Celempung
Celempung , also called chelempung , is a box zither with typically twelve double strings, which is played on the Indonesian island of Java in the provinces of Central Java and West Java as a soloist, for vocal accompaniment and in small instrumental ensembles for entertainment. Its West Javanese ( Sundanese ) counterpart in this musical function is the box zither kacapi . The celempung also belongs to a larger gamelan and to the Sundanese ensemble celempungan . The closely related, smaller siter forms the main instrument of the siteran ensemble , which is based on a gamelan in terms of playing style and repertoire .
Celempung in Java also stands for a simple bamboo tube zither with two strings cut out of the tube (idiochord).
Origin and Distribution
In their oldest form, the lute instruments on some Indonesian islands include boat-shaped lutes such as the hasapi on Sumatra . Under the influence of Islamic culture, lutes known as gambus with a slightly wider body were added from around the 15th century . A widespread group of string instruments are the sting fiddles, rebab , which play the main melody in gamelan on Java and Bali and otherwise serve as accompaniment to singing. The name rebab , derived from the Persian-Arabic rabāb , says nothing about the origin and age of this Indonesian type of instrument.
Lyres are unknown in Indonesia. In the first centuries AD, the Indian immigrants brought with them a number of Indian musical instruments, most of which are no longer played today as illustrations and in written sources. Reliefs on Borobudur (9th century) show several Indian musical instruments as well as bow harps (ancient Indian vina ), but the only modern harp that was reported around 1900 ( engkeratong among the Iban on Borneo ) has probably disappeared. Indian stick zithers with the names kinnaran ( kinnari ) and lawuwina ("calabash vina "), derived from Sanskrit , as well as sounds that were also called wina, ravanahattha or kacapi have also disappeared . The stab zither phin phia goes back to the Indian name vina in Thailand and kacapi has been preserved regionally in Sumatra as a synonym for hasapi .
Among the native string instruments of the Malay Islands , the group of zithers occurs in a particularly large number of types, some of which are based on simple archetypes. At the beginning of the 20th century there were isolated reports of earth zithers in Sumatra and Sulawesi . One or more strings are stretched over a pit serving as a resonance chamber. Relics of a pre-colonial, regional musical culture that can still be found on many islands today are idiochorde tubular zithers made of bamboo, which include the single-stringed guntang on Bali and the rare Javanese gumbeng . The latter is still played in the rinding gumbeng music style, which is limited to a village southeast of Yogyakarta . The heterochorde sasando on the island of Roti is one of the most mature Indonesian bamboo tube zithers. A bamboo zither is also known from West Java. It is called celempung bambu ( celempung for short , if it does not have to be separated from the box zither) and has two idiochorde strings that were cut from a 80 to 90 centimeter long bamboo tube with a diameter of 15 centimeters. The strings are stretched with pieces of wood ( pahul ) inserted at both ends and spaced. To strike the strings, one uses a bamboo or wooden stick or two in one hand. The musician hits the end of the tube with the other palm of the hand, creating a muffled drum sound. In Java, the tubular zither is used in a small ensemble as an inexpensive alternative to the tubular drum kendang and the single humpback gong ketuk , which is used as a clock.
To the box Zithern in which the strings parallel in the longitudinal direction on the ceiling extend an approximately rectangular resonant body, include not only the celempung in Central Java, the siter and in West Java kacapi . The narrow, boat-shaped kacapi is a characteristic instrument of Sundanese music and occurs in the large version ( kacapi indung ) as a vocal accompaniment in the ensemble tembang Sunda , together with the bamboo long flute suling , the two-stringed barbed fiddle rebab and occasionally a smaller kacapi rincik . The large kacapi is also called kacapi parahu due to its boat-shaped shape . An instrumental ensemble consisting of two kacapi and a suling that a sound image as tembang Sunda generated only without the vocal, the kacapi suling . In West Java there is also the two-string box- neck lute tarawangsa , whose function in gamelan has been taken over by the rebab since the early 19th century . The tarawangsa is played together with a kacapi in a meditative style typical of Sundanese culture, which is part of ritual music, and is otherwise used by the small Baduy ethnic group in Banten together with kacapi and suling to accompany singing.
The small siter with 12 to 13 double-choir strings is common throughout Java. In Central and East Java it occurs in the gamelan together with the celempung or as a substitute for it, in West Java it takes the place of the larger kacapi and is played there solo, together with a suling and possibly with a singing voice.
A relief at the East Javanese temple ( candi ) Jago (near Malang ) from the end of the 13th century shows musical instruments that had not appeared up to this time, including the small, banana-shaped metal slit drum kemanak , the dumbbell-shaped double gong réyong and a board zither that used a Could be the forerunner of celempung . This example of a zither comes from the late phase of the Hindu- Javanese empires, before Islam gained importance in the 15th century. Presumably the picture shows a rectangular, flat board zither without a resonance body. The English researcher Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) depicts a trapezoidal board zither in The History of Java (1817), the strings of which do not lead to tuning pegs as in celempung at the upper end, but on the side of the string carrier. The strings thus led down through holes in the string carrier and on to the lateral vertebrae, as is the case with today's kacapi . The illustration shows above all that at the beginning of the 19th century there was no zither with a deep body and feet and that the Indonesian instrument was similar to the East Asian zither. According to Jaap Kunst (1927), today's form of celempung with string attachments at both ends came about after 1820 under European influence. The East Asian vaulted board zithers ( guzheng in China, koto in Japan, gayageum and ajaeng in Korea and đàn tranh in Vietnam) are believed to be possible forerunners of celempung .
Of the four Javanese string instruments that were in use at the beginning of the 20th century, rebab, tarawangsa, kacapi and celempung , rebab and celempung are mentioned in one version of the narrative cycle about the mythical hero Panji, which differs from the younger Javanese narrative tradition ( gedog , in contrast to purwa , the ancient Indian epics). Since it is probably a later adaptation, this is not suitable as evidence of a long history of celempung . Celempung is an onomatopoeic word of Indonesian origin.
Design
The body of the celempung is rounded boat-shaped, trapezoidal in plan view and deepens towards the wider end in side view. The length is about one meter. The long sides are bulged outwards and usually stand out in color from the glued-on flat ceiling. The edges of the body are often decorated with carvings highlighted in gold or in a different color. The 11 to 14 metal strings pairs lead to the end face of the narrow end of a semi-circular cross bar as a saddle on a centrally diagonally erected web of sheet iron up to a narrow, S-shaped curved board, which likewise runs diagonally over the strings and with spacers at both ends is attached to the ceiling. The tuning pegs are inserted into this unusual board, the strings are rolled up at the end of the pegs protruding from the bottom of the board.
In contrast to the vaulted board zithers, which lie horizontally and across in front of the musician when playing, the celempung is set up so that the narrow transverse side points to the musician sitting cross-legged on the floor. He plucks with both thumbnails and, if necessary, mutes other strings from below with his fingers so that they don't resonate. To do this, he grabs the near end of the strings with his hands from the sides. In order to improve the playing position, the celempung lies in a sloping frame that is inclined towards the musician and consists of a support and two short feet at the lower, narrow end and two longer feet at the broad, upper end, resulting in an angle of about 30 degrees and gives a total height of about 50 centimeters.
The range is about two octaves . The strings are either tuned to pélog (theoretically 7-point scale) or to slendro ( salendro , 5-point scale), so that each of the two Javanese tone systems needs a separate instrument. There are three different moods: celempung slendro, celempung pélog bem and celempung pélog barang . The fourth tone level is missing in celempung , so that in western notation the approximate tone sequence D - E ♭ - F - - A - B ♭ results for pélog bem and A - B ♭ - C - - E - F for pélog barang resembles the gender panerus , a metallophone found in central and eastern Java that is tuned an octave higher than the gender barung .
Style of play
A Javanese gamelan from the courtly tradition consists of a selection of percussion instruments, string instruments and the flute suling . A possible division of the instruments is based on the sound quality into loud-sounding instruments made of bronze (metallophones saron and slenthem , gong series bonang ) and into a second group consisting of soft-sounding instruments. In addition to voices , these include rebab, suling, gender , the trough xylophone gambang and the celempung . Each of these two groups of instruments in a large gamelan can perform on its own, and sometimes both play together with the vocalists.
When played together , the loud percussion instruments provide the cyclically repeating, rhythmic and melodic framework ( balungan , melodic framework that is played in a single melody line by several metallophones at octave intervals), while the voices and the quiet instruments, also with their ability, persist To produce notes, play around the main melody and guarantee the linear musical flow of time. This embellishing musical element, with which there is a certain freedom for improvisation, is called garap (literally “to work”) as a contrast to balungan . The celempung is one of the Garap instruments. It plays gambang at the same speed as the xylophone . The kendang barrel drums determine the beginning and end of a composition, the basic rhythm and changes in tempo in the course of the game .
According to their structure, the compositions ( gending ) of gamelan are divided into several genres, for example ketawang, gangsaran, lancaran and ladrang . The strikes of a large gong divide a piece into sections ( gongan ) and the length of these sections is a characteristic of the musical genres. In the lancaran genre , the gong sounds after 8 basic beats or single tones of the main melody, in ketawang the gong hits on the 16th basic beat and in ladrang on the 32nd basic beat or melody tone. Other percussion instruments divide the gongan into smaller units of time. Ketawang and especially ladrang compositions have a calm, elongated course and offer more space for ornamentation through celempung and other quiet instruments.
The Central Javanese celempung was adopted in West Java. Celempungan is a Sundanese ensemble that consists of the eponymous zither, a barrel drum ( kendang ), a spit violin ( rebab ), possibly humpback gongs and singing. It plays the repertoire of the gamelan salendro, which, along with gamelan degung, is the most common gamelan in West Java. As an accompaniment to a female singing voice ( kliningan ), the ensemble suitable for almost any purpose is called gamelan salendro kliningan.
literature
- Celempung (Chelempung) . In: Anthony Baines: Lexicon of Musical Instruments . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2005, p. 44
- Margaret J. Kartomi: Celempung . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Volume 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 476 f.
- Jaap Art : Music in Java. Its History, its Theory and its Technique. 3rd edition edited by Ernst L. Heins. Volume 1. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1973, pp. 229-231
Web links
- Celempung . Youtube video
Individual evidence
- ^ Rüdiger Schumacher: Indonesia . In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Volume 5, 1996, Col. 766
- ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi: Celempung bambu . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Volume 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 477
- ↑ Celempung: Alat Music Drum Tradisional Terbuat Dari Bambu di Jawa Barat. Youtube video
- ^ Wim van Zanten: The Tone Material of the Kacapi in Tembang Sunda in West Java . In: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 30, No. 1, Winter, 1986, pp. 84-112, here p. 85
- ^ Philip Yampolsky: Indonesia, § I, 3 (iv): Instruments: Chordophones . In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Volume 12. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, p. 288
- ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi: Music in Nineteenth Century Java: A precursor to the Twentieth Century. In: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 21, No. 1, March 1990, pp. 1–34, here p. 13
- ^ Wim van Zanten: Aspects of Baduy Music in its Sociocultural Context, with Special Reference to Singing and Angklung. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde , Volume 151 (Performing Arts in Southeast Asia) 1995, pp. 516–544, here p. 525
- ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi, Jeremy Montagu: Siter . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Volume 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 532
- ↑ R. Anderson Sutton, Endo Suanda, Sean Williams: Java . In: Terry E. Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 4. Southeast Asia . Garland, New York / London 1998, p. 632
- ^ Thomas Stamford Raffles : The History of Java . Volume 1. John Murray, London 1817 (1830 edition: archive.org )
- ^ Anthony Baines, 2005, p. 44
- ^ Jaap art, Roelof Goris: Hindoe-Javaansche muziekinstrumenten. Batavia, 1927; 2nd revised, English edition: Hindu-Javanese Musical Instruments . Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1968, p. 21 f.
- ↑ Jaap Kunst, 1973, p. 74
- ^ Henry Spiller: Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia. Taylor & Francis, Abingdon 2008, p. 86
- ^ Henry Spiller, 2008, p. 71
- ^ Marc Perlman: The Social Meanings of Modal Practices: Status, Gender, History, and Pathet in Central Javanese Music . In: Ethnomusicology , Volume 42, No. 1, Winter 1998, pp. 45-80, here pp. 49, 74
- ^ Andreas Lüderwald: Gamelan . In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1991–) , Volume 154, No. 2 (World Language Music?) March 1993, pp. 26–33, here p. 28