Re: GAMELAN Digest - 26 Nov 1999 to 27 Nov 1999 (#1999-219)

I thought others might be interested in this post from the gamelan list:

>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 15:34:34 -0500
>Reply-To: evan ziporyn <ez@MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
>Sender: Indonesian performing arts <GAMELAN@LISTSERV.DARTMOUTH.EDU>
>From: evan ziporyn <ez@MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
>Subject: Re: GAMELAN Digest - 26 Nov 1999 to 27 Nov 1999 (#1999-219)
>To: GAMELAN@LISTSERV.DARTMOUTH.EDU
>
>Hello-
>
>Nice to see the list still vibrant and generating exchanges...as usual, I'm
>learning a lot.
>
>With regard to attempts to find solid theoretical bases for gamelan tuning,
>I'm wondering what the rationale is for searching for equal-tempered
>systems of any kind (5-tone, 17-tone, 20-tone, etc.). I've heard the
>"ideal slendro" argument put forward since I started playing the music, but
>I have to confess that I've never been aware of its source. I'd be
>grateful for any clues as to the origin of this. As for the systems
>proposed/described by Andrew Timar and others, they sound interesting and
>possibly revealing as avenues of after-the-fact investigation (i.e., to see
>how they _differ_ from gamelan tuning in practice). But given the rarity
>and artificiality of equal-tempered systems in the world (even in western
>classical music!!), I don't understand why one would expect them to reveal
>anything about the history or practice of gamelan tuning.
>
>To evoke Lou Harrison yet again, his Music Primer has a nice section in
>which he talks about first attempts to build a just intonation slendro. I
>don't have the book in front of me, but if I recall the upshot was a
>nice-sounding scale that didn't really "fool the experts," as it were, but
>which he still found useful in his own work. This of course brings up the
>complex and problematic relationship between gamelan and the overtone
>series, something addressed in these discussions in numerous interesting
>ways. I would seem natural for western ethnomusicologists to do this,
>given that pretty much all Eurasian tuning systems, from Tuva to western
>harmony, are based on lower partials. So I'm wondering - probably naively
>- if anyone else has seriously considered the possibility that slendro
>and/or pelog might have some connection to lower partials, and, if so, what
>it might be.
>
>I ask because there is a pretty obvious albeit somewhat tangential
>relationship between Balinese slendro and the overtone series in gamelan
>genggong. Here 4-note "angklung" melodies (this scale being a partial
>slendro) are played on suling and doubled by the genggong jaw-harps, which
>of course can only generate overtones from a single fundamental. The match
>isn't exact but it's as close as it ever is with Balinese suling. A
>reasonable 'saih gender wayang' can be made using partials 5-6-7-8-9 with
>the fundamental (that is, partial 8) corresponding to "deng" (second lowest
>pitch) on a Balinese gender wayang. Obviously, no set of genders I've ever
>heard has actually matches this, nor do those measured by McPhee, but it
>does generate something close to many genders I've heard, as well as
>representing some kind of intervallic "limit" for Balinese slendro (i.e.,
>it's hard to find intervals larger than 6:5 or smaller than 10:9). It also
>represents a model within the culture (in the sense that the genggongs are
>a part of Balinese music) for a 5-tone anhemitonic scale that's neither
>equidistant nor based on overblown fifths. I'm not suggesting any strong
>or necessary link, but the fact is that, in practice, suling melodies are
>played in "functional unison" with these kind of just intervals. And it
>seems to me that that does tell us _something_ about Balinese tuning
>systems, even if that's only to say that Balinese tuning is so flexible
>that it can accomodate a just-intonation slendro, along with many other
>possibilities. Which would, ironically, then rule out both equal-tempered
>_and_ overtone-based models. Which we sort of already knew...
>
>I'm kind of a novice on these matters, so forgive any glaring errors or
>irrelevancies - just thought I'd throw my two cents in...
>
>Evan Ziporyn

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