Abstract
Although music as cultivated in West Java differs in many respects from that of Central Java—a difference running parallel with the difference in national character (Central Java is purely Javanese; West Java largely Sundanese)—yet there is, so far as the instruments used are concerned, so much similarity between the two that the description of western-Javanese musical instruments, after all that has been said about those of Central Java, may be relatively concise. In the chapter dealing with Javanese music, moreover, we have often given particulars of Sundanese music (vide the General Register in vol. II, s.v. Sunda(nese)). There exist, after all, only few typically Sundanese instruments—if any at all—and the fact that, in addition to those, a number of instruments also known in Central and East Java are dealt with only in this chapter is due to the circumstance that they are found in so much greater numbers in western Java.
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References
The general signification of alok is scream, shout, call (e.g.“hela !”, “murder!”, etc.).
The only important exception to this are the descriptions and analyses of the lagam kulon and its scales, on p. 395 et seq., taken from the study “Over Soenda-neesche zangmuziek” (About Sundanese vocal music) (197), published before my meeting, and subsequent collaboration, with R. M. A. Kusumadinata.
In contradistinction to the Javanese use of that name, which, as is known, denotes precisely the highest saron.
Mus. Arch. Bat. Nos. 432 and 444.
As Dr. Purbacharaka informs me, chiblon comes from chiblu, which, in its turn, derives from the ancient Javanese word si-bu = “to plunge oneself”. Ichikibung is, ethymologically, i + chi = ki (= si) + bu(ng) — to plunge into the water.
Ind. Inst. No. A 4483; Mus. Arch. Bat. Nos 440 and 441.
Ind. Inst. No. 1603/1 and Mus. Arch. Bat. No. 431.
Illustration in van Eerde, “De volken van Nederlandsch-Indië”, vol. II, p. 192.
Mr. P. Gediking there came across one or two specimens. Cf. also “Djawa” XI, Nijverheidsrapport (Report on Industry), I, pp. 86 to 89 incl., and 260, in which there are also some illustrations.
Musicological Archives, Photograph No. 603; Leyden Cat. No. 40/58.
Ind. Inst. No. 1297/1, 2. Their presence in Borneo was first revealed by a communication to the author from the mining engineer Krol.
Good records of angklung music are those made by Beka, No. B 15723.
The lowest tube of each instrument was measured. Vide, for other angklungscale measurements, 193, p. 500, table XVIII, scales 6 to 12 incl.
a strong partial tone, almost as powerful as the sound here taken as fundamental tone.
Ind. Inst. Cat. Nos. 1297/1–2.
Ind. Inst. Cat. Nos. 1767/1–3
Leyden Cat. No. 40/58.
Ind. Inst., Nos. 1030/4, 1035/1,1045/1, 1045/5,1055/1; Mus. Arch. Bat., No. 469.
For other chalung-scale measurements vide 193, p. 500, Table XVIII, scales I to 5 incl.
Ind. Inst., No. 1029/14 a-e; Mus. Arch. Bat., Nos. 472.
Mus. Arch. Bat. no. 502.
The “full-bellied” kenḍang depicted in ill. 159 as joining in the playing, was borrowed from another large gamelan belonging to the Regent, and hailing from Jogya.
See further about terbangs the important article by Brandts Buys in “Djawa” XIII, p. 205 et seq. (36).
Lèotan is not exclusively the manner of sliding tonal transition peculiar to rebab playing; both in vocal music and in playing the suling, too, two tones are often bound by a portamento, in which case the term lèotan is also used.
It is, of course, only the kachapi-scale of that name which is referred to here; the mèlog-scale of, e.g., the ordinary gamelan is purely a pélog-scale.
Borneo: kechapi; Toba-Batak: kachapi; hapetan; Karo-Batak: kulchapi, hasapi; South-Celebes: kachapi; Mindanao (Maranao): kuchapi (Philippine Magazine XXXVI, July 1939, p. 296 and 298).
In contradistinction to the Malay pantun—a quatrain built up according to definite rules—the Sundanese pantun is a partly recited and partly sung epic. Cf. 300.
For records of kachapi playing, vide the numbers given below, pp. 402 et seq.
In Europe, too, the qopuz became known, viz, in the beginning of the 14th century at the latest. Sachs (“Handbuch der Instrumentenkunde”, p. 211), quotes in this connexion a line of verse by Heinrich von der neuen Stadt, reading, “Die Kobus mit der luten”, and he further points to the Hungarian and Russian word kobuz; the Russian kobza; the Rumanian cobuz and cobza, all of which words stand for instruments to be plucked with the fingers.
Mus. Arch. Bat., No. 1028.
Ind. Inst., No. H 3201; Mus. Arch. Bat. No. 459.
Vide 221 (p. 152 et seq., and ill. 49).
311, p. 146; 232, pl. XII fig. 27, and Ind. Inst., No. H 2059.
202, plate XIII, fig. 57, and 226.
Possibly hatong is an originally Chinese word (vide p. 38, note 1). Cf. the name for the Chinese funeral trumpet(?) fa-(ta-?) haotong (Mahillon III, p. 329, No. 1872). Think also of the correspondence, in form, between another Sundanese instrument, the kachapi, and the Chinese tseng (remark by Mahillon, in III, p. 346).
Mus. Arch. Bat., No. 489.
Ind. Inst., No. 1029/4.
Ind. Inst., Nos. 1055/13–16.
In South-Banten, also talèot. (Mus. Arch. Bat., Nos. 426 and 427 (Banten); 433 and 434 (Batavia)).
Ind. Inst., Nos. 1030/3, 1045/18; Mus. Arch. Bat. No. 428.
Ind. Inst., No. 1030/2; Mus. Arch. Bat., No. 429.
Ind. Inst., No. 1045/2 and 6.
Ind. Inst. Nos. 1045/8, 9 and 10.
Mus. Arch. Bat. No.?
Ind. Inst. No. 1045/17.
Ind. Inst. Nos. 1045/13 and 14.
Ind. Inst. No. 1045/20.
Mus. Arch. Bat. No. 358.
Ind. Inst. No. 1041/1.
A very good record, with a delightfully self-opiniated tarompèt-part, is Beka No. B 15723.
Cf. 338, p. 226, where mention is made of a gamelan utuk-ubruk being used, in Kebumèn, for the accompaniment of the wayang purwa, which gamelan consisted of 2 bonangs, 1 gendèr, 1 gong, 1 kempul, 1 kenchèr(? = kechèr), and 1 kenḍang, and, further, of the gamelan utuk-ubrul used in Magelang—vide our Appendix 57b-(in sléndro), also serving as accompaniment to the wayang (both kulit and klrjik), but also topèng, and consisting of saron, (ke)demung, gong suwukan, kenong, keṭuk, kempul and kendang.
Good illustration in Van Eerde, “De Volken van Nederlandsch-Indië”, vol. II, p. 259.
Dr. Purbacharaka has pointed out to me the interrelation between this and the ancient Javanese music- and dance-play amèn, or mèn-mèn, mentioned, e.g. in the Tantu Pangelaran (edition Pigeaud, pp. 104 and 170), in the combination bhandagina mènmèn, i.e. the executants of the menmen-play (Cf. also 194, p. 8, note 6, and p. 39/40). Amèn, for that matter, is nowadays (vide above, p. 174), in the north of Central East Java, also one of the names used for a small orchestra characterized by the absence of any gendèrs, and which, therefore, was probably used, in the beginning, more especially for this mènmèn-play.
Cf. Above, p. 138.
About this sisindiran vide 114, p. 110 (116 et seq.).
We must remind the reader to the fact that we here refer exclusively to the so-called nyorog-scale of the kachapi, which scale constitutes a tone-gender, either in pèlog (in that case, actually = transposed miring) or in salèndro (S. madenda). The real nyorog (vide App. 54) is a tonal “key” belonging to the tone-gender mèlog of the pèlog system.
the noun derived from ujung (used side-by-side with bujung) = to chase after.
J. W. van Dapperen, Volkskunde van Java III (“Djawa” XV, p. 170), 1935. — Lameng — sword.
Vide N.I. Oudheidkundig Verslag 1930, p. 46.
Cf. Philip Hanson Hiss, Bali (1941), pl. 44. — Perhaps named after the Florinese place Endé?
from paris = schild?
According to the Regent of Batavia, babah is derived from an Arabic word baba = master; this word, it is supposed, was originally hababa, and signified “apple of the eye”.
In so far as it is played on a gamelan, the miring scale—at any rate in this meaning of the term—is a transposition, to the customary register of the gamelan pélog, of a scale obtained by incorporating the two “vocal” intermediary tones (panangis and pamiring; vide p. 53), and taking the tone nem (Sund. barang) as penunggul (Sund. singgul); the tone barang (Sund. sorog) as gulu (Sund. galitner); the tone ḍaḍa (Sund. panelu) as pamiring, etc. etc.—a scale which, as stated before, may be expressed theoretically in cents by the numbers 150 120 420 120 390.
Thus, it is also the rebab—and not, as generally in the Principalities, the gender—which enables the (Jalang to get the right pitch and keep to it, in singing the suluks.
tong(g)èrèt is the name of an insect, a cicada, which produces a shrill, deafening sound.
a species of flower.
poh = weak.
The great landlords of Batavia—at any rate in the 18th and 19th centuries— used to keep, at their country seats, European orchestras as well as gamelans, a (sometimes large) number of slaves playing instruments of western origin. Dr. V. J. van de Wall (393, p. 85 and 92; 394, p. 90) mentions various examples of this custom.
This reading is called, in Sumedang, ngechapan = to pronounce words for somebody else, to prompt. In Bandung it is called ngiloan = to read attentively.
Such a group of similarly-formed stanzas is called pupuh.
= west(erly).
= east(erly).
In May, 1933, Raden Machyar Kusumadinata (ill. 164) was requested by the Director of Education and Religion to make an attempt to raise Sundanese vocal music from its decline. The result of Kusumadinata’s activities was surprising: within the space of twelve months, this apostle of music succeeded in winning over a large number of school-teachers to his ideal, and in thoroughly instructing them. Many of these educationalists, in their turn, started courses in singing, with the result that the native songs are now being sung once again all over the place, free from western stains; new vocal plays are being got up; the almost forgotten, ancient playditties are being taught the children again at a number of schools; briefly, Sundanese popular vocal music has, humanly speaking, been saved from perdition for at least another generation.
The intervals VI/V and II/I, I suspect, have grown so small because of the fact that the tones VI and II function as “leading tones”.
Actually the 2nd degree of the sléndro tonal sequence (cf. p. 65, note 3).
The lagu Polos, moreover, has the peculiarity that its two melodic supports are not placed—as in all other cases known to me—at a distance of a fifth or fourth, but at that of a diminished fifth or augmented fourth: that is: in addition to the G (kenong), the D (singgul) is the prominent tone.
Other unexplained names are the sorog bungur, i.e. “violet exchange tone”, and the sorog liwung, i.e. the tone which “causes one to faint”, or “turns one’s head”.
H.M.V. No. 2936 (singer: Ajum).
The exceptions (e.g. the lagu’s Papatet (Odeon A 39524a) and Pangapungan, as regards the sorog gedè), confirm the rule.
H.M.V. 1879.
H.M.V. 1873.
H.M.V. 1875.
H.M.V. 1876; Odeon A 204007a and A 39588a.
H.M.V. 1875.
H.M.V. 1873.
This is also evident from the stanzas 2 and 3 —not reproduced in Appendix 53—of Nyi Anah’s rendering, in which the singing voice starts, respectively, one bar earlier and one bar later.
Until quite recently there existed no equivalent of this in western music. In 1946, however, the Dutch composer Koos van der Griend has obtained an analogous effect in the score written by him for a sound film. Wouter Paap, in “Mensch en Melodie” (Vol. I, p. 329), made the following remarks about this score: “... The composer has here made use of the possibility of mixing together three different musical records. He played three separate piano parts, which were successively recorded on the sound reel, and subsequently unified into a single sound-effect. As each of the three parts has its own metre and ryhthm, adapted to the speed of the film-action, [f.i. in score No. I one beat to 12, in score No. II one beat to 14 and in score No. 3 one beat to 16 film-pictures], the result was quite a new polymetrical and polyrhythmic effect, which can be obtained only (sis!) by these means.” Personally, I should have preferred, in this case, the terms heterometrical and heterorhythmic, reserving the terms polymetrical and polyrhythmic for those forms in which the hearer can discern in the simultaneously sounding voices their metrical and rhythmical correlation, as in the following instances (perhaps there are more): (a) in combinations of different metra, but with simultaneous periodical accents; (b) in combinations of bars of equal type, but whose accents lie apart by one or more beats (“shifting” of the bars in respect of one another, for example in a fugue where often the subject in some of its later entries starts on another beat than the first time); this frequently does not find expression in the notation; (c) in combinations of bars of different type, but whose periodical accents coincide; (d) in combinations of bars of different type, in which the accents coincide periodically after every few bars. Examples of such poly metrics and polyrhythmics may be found in the western music of the last few centuries. Those defined under (a) are the most numerous; we find such formations in a great many orchestral and chamber music movements; as an example of (b) I refer to Bach’s “Well-tempered Clavier”, Part I, the fugue in E (the third entry of the subject); examples of (c) are the opening of the violin sonata by. Gabriel Pierné (6/8, later 2/4 against 10/16); the opening of the Scherzo from Ravel’s string quartet (6/8 against 3/4) and de Falla, Pieces espagnoles, II. Cubana (6/8 against 3/4); examples of (d): the middle part of the Pantoun from the pianotrio by Ravel (3/4 against 4/2); p. 164 et seq. of the score of Mozart’s Don Juan, where three orchestras play simultaneously in 3/8, 2/4 and 3/4 time, respectively (in this case, however, one 3/8 bar is equal to a single beat of either of the two other types of bar); a few pasages in Willem Pijper’s 2nd sonatine for piano (3/8 plus 4/8 against 4/8 plus 3/8), and in the sonata for flute of the same composer, 3rd movement at No. 26 (4/8 against 3/4).
Raden Sanusi, however, gives the lagu according to the rule; i.e. with the dominant as finalis (H.M.V. 1881).
This lies above the tonic, since we are dealing here with a scale which, in common with the ancient Greek scales, are felt to run from high to low.
H.M.V. 1881: Raden Sanusi; Odeon A 39651b: Nyi Resna.
Odeon A 204013a: Nyi Resna.
Beka B 157521: Nyi Mursih.
Odeon A 39576b: Nyi Resna.
H.M.V. 1874 and Odeon A 39588b: Nyi Anah.
Odeon A 204007a.
Beka B 1575011: Nyi Mursih.
H.M.V. 1873: Raden Sanushi.
H.M.V. 1877: R. Sanusi; Odeon A 39576a: Nyi Anah.
H.M.V. 1880: R. Sanusi; Odeon A 39575a: Nyi Resna.
Beka B 15750I: Nyi Mursih.
Odeon A 39576b; Beka B 15752II.
Odeon A 204003a.
H.M.V. 1876.
Beka B 157501.
H.M.V. 1875.
Odeon A 204007a.
H.M.V. 1873.
H.M.V. 1875.
H.M.V. 1881; Ultraphone A 60023, and our Appendix 50.
H.M.V. 1880. Odeon A 39575a.
H.M.V. 1881; Odeon A 39651b.
Beka B 15750II.
Further details regarding sisindiran may be found in Hidding (114, p. 110 (116 et seq.)).
Odeon A 204013b.
The reader is once again reminded of the fact that it is not quite certain that the madenda scales should be reckoned to belong to the salèndro system (cf. above, p. 370/371).
In so far as orchestral music is concerned the terms tabeuh gedè, tengah, and leutik are also used.
Thus, the lagu Erang sorong has kenongan of three wiletan.
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Kunst, J. (1949). West-Java. In: Music in Java. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7130-6_5
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