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From: alves@aludra.usc.edu (William Alves)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: gamelan tunings
Keywords: Intonation systems, octaves, tuning systems
Message-ID: <6534@merlin.usc.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 01:08:52 GMT
References: <3113@husc6.harvard.edu> <14533@well.UUCP> <3156@husc6.harvard.edu> <14592@well.UUCP>
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Reply-To: alves@aludra.usc.edu (Bill Alves)
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In article <14592@well.UUCP> csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) writes:
>
>There are no in-print trustworthy references to gamelan tunings.
>Gadjah Mada University published one in the 1960's which appears
>systematic--it compares 2 dozen "famous" central Javanese gamelan.
>Some tunings are also given in KARAWITAN volume 1, ed. Judith Becker,
>U of Michigan 1984.  Jaap Kunst's famous MUSIC IN JAVA (1930's) is
>untrustworthy: he rationalizes everything to a 1200-cent octave.
>
I don't exactly know what you mean by trustworthy, but, as it happens, I've
just been reading an article called "A Retrospect on a Century of Gamelan
Tone Measurements" by Roger Vetter in the current issue of Ethnomusicology.
He gives a brief review of the literature on this widely studied topic before
going into a largely anectdotal description of a gamelan tuner's methods.
Most of his references I'm familiar with, and for those interested, here is
my own summary of the problems.

It all began in 1884 when Alexander Ellis made a large number of pitch measure-
ments of "exotic" instruments, including gamelan, seeking (with his new "in-
vention," the cents measurement) to find out how non-Western scale systems
compared with 12-tone equal temperament. His failing was that he was searching
for one true, ideal pelog and slendro, not stopping to consider that such
a standard might be a foreign concept to the Javanese. Therefore, he dismissed
the inconsistencies he found as imperfections in the instruments.

The preeminent Javanese music scholar Jaap Kunst (whom you mention), also did
a large number of pitch measurements, but he, too, fell into this trap, 
largely as a result of his trying to reconcile Javanese tuning systems to
Hornbostel's theory of overblown fifths. Though he later modified his views,
there have been plenty of others to the present day who seek to find the
"standard" pelog or slendro, often, like Kunst, as part of a quest to fit them
into a theory or consistent system. Into this camp falls A. M. Jones (who com-
pared tunings in Indonesia and Africa as support for his probably valid thesis
of musical influences there), Bukofzer (who sought to prove that slendro was
originally a subset of pelog and therefore younger), and most recently (1978)
Jay Rahn (who proposed that pelog is a subset of an equidistant nonotonic
system). [The last two I haven't read myself; they are mentioned in Vetter's
article].

Mantel Hood not only reinforced the fact that there is no one standard for
either tuning system, but also discovered the stretched and compressed oct-
aves. Therefore most of those many tone measurements which preceded him were
invalid because they only measured the central octave. Hood questioned tuners,
as does Vetter, to find that this method was quite deliberate. He hypothesized
that the "shimmer" or beats that the detuned octaves caused were a remnant
of the paired detuning still found on Bali. The article, which I've referenced
before here, is "Slendro and Pelog Redefined" in Selected Reports in Ethno-
musicology, 1#1.

True, there remain a good number of questions, some of which Vetter brings up,
but, for me, Hood's article remains the authoritative word on the subject. 

Bill Alves
USC School of Music / Center for Scholarly Technology