Gamelan
Bronze, gongs, and notes that don't fit on a piano. Gamelan orchestras from Java and Bali are made mostly of bronze metallophones, gongs and drums, and Debussy heard a Javanese gamelan at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, which influenced works like his piano piece Pagodes (1903). Hear two tunings that miss the piano (slendro: five roughly equal steps; pelog: seven unequal notes, usually five at a time), follow a cycle that the big gong ends, hear paired instruments shimmer (ombak, the wave) and two interlocking parts that only make one fast melody when combined (kotekan). Then play the nearest piano version, C D E G A, and a kotekan for two hands. All sounds are synthetic approximations and every pattern is our own.
In this lesson you'll
- Hear and describe the two gamelan tunings, slendro (five notes, roughly equally spaced) and pelog (seven unequal notes, usually five used at a time), see on the circle why neither fits the piano's twelve equal half steps, and know that each gamelan is tuned as a set.
- Follow a cyclic structure: count an eight-beat cycle in which smaller gongs divide the cycle and the big gong marks its end, and hear the shimmering beat (ombak) of paired Balinese instruments tuned slightly apart.
- Play C D E G A, the piano's nearest (only approximate) version of a five-note slendro-like set, and a two-hand kotekan in which the hands alternate note by note to make one fast line, landing on the gong at beat eight.
Music in this lesson
- PagodesClaude Debussy · 1903 · piano (named only, not played)
Remember
Gamelan is bronze: orchestras from Java and Bali made mostly of metallophones, gongs and drums, tuned to slendro or pelog, tunings that don't match Western equal temperament and vary from one ensemble to another.
The music is cyclical: the large gong marks the end of each cycle and smaller gongs divide it.
Paired Balinese instruments tuned slightly apart shimmer (ombak, like the beats of lesson 49, but on purpose), and in kotekan two players each play part of a fast melody that only exists when combined (separate parts that fit together, as in the canon of lesson 70).