Vol. XIX No. 5
February 2004
Javanese Gamelan Comes to Juilliard

By VIVIAN FUNG

Over the years, the L&M department has hosted many special events featuring world musicians, including frame-drum master Glen Velez; Indian flutist Steve Gorn; shakuhachi master Ralph Samuelson; and Persian poet, painter, and musician Reza Darakshani. This year we are pleased to invite the Juilliard community to a concert-demonstration of the Gamelan Kusuma Laras of the New York Indonesian Consulate, in Paul Hall on February 25 at 11 a.m.

The Gamelan Kusuma Lamas (formerly known as the New York Indonesian Consulate Gamelan) performs. (Photo courtesy of Deena Burton)
The influence of Indonesian gamelan on Western composers has been particularly significant in the 20th and 21st centuries. Debussy, on hearing a Javanese gamelan—the generic term for a Southeast Asian orchestra that usually includes gongs, chimes, and various other percussion instruments—during the 1889 Grand Universal Exhibition in Paris, commented in La Revue Blanche with much enthusiasm that, to the Indonesian musicians, "music is as natural as breathing. Their conservatoire is the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind among the leaves and the thousand sounds of nature which they understand without consulting an arbitrary treatise." His music was highly influenced by (among other aspects of gamelan) Javanese scales and gamelan-style counterpoint. Writing in that same article with his characteristic sarcasm, Debussy stated that "Javanese music is based on a type of counterpoint by comparison with which that of Palestrina is child's play." Subsequent generations of composers have been highly influenced by traditional gamelan—among them Britten, Messiaen, and the Canadian composer Colin McPhee, who wrote a lengthy treatise on Balinese gamelan and also a book on his eight-year sojourn in Bali.

Closer to home, the interest in Indonesian gamelan has flowered in America, with gamelan ensembles being formed in many universities and music organizations throughout the country. Such composers as Lou Harrison and Steve Reich have been making pioneering music that reflects Eastern influences. Steve Reich, in a preface to Michael Tenzer's book on Balinese gamelan, states that "it seems that Balinese music and others have made tremendous inroads into Western musical life … In any large record store in America or Europe one will find large and thriving world music departments with CDs not only from Bali, Java, Africa, and India, but from all over the globe … Music from Bali, Java, West Africa, India, and elsewhere is now just a part of the furniture. We have come to accept it as part of the classical music of the world." I will myself be writing a work for the Electric Ensemble at Juilliard featuring a gamelan ensemble to be premiered during the 2005-06 centennial season.

Gamelan Kusuma Laras is a traditional gamelan that is dedicated to playing repertoire of Central Java. Gamelan traditions are found throughout Southeast Asia, and in Indonesia they were refined and supported by the courts of Java and Bali as early as the 15th century. The gamelan music of the courts of Central Java, which will be performed at the concert-demonstration, is above all ensemble music—no one instrument predominates, as in much of Western music. Rather, each instrument adds a layer of sound within a cyclical structure delineated by hanging gongs and large, knobbed kettle gongs. The Javanese orchestra typically comprises 35 instruments, consisting mostly of gongs and metallophones made of bronze. Other instruments include a two-stringed bowed fiddle, a xylophone, a bamboo flute, several drums, and men's and women's voices. The gamelan ensemble that will play for the Juilliard community will be a smaller version of the typical large orchestra, for the sake of demonstration purposes.

Gamelan Kusuma Laras was founded in 1983 by Anne Stebinger, its artistic director, and is joined by associate director Leslie Rudden and guest director I.M. Harjito, who was classically trained in gamelan performance in Indonesia and is on the faculty of the world music program at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. The group consists of American and Indonesian players, and rehearses weekly on instruments owned by the New York Indonesian Consulate. I myself am a member of this ensemble and have been captivated by the completely different method of playing and learning music. Also joining the gamelan will be Dr. Marc Perlman, ethnomusicologist and associate professor at Brown University. Among his many interests and specialties are Javanese gamelan and Burmese music. He will be a key figure in this demonstration, discussing and revealing the many aspects of Javanese gamelan.

With students coming to Juilliard from around the globe, it would be of great interest to integrate world music into the musical fabric of the School's community. Students and faculty interested in participating in a gamelan should come to the event or e-mail me at waigwun@yahoo.com.

Please come and join us!

Vivian Fung, a member of the L&M faculty, earned her D.M.A. in composition in 2002.

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