AW.: Re: slendro: nothing equal about it!

Glen@OrganicDesign.org:

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I've always sited Gamelan as a (quasi-)indigenous music where the scale is
based on the overtone series of the instrument. The New Grove's Dictionary
of Music and Musicians mentions the use of a stretched octave and gives
measurements of the scale steps: >>

This definition is problematic for several reasons, the most important of
which is that repertoire in slendro or pelog can just as well be played on
ensembles without metallophones -- especially the plucked strings of a
siteran group (or kechapi in Sunda), even (in Banyumas) unaccompanied vocal
ensembles imitating a gamelan. Further, an instrument like the gender
(which is the metallophone to which all the others are tuned) has both a
harmonic overtone structure and the overtones of the individual keys which --
largely based on shape -- may vary enormously from one to the next.

A closer look at the data will show that octave stretching is by no means
uniform. Octave Slendro: 0, 231, 474, 717, 955, 1208 cents.deviations may,
in general, be used to create beats, but there is by no means a consistant
pattern. Pak Tjokro's gamelan, measured in Sethares' book, is an example of
a narrowed tuning. One of the few classical Javanese musicians with a
profound interest in the subject of tuning, Ki Suhardi, actually prefers that
the highest tones of the gender be less than an octave above the middle
octave tones, and that the slenthem, which shares the same tones as the
lowest octave of the gender, be tuned above the gender, thus his general
tendency is towards narrow octaves. Suhardi's son, Hartono, has just written
a thesis at ISI in Yogya on the subject of Suhardi's tunings. Another factor
that should be considered is that bronze rise in pitch over time, and the
smaller keys rise faster than the larger ones -- so the stretching may not be
a part of the initial tuning design.

The study by Wasisto Surjodiningrat et al has got to be taken in context.
(Perhaps others can better evaluate the measurement techniques used.) The
gamelans measured were selected on the basis of cultural rather than musical
prestige. Although several instruments are indeed quite musically important,
a gamelan being owned by a court is not evidence of it being in tune and may
in fact be highly indictative of lack of maintenance or tuning, due to the
present financial constraints of the courts. What was not considered at all
by Surjodiningrat was the subjective evaluation of musicians as to the
in-tuneness of particular gamelans. His data would be much more useful if
that question had been asked. For example, the famous 17th gamelan of the
Istana Mankunegara, Kyai Kanyut Mesem, has an astonishing sound, but most
musicians would agree that it was "out of tune". Moreover, the tuning has
been revised several times in this century alone, and at one point, the
identity of the slendro pitches were shifted by one key. Another pair of
Mankunegaran gamelan have been arbitrarily combined and slightly retuned to
be used as a practice instrument before performances on Kanyut Mesem. One of
the gamelan in the Pura Pakualam is famous for having a pitch 1 slendro that
is too high. The most widely copied gamelan -- that of the radio station in
Solo -- actually had the loud and soft instruments tuned separately by
different tuners and it certainly sounds like it.

Scholarship in Javanese tunings (and I would here insert the names Perlman
and Polansky, and Weintraub for Sunda -- I summarized his dissertation on
this list earlier) has moved well beyond simply making measurements to
actually describing the process by which a gamelan smith tunes.