javanese concert had a
tremendous impact on French people, at the time mostly unaware of
far-eastern culture.
• It produced an abundant literature. Starting with little explanatory
booklets trying to give visitors an understanding of what was going on
before their amazed eyes.
• Some of them include attempts at analysis that look basic compared to
our present knowledge, but nonetheless show a will to understand
which is far from superficial.