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Reviewed by:
  • Gamelan of Central Java VIII: Court Music Treasures, and: Gamelan of Central Java IX: Songs of Wisdom and Love
  • Christopher J. Miller (bio)
Gamelan of Central Java VIII: Court Music Treasures. Felmay FY8119. Recorded and produced by John Noise Manis. San Germano AL (Italy): Yantra Productions, 2004 and 2007. Notes by John Noise Manis and Sumarsam. Compact disc.
Gamelan of Central Java IX: Songs of Wisdom and Love. Felmay FY8120. Recorded and produced by John Noise Manis. San Germano AL (Italy): Yantra Productions, 2004 and 2007. Notes by John Noise Manis and Sumarsam, with translations by Rosella Balossino and essay by Ilario Meandri. Compact disc.

Court Music Treasures and Songs of Wisdom and Love are two additions to a series of recordings of Javanese gamelan music that now numbers eleven volumes, with another two planned. The series represents the better part of the “not-for- profit recording activity” of Yantra Productions, which now also includes recordings on Lyrichord, Arion and ARC (http://www.gamelan.to/ [accessed January 19, 2010]). With all of this activity, Yantra Productions is responsible for a major portion, if not the majority, of the recordings of Javanese gamelan music currently commercially available in a digital format.

As with the series overall, there is much in these two volumes that is of value, but there is also much that is frustratingly arbitrary.

To acknowledge the valuable first: Court Music Treasures presents recordings of performances on two historically and culturally significant gamelan, Kyai [End Page 148] Kaduk Manis and Kyai Manis Rengga, which belong to the Kraton Surakarta, the principal court in the Central Javanese city of Surakarta (also known as Solo). The recordings are extremely clear, with a good balance between parts—though with what sounds like fairly close microphone placement (no details are provided on recording equipment or techniques). This comes at the expense of fully capturing the exquisite acoustics of the pendhapa Sasono Sewoko, the main open-walled pavilion of the Kraton (Palace). Also included is an excellent recording of an archaic Gamelan Carabalen that presumably also belongs to the Kraton Surakarta (the instruments are not identified).

Songs of Wisdom and Love, with its focus on sung poetry, includes among its fourteen tracks six examples of unaccompanied macapat, a form that is not well represented on existing recordings. Macapat is one of the most significant categories of traditional Javanese poetry that, generally speaking, is most often sung. In technical terms, macapat poetic meters are defined in terms of the number of lines, the number of syllables per line, and the final vowel sound of each line, but they are more readily distinguished by their associated melodies. The six examples on Songs of Wisdom and Love nicely complement the only other commercial recording of macapat in a digital format that this reviewer is aware of: Java: Vocal Art, a 1969 recording on the Auvidis label that was reissued on CD by UNESCO in 1989 (UNESCO D8014). Whereas that recording presents an excerpt of a literary performance of macapat, in which a narrative is recounted through multiple stanzas, each sung using the same basic melody, Songs of Wisdom and Love gives a sense of the musical variety of macapat. Each of the six examples of unaccompanied macapat is of a different meter with a different melody. They provide a useful point of comparison with four examples of macapat accompanied by gamelan in a form called palaran. In this form, the unmetered vocal melody is loosely coordinated with an accompaniment in the srepegan structure, which features the steady pulsing of structure-marking gongs and gong chimes (kenong, kethuk, kempul) and the rippling patterns of the panerusan—the diverse group of elaborating instruments including gender (thin-keyed metallophone played with padded mallets), gambang (xylophone), celempung or siter (plucked zither), and suling (bamboo flute). There is in palaran a high degree of interaction between performers, with the instrumentalists following the pace of the vocal melody, but the singer then timing his or her cadences to coincide with a stroke of gong signaled by the kendhang (drum).

The comparison between unaccompanied macapat and palaran is most readily made between tracks 2 and 3, which feature the same macapat meter...

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