Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 77

The Music of Java There remains the rhythm. If, perhaps with some justice, we may say that European music has attained a higher degree of perfection from the point of view of melody and harmony, as regards rhythm it is, in my eyes, we who have remained behind. In Indonesian music in many cases the rhythm is much more elaborate and varied; sometimes I have heard polyrhythmic, better heterorhythmic, constructions of extraordinary beauty.
Now let us pass on to a more concrete subject. the composition and the use of the Javanese orchestras. The plural is used here intentionally : Java is familiar with several kinds of orchestras and also with a number of instruments, that can be used simultaneously as well as for solo-parts. The gamelan proper is nothing short of the most perfect orchestral form and the most complete; other simpler ensembles are at the same time more primitive.
The complete gamelan of the Principalities seems, when seen and heard for the first time, to be only a confusion of sounds and instruments. Apparently the musicians are placed and play at their own sweet will. But little by little one perceives that there is "method in their madness," and that each instrument has its own task to fulfil in the orchestral plan
In the first place attention has to be drawn to the fact that the great gamelan of the princes and regents have a double set of instruments-viz., they are composed of a slendro-part and of a pelog-part. The only instruments these parts have in common are the big gongs and the drums ; occasionally also some kenongs and some kempuls.
Needless to say, the slendro and the pelog parts are never played simultaneously. It is also quite exceptional to pass from the one into the other in one gending. I only know one single case : in the gending Bedåjå ketawang, where there is a change from pélog into sléndro, and then back again into pélog.
The pélog-part of the gamelan is again divided into two parts with regard to the multi-octave genders. The sequence of tones for those genders, according to the pelog-bem-system, must be bem, gulu, dådå, limå, nem in every octave; but in the pelog-barang-system the sequence is limå, nem, barang, gulu, då då. As the keys are suspended above sounding-tubes by means of cords, it is difficult to change them, when, in the course of the evening, pélogbem is abandoned in favour of pélog-barang, and therefore there are in pélog those two groups of multi-octave genders. Each of those couples of gender pélog forms, with a gendèr sléndro, an open square, in the middle of which the musician is seated.
This difficulty does not arise with the other melodic instruments. When their compass is not more than one octave, they produce all the seven tones
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