Bonang
Bonang is a musical instrument in the Gamelan Orchestra on the Indonesian island of Java . The idiophone struck with sticks consists of several hump gongs , which are movably mounted in a double row on strings in a wooden frame.
Design
A bonang consists of two rows of kettle gongs. When the pitch rises, a gong is more curved in the direction of its hump; when it rises, it is flat. The gongs lie loosely on two strings that are stretched in a horizontal wooden frame. The individual gongs can be exchanged as required. Ornate carvings are almost always found on the sides of the wooden frame.
There are three different types of bonang : The bonang panerus is the smallest and therefore the highest-pitched instrument. The bonang barung is larger than the panerus and sounds an octave lower. The bonang panembung is even larger and therefore an octave lower in pitch than the barung . It is an old instrument and is no longer used in modern gamelan ensembles. All three types of bonang cover two octaves. In an ensemble there is one of each bonang in pelog (14 gongs) and one in slendro tuning (12 gongs).
Style of play
The bonang is one of the instruments in gamelan that decorate the basic melody. The playing is both rhythmically and melodically more complicated than that of the basic melody. Bonang panerus and bonang barung usually play interlocking (i.e. a note of barung and parerus alternates ), or the panerus plays twice as fast as barung . The gongs are struck with two elongated bats ("tabuh") whose front ends are wrapped with string in order to hit the hump of the gongs. In order to avoid that a note fades away for too long, the club is placed directly on the hump of the gong after it has been struck, thereby dampening the note.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jennifer Lindsay: Javanese Gamelan - Traditional Orchestra of Indonesia. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992. ISBN 0-19-588582-1
- ↑ Neil Sorrell: A Guide to Gamelan. Faber and Faber, London 1990. ISBN 0-571-14401-2