Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 76

The Music of Java
a sixth, or even a seventh, tone as a weak or accessory tone. always pentatonic and has generally almost equal intervals.
From top to bottom these intervals are called in Central Java: In pélog The intervals expressed in European semi-tones (approximately)
In slendro
(penunggul or bem alit)
barang
nem
limå or gangsal
pélog
dådå or tengah
gulu or djonggå
I 5
27
1.2
15
2.4
1.5
(barang alit)
1.2
ncm
lima or gangsal
Slendro is
The intervals expressed in European semi-tones (approximately)
2.4
2.4
dådå or tengah
gulu or djonggå
penunggul or bem
barang
So neither of these systems agree entirely with our own system of intervals, but I know by experience that the European ear accommodates itself quickly and hears these intervals as perfectly pure and beautiful. But then, these scales, like our own, are built up on absolutely natural principles.
As regards the Javanese melody, in my opinion it has not yet reached the same degree of development as the European-at any rate, as far as the orchestral compositions are concerned. The fundamental melody is rather simple, more or less archaic. Only when produced vocally or on the rebab (the native violin) or the suling (bamboo flute) does it become richer and more graceful. However, notwithstanding its relative simplicity, it sometimes sounds very impressive and full of sentiment, and the vocal melodies are often splendid. One of those songs belonging to the Jogjanese wayang-purwa music, I will now let you hear. Here follows the reproduction of the lagon patet manjura wetah.)
2.4
2.4
2.4
And now for the harmony. One notices that the different voices are not, as with us, subject to certain fixed rules. One might almost call it voluntary or accidental. Ordinarily this is not a properly regulated polyphony; it is a freer form, more primitive perhaps-viz., heterophony, as Professor Stumpf has baptized it. However, in some of the gendings, we find the beginnings of canonic imitation: perhaps a polophony in statu nascendi; and also the human voices and the rebab come sometimes to a melodic independence which creates a real kind of polyphony.
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