Traditions of Gamelan Music in Java

Traditions of Gamelan Music in Java PDF

Author: R. Anderson Sutton

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1991-04-26

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780521361538

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This book is a wide-ranging study of the varieties of gamelan music in contemporary Java seen from a regional perspective. While the focus of most studies of Javanese music has been limited to the court-derived music of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, Sutton goes beyond them to consider also gamelan music of Banyumas, Semarang and east Java as separate regional traditions with distinctive repertoires, styles and techniques of performance and conceptions about music. Sutton's description of these traditions, illustrated with numerous musical examples in Javanese cipher notation, is based on extensive field experience in these areas and is informed by the criteria that Javanese musicians judge to be most important in distinguishing them.

Traditional Music in Modern Java

Traditional Music in Modern Java PDF

Author: Judith Becker

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2019-03-31

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0824882210

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Musicologist Judith Becker contends that sociopolitical changes in Javanese society since the 1940s are reflected in changes in the structure of gamelan music, which is one of the traditional musics of Java. She sees gamelan music as a musical system in a state of crisis, unsure of its proper function and direction. While traditional gamelan musical structures supported old Hindu-Javanese concepts of cosmology and kingship, modern innovations reflect Indonesian nationalism and a desire to become a "twentieth century nation." In particular, the introduction of Western musical notation, which Becker describes as "the most pervasive, penetrating, and ultimately the most insidious type of Western influence," is changing gamelan from an aural to a written tradition. Becker examines the works of contemporary composers Ki Wasitodipuro and Ki Nartosabdho to illustrate modern innovations in gamelan compositions and the attitudes of composers to their music, as they attempt to compromise between the ethos and structure of traditional gamelan music and the changing tastes and attitudes of the modern Indonesian nation. In addition to her interpretation of the political influence on gamelan music, Becker includes four appendices that ethnomusicologists will find valuable. Appendix I articulates her theory of the derivation of central Javanese gamelan gongan, the basic temporal/melodic repeated unit of gamelan music. Appendix II gives biographical sketches of Ki Wasitodipuro and Ki Nartosabdho and lists their compositions referred to in the text. Appendices II and IV deal with various aspects of pathet, a Javanese system of classifying gamelan pieces. A fifth appendix, by Alan R. Templeton, gives an informational analysis of pathet.

Traditions of Gamelan Music in Java

Traditions of Gamelan Music in Java PDF

Author: R. Anderson Sutton

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1991-04-26

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780521361538

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This book is a wide-ranging study of the varieties of gamelan music in contemporary Java seen from a regional perspective. While the focus of most studies of Javanese music has been limited to the court-derived music of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, Sutton goes beyond them to consider also gamelan music of Banyumas, Semarang and east Java as separate regional traditions with distinctive repertoires, styles and techniques of performance and conceptions about music. Sutton's description of these traditions, illustrated with numerous musical examples in Javanese cipher notation, is based on extensive field experience in these areas and is informed by the criteria that Javanese musicians judge to be most important in distinguishing them.

Music in Central Java

Music in Central Java PDF

Author: Benjamin Elon Brinner

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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This volume describes the adventures of two central characters - John, an American student who travels to Java, and Joko, a Javanese musician. Their adventures and exploits lead them through Javanese society and as they travel they explore the variety and range of instruments and performance styles throughout central Java.

Gamelan

Gamelan PDF

Author: Sumarsam

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-12-15

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9780226780115

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Gamelan is the first study of the music of Java and the development of the gamelan to take into account extensive historical sources and contemporary cultural theory and criticism. An ensemble dominated by bronze percussion instruments that dates back to the twelfth century in Java, the gamelan as a musical organization and a genre of performance reflects a cultural heritage that is the product of centuries of interaction between Hindu, Islamic, European, Chinese, and Malay cultural forces. Drawing on sources ranging from a twelfth-century royal poem to the writing of a twentieth-century nationalist, Sumarsam shows how the Indian-inspired contexts and ideology of the Javanese performing arts were first adjusted to the Sufi tradition and later shaped by European performance styles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He then turns to accounts of gamelan theory and practice from the colonial and postcolonial periods. Finally, he presents his own theory of gamelan, stressing the relationship between purely vocal melodies and classical gamelan composition.

Javanese Gamelan and the West

Javanese Gamelan and the West PDF

Author: Sumarsam

Publisher: University Rochester Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1580464459

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Javanese Gamelan and the West studies the meaning, forms, and traditions of the Javanese performing arts as they developed and changed through their contact with Western culture. Authored by a gamelan performer, teacher, and scholar, the book traces the adaptations in gamelan art as a result of Western colonialism in nineteenth-century Java, showing how Western musical and dramatic practices were domesticated by Javanese performers creating hybrid Javanese-Western art forms, such as with the introduction of brass bands in gendhing mares court music and West Javanese tanjidor, and Western theatrical idioms in contemporary wayang puppet plays. The book also examines the presentation of Javanese gamelan to the West, detailing performances in World's Fairs and American academia and considering its influence on Western performing arts and musical and performance studies. The end result is a comprehensive treatment of the formation of modern Javanese gamelan and a fascinating look at how an art form dramatizes changes and developments in a culture. Sumarsam is a University Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. He is the author of Gamelan: Cultural Interaction and Musical Development in Central Java (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and numerous articles in English and Indonesian. As a gamelan musician and a keen amateur dhalang (puppeteer) of Javanese wayang puppet play, he performs, conducts workshops, and lectures throughout the US, Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Javanese Gamelan

Javanese Gamelan PDF

Author: Jennifer Lindsay

Publisher: Singapore ; Toronto : Oxford University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13:

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The gamelan music of central Java, until almost a century ago heard only in Java, is now being widely taught all over the world. More and more non-Indonesians are coming into contact with gamelan music through travel or through recordings or performances in their home countries. Yet, while valuable research material on gamelan music is available, this is the only short book available for those coming into contact with gamelan for the first time. The book outlines some of the basic concepts of Javanese gamelan, and provides a listening framework so that the perhaps exotic sounds can be given musical and cultural sense. Included in the text is an explanation of the historical background, the instruments and their making, tuning and notation, the structure of the music, and the place of gamelan music in Javanese society.

Unplayed Melodies

Unplayed Melodies PDF

Author: Marc Perlman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2004-10-25

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0520930495

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The gamelan music of Central Java is one of the world's great orchestral traditions. Its rich sonic texture is not based on Western-style harmony or counterpoint, but revolves around a single melody. The nature of that melody, however, is puzzling. In this book, Marc Perlman uses this puzzle as a key to both the art of the gamelan and the nature of musical knowledge in general. Some Javanese musicians have suggested that the gamelan’s central melody is inaudible, an implicit or "inner" melody. Yet even musicians who agree on its existence may disagree about its shape. Drawing on the insights of Java’s most respected musicians, Perlman shows how irregularities in the relationships between the melodic parts have suggested the existence of "unplayed melodies." To clarify the differences between these implicit-melody concepts, Unplayed Melodies tells the stories behind their formulation, identifying each as the creative contribution of an individual musician in a postcolonial context (sometimes in response to Western ethnomusicological theories). But these stories also contain evidence of the general cognitive processes through which musicians find new ways to conceptualize their music. Perlman’s inquiry into these processes illuminates not only the gamelan’s polyphonic art, but also the very sources of creative thinking about music.