An ensemble used for traditional and ceremonial music, especially in Bali and Java. It consists mainly of tuned gongs, chimes, and other percussion instruments.
A gamelan as a set of instruments is a distinct entity, built and tuned to stay together — instruments from different gamelan are not interchangeable.The word "gamelan" comes from the Javanese word "gamel", meaning to strike or hammer, and the Malay-Indonesian suffix "an" makes the root a collective noun.
Instruments and characteristics
A gamelan is a musical ensemble, which originated from Indonesia. The huge range of timbres typically featured in gamelan include:
metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs, bowed and plucked strings, and vocalists are also sometimes used.
A gamelan as a set of instruments is built and tuned to stay together — instruments from different groups are not interchangeable.
Gamelan artists would use the pentatonic scale, so ‘B’ and ‘F’ wouldn’t be used.
Varieties of gamelan ensembles
Balinese gamelan varieties
Gamelan angklung Gamelan bebonangan Gamelan gandrung Gamelan gambang Gamelan gender wayang Gamelan gong gede Gamelan gong kebyar Gamelan gong suling Gamelan jegog Gamelan joged bumbung Gamelan selunding Gamelan semar pegulingan Kecak Beleganjur Genje Gamelan Batel Gamelan Pearjaan Gamelan Gambuh Gamelan Gong Luang Gamelan Gong Saron Gamelan Semarandana Gamelan Trompong Beruk Gamelan Tembang GirangJavanese gamelan varieties
Central Java Ritual or "archaic" gamelan Classical gamelan Gamelan Gadhon Gamelan Siteran The court gamelan Mangkunagaran Pakualaman Surakarta Yogyakarta Banyumas Bamboo gamelan Gamelan without instruments Cirebon (Northwest Java) Gamelan Prawa Gamelan Pelog Renteng Sekati Dengung Gamelan Kedempling East Java Sunda (West Java) Degung Jaipongan Kliningan Salendro Kecapi suling Tembang sundaOther Indonesian gamelan varieties
Cultural context
Gamelan is often used to accompany dance, wayang puppet performances, and rituals.
In the West, gamelan is often performed in a concert context, but may also incorporate dance or wayang.
Tuning
The tuning and construction of a gamelan orchestra is a complex process. However, this is a view that is contested by some teachers of gamelan, and there have been efforts to combine multiple ensembles and tuning structures into one gamelan so as to ease transportation issues at the times of festivals.
A peculiarity of gamelans is that, although the intervals between notes in a scale are very close to identical for different instruments within each gamelan, the intervals vary from one gamelan to the next. The occasion for the word approximately is that it is common in Balinese gamelan that instruments are played in pairs which are tuned slightly apart so as to produce interference beating which are ideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of notes in all registers.
Influence on Western music
The gamelan has been appreciated by several western composers of classical music, most famously Claude Debussy who heard a Javanese gamelan play at the Paris Exposition of 1889 (World's Fair). (The gamelan Debussy heard was in the near-diatonic madenda scale and was played by Sundanese musicians.) Despite his enthusiasm, direct citations of gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, or ensemble textures have not been located in any of Debussy's own compositions.
Direct homages to gamelan music are to be found in works for western instruments by Béla Bartók, Francis Poulenc, Olivier Messiaen, Colin McPhee, Benjamin Britten and Steve Reich. In more recent times, American composers such as Barbara Benary, Lou Harrison, Dennis Murphy, Michael Tenzer, Evan Ziporyn, Daniel James Wolf and Jody Diamond as well as Australian composers such as Peter Sculthorpe, Andrew Schultz and Ross Edwards have written several works with parts for gamelan instruments or full gamelan ensembles. American folk guitarist John Fahey included elements of gamelan in many of his late-60s sound collages, and again in his 1997 collaboration with Cul de Sac, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones. The experimental art-rock band King Crimson, while not using Gamelan instruments, used interlocking rhythmic paired guitars that were influenced by Gamelan.
Gamelan outside Indonesia
See gamelan outside Indonesia.
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