Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 74

The Music of Java
orchestral compositions express a crisis, a conflict; they strive and attain. On the other hand, we may characterize Javanese music perhaps best by calling it "time transferred into music." It is in the best sense of the word without aim"; it does not evolve, it is. This will explain why, at the end of a European concert, we are conscious of being fatigued, whilst a whole night spent in listening to the gamelan leaves us practically without any feeling of being tired.
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It goes without saying that this contrast only bears on the general character of both arts. Western music also knows compositions without growth and development; it also can be meditative, can give the impression of being "time transformed into music." The Indonesian music, on the other hand, sometimes has its dramatic moments, and can undoubtedly express strong passions. But these features, when they occur, in no wise mark the general character of the two kinds of music.
You are undoubtedly aware of the fact that music in the Indonesian archipelago is still entirely a popular art; a music made by and for the people of all classes in the Indonesian world. As for the origin of the greater part of the compositions, it is as with us in our folk-songs and our medieval art: the author is only seldom known by name, and even then he is only the voice of the people. Prince and labourer alike listen with equal rapture to the same gendings, although their individual appreciation may be different. To appreciate this fully one must have attended a wayang performance in one of the cratons (palaces), and have seen how completely the nobles as well as the common people are absorbed in the music and the play: the nobles with their guests on the marble dais of the pendopo, a brilliant nucleus of the audience, and round it the people, a dense mass of delicate, brown, and silent figures
When we consider the composing elements in our own music, and then ask ourselves to what extent they are also present in Javanese music, we arrive in the first place at the conclusion that, although the European ear can distinguish a tonal centre in many of the vocal compositions (tembang) and of the instrumental pieces (gending), there is no question here of such a pronounced and fixed tonality as we find in our own music. Instead of this we find semi-modal, semi-tonal systems of a highly intricate kind. We enter here in the sphere of the patet and of the laras bem and barang of the principalities, the scales selisir, sunarès, etc., of Bali, the modes mèlog, njorog, madenda, degung, etc., of the Sundanese: in my eyes the most fascinating province of the whole Indonesian world of music.
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