The Textures of Central Javanese Gamelan Music Pre-Notation and Its Discontents

NORIKO ISHIDA The textures of Central Javanese gamelan music Pre-notation and its discontents The idea of inner melody in Central Javanese gamelan music (karawitan), first presented by Sumarsam in 1975, was a bold departure from the pioneering notions about melodic texture that Jaap Kunst articulated in his monumen- tal book Music in Java. Kunst’s classification (1949:247) of the melodic instruments of the gamelan ensemble into three groups – cantus firmus instruments; instruments playing a more or less independent counter-melody; and paraphrasing instruments – always had its limitations. As is clear from the terms he chose, Kunst likened the gamelan composition known as gendhing to compositions of the European medieval period, which generally consisted of a nuclear theme (cantus firmus) and melodies around it, and he assigned supreme importance to that nuclear theme, which was played by the saron instruments.1 Sumarsam, in contrast, argued that the saron melody alone is not sufficient to show the entire melodic line of a gendhing, and that there seems to be no single part in the ensemble that is solely responsible for guiding its melodic motion. There is an implicit melody in the minds of musicians, Su- marsam (1984:257-89) contended, that guides them in performance, and every melodic instrument extrapolates its own melody with reference to this inner melody. It is not the explicit saron melody, he asserted, but rather this inner melody that constitutes the basis of performance and allows the melodic parts of the gamelan orchestra to interact with one another as an organic entity. This concept of inner melody was quickly adopted by researchers and popularized via the sourcebook on karawitan edited by Becker and Feinstein (1984), especially inasmuch as it bridged the melodic lines of balungan and garap, which scholars recognize as the two categories of melodic expression in the gamelan ensemble, allowing them to flow together at some times and diverge from each other at other times.2 Upon closer examination, however, 1 A saron instrument is a metallophone of six or seven keys played with one mallet. 2 Balungan may be provisionally defined as the saron melody, and for the moment, garap may be said to be the elaboration of the saron melody by the ‘softplaying’ instruments. NORIKO ISHIDA is lecturer at the Department of Japanese Literature, Faculty of Cultural Scienc- es, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. Her main field of academic interest is Javanese gamelan music. She graduated at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Noriko Ishida may be contacted at [email protected]. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (BKI) 164-4 (2008):475-499 © 2008 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:19:36PM via free access 476 Noriko Ishida inner melody has not proved a tool that can fully elucidate the melodic behav- iour of gendhing. Marc Perlman (1993:303-12) provided several examples of problems with the register of balungan melodies that cannot be settled by means of the concept of inner melody. Perlman’s thorough study of unplayed melodies in Central Javanese gamelan music revealed that the concept of inner melody still leaves problems unsolved: it has even given rise to new problems. As expressed by some researchers, the idea of inner melody is tantalizing (Tenzer 1997:174; Sumrongthong and Sorell 2000:78), but not satisfactory. Does inner melody really exist? Perhaps this fundamental question should have come first. As evidence of the existence of inner melody, Sumarsam (1984:2623) offered only the humming of a certain melody by musicians try ing to remember parts of gendhing or while playing one particular part. Does such humming testify to the existence of an inner melody? In fact, the hummed melody is more often than not a collage of melodies played by vari- ous instruments of the ensemble that are spontaneously, informally, and arbi- trarily compiled by the musician at that moment.3 We can safely regard it as similar to the vocalized form of what Rahayu Supanggah (1990:120) calls ‘performance in the heart’. But how could such elusive melodies be transmitted from generation to generation without being transcribed or otherwise articulated? Gendhing have been handed down over hundreds of years without being notated – the notation we have now dates back only a century, and inner melody, according to Sumarsam, has never been written down, has never been played on any instrument, and has never been explicitly uttered. Can anything so vague and fleeting be shared among musicians and transmitted between generations? Even if we can say that inner melody is the underlying feeling of gendhing that musicians absorb, inspired by the melody of the whole ensemble (Sumarsam 1984:303), this raises a crucial question: Which comes first, gendhing or inner melody? Clearly, it is the gendhing that comes first. What is called inner melody may be not some a priori phenomenon for guiding uninitiated musicians, but rather the essence of gendhing extracted and edited by experienced musicians after performing it many times. Therefore, our inquiry must begin with melodies that were actually played. In order to examine these explicit melodies, one must take into consideration the changes that have occurred over the course of time, because there are indications that the present confusion about the elusiveness of karawitan melodies has been caused by the use of notation, which came into vogue in the early twentieth century. Examining gamelan melodies and melodic texture at a time when this music was not yet notated, and charting the changes caused by notation, may help solve the long unsettled problem of gamelan melodies. Reconstructing the melodic texture of gendhing of the pre-notation era, then discussing the advent and the impact of notation on performance practice, and finally examining 3 See Perlman (1993:231-40; 2004:106-7) for an example of such humming. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:19:36PM via free access The textures of Central Javanese gamelan music 477 the consequent changes that occurred in melodic texture will make clear how the monogenetic texture of gendhing in the pre-notation era developed into the complicated one of today, shifting the basis of performance from the rebab (a two-stringed bowed lute) to the saron. It will also show how melodies were enriched in response to the use of notation. (This article deals only with the ‘softplaying’ compositions of the Solonese tradition, except where noted.) Composed melody, tracing, and texture How did gamelan composers in centuries past create gendhing, which are com- prised of many melodic parts, instrumental and vocal, without notation? How did they guide their fellow musicians to learn a new piece at its first rehearsal? Almost all of the 157 gendhing listed in the Serat Centhini, which was put into final form in 1814, still survive today as popular pieces in the ‘classical’ repertoire,4 which means that they were composed, played, and handed down without notation for years before notation became widely used in the early twentieth century. Did they compose all the parts one by one, as composers in the Western tradition do, and then teach musicians the parts individually? The origins of a piece entitled Gadhungmlathi offer a good indication as to how gendhing were composed and transmitted. The Wédhapradangga5 tells us that Gadhungmlathi was introduced by a female gendèr player named Jlamprang who had learned the piece from Kencanasari,6 the spirit wife of kings of the Mataram dynasty living in and ruling the legendary realm of spirits in the Southern Ocean (Pradjapangrawit 1990:99-105). Jlamprang, who was an accomplished gendèr player in the court of Paku Buwana IV in Surakarta (1788-1820), contracted cholera and died. While her family members were grieving, Jlamprang herself felt as if she was entering a wonderland, the realm of Queen Kencanasari, in the Southern Ocean, where she was asked to become a court musician. She refused, say- ing that she still wanted to serve at the court of Paku Buwana IV. Knowing that Jlamprang could not be forced, Kencanasari abandoned the idea, but she asked Jlamprang in return to take back a gift for Paku Buwana IV, a musical work called Gadhungmlathi, a gendhing gendèr, which is a gendhing whose intro- duction (buka) is played by the gendèr. A gorgeous gendèr was carried in and 4 Serat Centhini 1986:90-1. See Lindsay (1991:327:54) for some problems of identification of these pieces. 5 This history of Solonese gamelan from Java’s mythological past to the period of Paku Buwana XI (19391945) was written by R.Ng. Pradjapangrawit (18871975) on the basis of what he had read and heard. He is better known by his last name of K.R.T. Warsodiningrat, a Surakarta-based master musician at the Kasunanan Palace and lecturer at Konservatori Karawitan Indonesia and Akademi Seni Karawitan Indonesia. 6 The gendèr is a metallophone of 12 or more keys played with two mallets. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:19:36PM via free access 478 Noriko Ishida Kencanasari began playing. After three repetitions, Jlamprang was ordered to play the gendèr herself. Because she was an extremely talented and well- trained gendèr player, she surprised Kencanasari with her performance by precisely imitating Kencanasari’s example. Only when Jlamprang had demon- strated her mastery of the instrument and the composition was she allowed to return to life, just as her body was about to be bathed before burial. Whether this narrative of a neardeath experience is a real story or fiction is irrelevant. Rather, its significance lies in how Gadhungmlathi was taught and how Jlamprang learned it.

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