Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

2. Musicians.

Javanese of all social classes play gamelan, but aristocrats and members of other élites rarely perform professionally; music and dance are seen as training for achieving refinement and harmony. Professional musicians are predominantly male, but female singers (Pesindhèn) stand out as the most visible, audible and highly paid performers. Women also play all of the instruments of the gamelan, but with the exception of gendèr players (Weiss, 1993), they usually do so in gender-segregated amateur groups. Remuneration for performance is usually quite low for all but drummers and female singers; only musicians who perform regularly in popular shadow-play troupes and those who manage to find a position in the government bureaucracy, teaching in the schools or performing in the radio station ensembles, are able to make a living as musicians.

Formal musical study was uncommon until the mid-20th century. Despite the spread of institutionalized teaching, musicians continue to learn from many sources through repeated exposure and attempts at imitation. Since most musicians do not own instruments, learning and practicing are inherently social activities, requiring access to a set of instruments and involvement in a group situation. Sitting in and around the gamelan in performance is widely accepted from earliest childhood. The incorporation within a gamelan of roles of gradated difficulty enables beginners to participate alongside far more capable musicians. Most musicians gain competence on all of the simpler instruments; many can also play at least some of the complex ones. It is particularly common to learn from older relatives, who may demonstrate or correct but rarely teach systematically. Cassette recordings have facilitated and altered the process of imitation from the 1970s by offering a broad array of stylistic resources and enabling exact, unlimited repetition of a model for imitation.

The establishment of performing arts schools has changed education processes by offering students systematic training in gamelan, dance and puppetry, though many musicians continue to learn informally. Students at these institutions develop a broader competence than other musicians because they learn several different styles of Javanese gamelan as well as music from other parts of Indonesia (principally Bali and West Java). Use of notation and a more verbalized, analytical approach to musical practice also distinguish this training. Since students from these institutions often teach gamelan in general schools, their standardized versions of performance practice and repertory are affecting the mainstream, diminishing but not eliminating regional and individual stylistic diversity.

Javanese royal courts and lesser noble houses maintained numerous musicians, dancer-actors and puppeteers. In the heyday of the Kraton, the major palace of Surakarta, seven different groups of musicians were part of its many-tiered bureaucracy, including those associated with the crown prince and the prime minister. Musicians moved through an explicit system of ranks linked to particular instruments of the gamelan, with a few musicians at the apex of this system attaining noble rank. Members of the aristocracy often studied music and dance but were far more likely to dance than to play gamelan in court performances. Today a small number of musicians perform for court occasions and radio broadcasts from the palace (similar complexity and subsequent decline occurred at the Kraton of Yogyakarta). Smaller versions of these organizations developed at the Mangkunegaran and Paku Alaman, the minor courts of Surakarta and Yogyakarta.

The gamelan musicians at the government’s radio stations in Surakarta and Yogyakarta have been highly influential, spreading their playing styles and repertory farther afield than most other groups through frequent broadcasts and numerous commercial recordings. The only non-governmental groups to approach such distribution have been those associated with the most influential shadow-puppet masters (dhalang), Ki Nartosabdho and Ki Anom Suroto.

There are numerous other professional and semi-professional gamelan groups, some associated with a particular dhalang and others with municipal or educational institutions. The spectrum of experience and ability shades off into amateur groups linked to schools, banks, government offices and other institutions that tend to serve a social function, but may also provide music for the sponsoring institution’s celebrations. Other performance opportunities include regional competitions and radio broadcasts on public and private stations.

Indonesia, §III: Central Java

3. Instruments and ensembles.

Gamelan instruments are tuned to two systems (laras): pentatonic sléndro and heptatonic pélog. Pitches are commonly represented by kepatihan notation, with 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 for sléndro and 1 to 7 for pélog (superscript and subscript dots indicate upper and lower octaves, respectively). Tuning varies considerably from one gamelan to the next, both in absolute pitch and in relative size of intervals, engendering considerable scholarly debate over the theory and aesthetics of tuning. Further complexity results from stretching of octaves on fixed pitch instruments, singers’ and rebab (spike fiddle) players’ individual intonations, and the varying relationship between the two halves of a sléndro-pélog gamelan: some sets coincide (tumbuk) on pitch 6, others on 1, 2 or 5 (Table 4). Certain gamelan sets are valued for their particular tunings and may be models for other sets. The gendèr (14-key metallophone) is usually used as a standard for tuning the rest of the gamelan.

Instrumentation is flexible: ‘complete’ gamelan may vary greatly in the number of saron (metallophone, fig.12a), kempul (vertically suspended bossed gong), kenong (horizontally suspended bossed gong) and gong (fig.13; for further detail on instrumentation see Gamelan, §I). Yet this hardly affects performance practice and repertory. Likewise, the quality of the instruments, ranging from old, beautifully forged and tuned bronze to cheaper brass and iron, affects the overall sound but not the choice of repertory or performance practice. On the other hand, the availability of only one tuning restricts the choice of repertory, although many sléndro pieces may be played on a pélog ensemble. Two variant ensembles are sufficiently different to warrant specific terms: first, the small gamelan gadhon, which features the softer panerusan (elaborating) instruments rebab (spike fiddle, fig.11), gendèr, gendèr panerus (small 14-key metallophone), gambang (wooden xylophone), suling (bamboo duct flute) and siter or celempung (zithers) as well as some of the basic instruments including kendhang (drum), slenthem (low-pitched metallophone), some sort of gong and occasionally other colotomic instruments; second, in soran or bonangan performance the bonang (gong-chime, fig.12b) and saron predominate and the soft instruments are lacking. These two subsets may also be heard as alternating textures within a performance by a full ensemble: the loud instruments come to the sonic foreground at certain points (usually beginnings, fast transitions and some endings) and in certain pieces (particularly the shorter forms), while the softer, more complex sound of panerusan emerges in slower tempi and longer pieces.

Certain royal ensembles present different (and possibly earlier) approaches to instrumentation. Gamelan monggang (see Gamelan, fig.1), kodhok ngorèk and carabalèn all feature gongs and gong chimes in different sizes and combinations. They are reserved for ceremonial occasions and have a small repertory of pieces specific to each ensemble. Only the ceremonial gamelan sekatèn overlaps significantly with the common gamelan in instrument types and repertory (though not in performing practice; see §6 below).

Indonesia, §III: Central Java