Gangsa (metallophone)

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A pair of gangsa gantung in Bali

Gangsa ( Indonesian , "bronze", "brass") is a group of metallophones with bronze or brass soundplates, which are used in Balinese music mainly in the ensemble types gamelan gong kebyar and gamelan gong gede . A distinction is made between two types of gangsa : The rare gangsa (jongkok) have bronze sound plates , corresponding to the Javanese saron , which rest on a single, wooden resonance box. In the more common gangsa gantung ("hanging gangsa "), also called gendèr , the sound bars hang on strings over a wooden frame and each plate has a bamboo tube attached vertically in the frame to amplify the sound.

In everyday parlance in Bali , gangsa refers to a group of four high-sounding kantilan and four lower-sounding pemadé , which together produce the main melody of the gamelan gong kebyar in a village ensemble of around 25 instruments .

The gambang gangsa is a variant of the xylophone gambang (kayu) with bronze plates that is rarely used in Java . The flat bronze or brass gongs gangsa played in the north of the Philippines have no relation to the Indonesian instruments except the name .

Origin and Distribution

Javanese xylophone calung made of pentatonic tuned bamboo tubes, penitir type according to size and function . Was used in the gamelan calung . Conceivable as a very old preliminary stage of the standard handling . A comparable relief image can be seen on Borobudur (8th century). Tropical Museum Amsterdam, before 1936

The origin of the metallophones lies in Asia. Musical instruments made of metal sound bars in a vertical frame were known in China around 700 AD, where they were brought by a Turkic people . This type has been handed down in Korea from the 12th century . The second and more widespread type has horizontal sound bars and is widespread in Southeast Asia. Such a metallophone - like today's saron in the shape of a wooden trough xylophone - is on Java for the first time on a relief at the Buddhist stupa Borobudur from the 8th / 9th centuries. Pictured in the 18th century, together with several double-headed drums (forerunners of the kendang ), single-headed clay drums, mouth organs , flutes, other wind instruments, plucked lute instruments , kettle gongs , numerous cymbals of different sizes , cymbals and other idiophones made of metal. Similar and other musical instruments, some of which betray Indian cultural influence, appear a century later at the Prambanan Hindu temple .

The two basic forms of Indonesian metallophones - saron and gendèr - also differ in their sound. In the Javanese saron and the Balinese gangsa (jongkok) the sound is hard, metallic and loud, but short-lived, while the bamboo resonators of the gendèr ensure a fuller and longer lasting sound.

Another Javanese type of metallophone is the gong kemodong, which consists of two large bronze plates (more rarely made of iron) of different pitches with a hump in the middle, which are suspended on strings over a square wooden box. Often there are two clay pots inside the box. The gong kemodong can be used as a cheaper alternative to the large gong ageng . Metallophones, instruments with hump gongs and sometimes used, small metal idiophones like the kemanak, all have well-specified, musical tasks in different gamelan .

A trough xylophone called saron with bamboo impact plates, which exists in rural Java, could have been preserved from older, pre-metallic stick games. Roneat is the name of a group of Cambodian xylophones, which also includes a metallophone with bronze plates. There are structural similarities between Southeast Asian metallophones and African xylophones. Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1911) compared the mood of the Burmese patala, which is related to the roneat , with African xylophones and was the first to emphasize the musical aspect of the Indonesian cultural influence on Africa claimed by representatives of diffusionism . The theory of the spread of Indonesian xylophones in Africa was mainly continued by the ethnomusicologists Jaap Kunst on the Indonesian side and Arthur Morris Jones on the African side. As a tacit requirement of this outdated theory, according to which fully developed frame xylophones must have come to Africa, stages of development and form details (such as the practically basic use of Mirlitons ) of African instruments are overlooked.

Design and style of play

In the gangsa jongkok or the saron , the bronze sound plates , daun (Indonesian, “leaf”) or bilah (“chip”, “bar”), lie on a soft intermediate layer made of rattan or cork over a wooden box ( tatak ). Each sound plate is held in place with two metal pins that are inserted through holes in the plate and pounded into the box. The sound bars are made of a bronze mixture ( Balinese kerawang ), which is poured into molds from around ten parts tin and three parts copper. While it is still hot, the casting is dipped in water, heated again over a fire and forged into the final shape, whereby the desired pitch must be checked in between.

The wood is usually the heavy, durable and medium-hard jackfruit tree wood (Indonesian nangka ), from which filigree relief patterns can be carved for decoration. The boards are struck with a short wooden mallet ( panggul gangsa ) in one hand, while the protruding edge is often steamed ( tekep ) between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand . There are generally three striking techniques: 1) The record fades freely after the strike, overlaid by the sound of the record that is subsequently struck. 2) The sound plate is muted before the next hit, or 3) It is muted and then struck, creating a dull, dry sound.

With the “hanging” gang gantung , the sound bars are lined up along a string pulled through the holes. They float over bamboo resonators that are fixed vertically in a wooden box ( pelawah, tatak ) that is also richly carved and painted in color . Gangsa gantung are used much more frequently, while gangsa jongkok occur in the gamelan, especially on the north coast of Bali in some villages east of Singaraja .

Gamelan Gong Kebyar

Gangsa are used for the five-tone scales ( patutan ) of the barely played large, courtly gamelang gong gede , which consists of around 50 instruments, and today's gamelan gong kebyar , which is reduced to around 25 instruments. The last puputan in Klungkung in 1908 marked the complete conquest of Bali by the Dutch and the fall of the kingdoms. The following period meant a phase of particular creativity for the arts, which was promoted by newly gained freedoms and a social democratization understood in this way. The extremely lively gong kebyar orchestra was created in this atmosphere and the gangsa was expanded from five to seven to ten sound bars . In a common gangsa with ten bars, the pitch range is two octaves . The gamelan gong kebyar is based on the five-tone pelog selisir scale , which is derived from the Javanese seven-tone pelog scale . The tone sequence selected from the seven-tone scale ( saih pitu ) is 1 = C ( ding ), 2 = D ( dong ), 3 = E ( deng ), 5 = G ( dung ) and 6 = A ( dang ). In brackets are the tone syllables sung for practice purposes , which are also often pronounced nding, ndong, ndeng ... The sound bars for tones 4 and 7 are missing. The patutan derived from the seven-tone scale ( saih pitu ) are called saih lima (“series of five”).

The ten sound bars of a gangsa roughly correspond to the following pitches: 1 = D ( dong ), 2 = E ( deng ), 3 = G ♯ ( dung ), 4 = A ( dang ), 5 = C ♯ ( ding ), 6 = D ( dong ), 7 = E ( deng ), 8 = G ♯ ( dung ), 9 = A ( dang ), 10 = C ♯ ( ding ).

Almost every musical instrument in the gamelan gong kebyar is used in pairs; one (the “female”, wadon, or pengisep , from ngisep, “to take up”) is pitched slightly lower than the other (the “male”, lanang, or pengumbang, from ngumbang, “to flow”), thus a sequence of beats is included heard floating pitches. In the case of the gendèr , the measured difference between the deepest sound bars of a pair of instruments is 20 to 50 cents , with the distance between a semitone being 100 cents. The gangsa pairs are played rhythmically interlocked with the other instruments at a set, fast tempo to form and decorate the melody line. In principle, as in Javanese gamelan, higher-sounding instruments are struck faster than lower-sounding ones . In most cases, the fourth beat of the densest gangsa beat sequence is emphasized by a small gong kajar . In the slow sequences of the gong kebyar , the kajar beat coincides with every eighth gangsa note. In the orchestra, the kajar is not one of the melody-forming instruments, but one of the colotomic instruments (which structure the rhythm). In some gamelans , a gong pulu or, more rarely, a bamboo tube zither guntang can take over its function . The toothed (English interlocking ) way of playing Balinese gamelan is kotekan . A kotekan is made up of two parts, one of which ( polos , "simple") complements the other ( sangsih, "different") to create a continuous melody. A similar technique in European music theory is the hoquetus . In gong kebyar , the gangsa from the row of humpback gongs trompong (in Java bonang ), which is missing opposite the gong gede, take over the musical leadership.

The gangsa group in a gamelan gong kebyar includes nine to ten instruments of the gantung type. Four gangsa kantilan ( kantilan or kantil for short ), two of which are “female” and two “male”, are the highest-sounding instruments in the ensemble. Four correspondingly larger gangsa pemadé are tuned an octave lower than the kantilan . Another octave lower, one or more rarely two gangsa pengugal ( ugal for short ) sound . If only one ugal is used, it is the “feminine” ( pengumbang ). The ugal falls out of line with the eight other gangsa , which musically belong together, because it is used independently in the compositions.

In the gamelan gong kebyar two (gangsa) calung (also jublag ) with five sound bars are used to play the main melody. They correspond in form and function to the Javanese slenthem with six plates. The sound plates, which cover an octave, are hung on strings over individual bamboo tubes in a wooden box, as is the case with the instruments with ten plates. The lowest note of the calung is ding and corresponds to the fifth note of the ugal . Sounding an octave lower and much larger than the calung are the two (gangsa) jegogan with five sound bars over a flat trough resonator. The jegogan are set up in the rear area of ​​the ensemble and produce individual accents of the main melody with the lowest notes of the tone scale ( gamut ). The deepest instruments are played with padded wooden mallets. The jegogan mallets ( panggul jegogan ) are spherical at the tip, padded with rubber and covered with fabric. The penyacah, which are only sometimes used and also played in pairs, are tuned an octave higher than the calung and have seven sound bars .

Furthermore, the gong kebyar includes gong games of different sizes, the cymbals ceng-ceng , two barrel drums kendang and the only instruments that produce a sustained melody tone, the bamboo flute suling and the spiked fiddle rebab .

More gamelan

Rare gangsa jongok cenik with six bronze sound plates . Tropical Museum Amsterdam, before 1939

Gamelan gong kebyar are played in concert or to accompany dances, such as the traditional Balinese war dances baris , which are only performed by men at village temples. The very old mask dance Barong is about the powerful guardian spirit Barong , who fights as a form of divine power against the diabolical forces that are usually embodied in the demon Rangda. The barong dance is accompanied by the purpose-built gamelan bebarongan . In this case, the humpback gong series trompong is replaced by two gender rambat . These pentatonic metallophones with 13 to 15 bronze tone plates are struck with two hammers and produce a hard metallic sound. Six to eight gangsa ( kantil and pemadè ), two jegogan and two jublag with five sound bars each play the main melody. A hanging, "large gong" ( gong gede ) marks the end of the longest melodic phrases; A kendang barrel drum provides the rhythm . Other instruments include a flute or two suling , a spiked fiddle, rebab, and some small cymbals and gongs.

Two ancient court ensemble formations are gamelan gambuh and gamelan semar pegulingan ( pagulingan ). With the latter, bronze instruments produce the melody, similar in orchestration and playing style to the gong kebyar developed from this . Most semar pegulingan are five-tone ensembles, with 22 seven-tone ensembles ( semar pegulingan saih pitu ) being counted in the 1990s . From the soft-sounding semar pegulingan and the clumsy, majestic gamelan gong gede , I Wayan Beratha developed the seven-tone orchestral formation gamelan semara dana in Denpasar in 1987 . The melody-leading metallophone gamelan semara dana gangsa has twelve sound plates with the pitches: 1 = D ( dong ), 2 = E ( deng ), 3 = G ♯ ( dung ), 4 = A ( dang ), 5 = C ♯ ( ding ), 6 = D ( dong ), 7 = E ( deng ), 8 = F ♯ ( deung ), 9 = G ♯ ( dung ), 10 = A ( dang ), 11 = B ( daing ), 12 = C ♯ ( thing ). The gamelan semara dana was originally intended to accompany the dance drama Sendratari . Sendratari , composed of seni-drama-tari ("art-drama-dance"), is a dance theater style introduced in the 1960s to stage narratives from the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata . The sound contrast in the combination of both types of gamelan is used for a dramatic increase when the noble, subtle ( alus ) characters are accompanied by the instruments of the semar pegulingan and the evil, coarse ( keras, kasar ) figures are accompanied by those of the gong gede . Today mainly modern composers use the gamelan semara dana because of its diverse musical possibilities.

A simple village orchestra in the music of Bali and Lombok is gamelan angklung , which is based on a four-tone scale. It usually consists of 16 instruments that are smaller and higher pitched than in the other gamelan . This includes some metallophones that span an octave. With its less voluminous sound, the gamelan angklung can perform at family celebrations in the courtyard of a private house. His own repertoire also includes pieces from the tradition of the gamelan gender wayang , which is used to accompany wayang performances. Despite the name, there are no bamboo shaking idiophones angklung in the ensemble .

For the other musical style of northern Bali, the four-tone gamelan was expanded to a gamelan angklung with five tones and 23 instruments. Metallophones include a pair of jegogan as the lowest gangsa instrument, a pair of gangsa (pemadé) one octave higher and three pairs of kantilan an octave higher. There are also various gongs, drums, cymbals and flutes. The jegogan often perform a simple melody line ( pokok ), while the other two gangsa groups decorate the melody with fast (interlocking) beats. From each gangsa pair, one (the pengisep instrument) plays the polos part and the other (the pengumbang instrument) the complementary sangsih part according to the kotekan pattern . More often, however, all gangsa and kantilan play a melody in unison or alternating, with the jegogan dotting individual tones at alternating intervals in both forms .

Gambang gangsa, curing in South Bali , with 15 bronze sound plates . In semar pegulingan gamelan used. Tropical Museum Amsterdam, before 1939

One of the rare and older ensemble formations in Bali and Central Java is the gamelan gambang ( gambang for short ), based on a seven-tone series, with the bronze rod games gambang gangsa . Thomas Stamford Raffles describes in The History of Java (1817) the Javanese gambang gangsa together with the gambang kayu and the metallophones “saron”, “demong” and “selantam” as part of gamelan . The gambang gangsa may have been pushed into the background by the introduction of the one-octave metallophones of the saron type. It is closely related to the Cambodian roneat dek and the corresponding Thai ranat thum lek . The gamelan gambang consists of two pairs (gambang) gangsa for the main melody and four, rarely six bamboo xylophones gambang (more precisely gambang kayu , from kayu, "wood") each with 14 longitudinally slotted bamboo sound sticks to decorate the melody. The seven bronze sound plates of the gangsa lie on a wooden trough, which is cushioned by a palm leaf cover. The position of the plates is fixed with wooden pins or iron nails. The gangsa pairs, consisting of a “male” and a “female” instrument, are pitch an octave apart. Each gangsa is struck by a musician with two wooden or buffalo horn hammers. A gamelan gambang in the village of Tatulingga in the administrative district of Karangasem has an above-average repertoire of around 50 pieces; most of them have the main melody ( pokok ) handed down as lontar ( palm leaf manuscript ). The gamelan gambang is ritually played during temple ceremonies.

There are also a number of other Balinese ensemble formations that feature gangsa . Gamelan caruk is a reduced version of the gamelan gambang . These only include two gangsa octaves apart , each with seven bronze plates and two bamboo xylophones caruk , which are played by a musician. The caruk consists of two xylophones with four plates each, which, placed next to one another, produce a seven-tone scale and the first tone of the upper octave. The ensemble is very rarely used at funerals and temple ceremonies.

In the gamelan gong luang (also gamelan saron ) nine instruments play together: two jegogan , two gangsa that are slightly smaller than the usual jegogan , a bamboo saron (similar to the caruk ), a hanging gong, ceng-ceng cymbals , a barrel drum kendang and a gong circle with 16 humpback gongs reyong . This ensemble is also played at funerals ( offerings , burning and scattering of ashes in the sea).

literature

  • Margaret J. Kartomi: Gangsa (ii). In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 391f
  • Jaap Art : Music in Java. Its History, its Theory and its Technique . 3rd edition edited by Ernst L. Heins. Volume 1. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1973
  • Michael Tenzer: Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth-Century Balinese Music. (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology) University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000

Web links

Commons : Gangsa jongkok  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Tenzer, 2000, p. 450
  2. ↑ Jaap Kunst, 1973, pp. 292, 364; Volume 2, Fig. 14 on p. 416
  3. ^ Sibyl Marcuse : A Survey of Musical Instruments. Harper & Row, New York 1975, p. 32
  4. ↑ Jaap Kunst, 1973, p. 107f
  5. ^ Colin McPhee: The Five-Tone Gamelan Music of Bali. In: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2, April 1949, pp. 250-281, here p. 255
  6. ↑ Jaap Kunst, 1973, pp. 177f
  7. ↑ Erich Moritz von Hornbostel : About an acoustic criterion for cultural contexts. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1911, pp. 601–615
  8. ^ Arthur Morris Jones : Africa and Indonesia: The Evidence of the Xylophone and Other Musical and Cultural Factors: With an Additional Chapter - More Evidence on Africa and Indonesia. (Asian Studies) EJ Brill, Leiden 1964
  9. ^ Roger Blench: Evidence for the Indonesian origins of certain elements of African culture: A review, with special reference to the arguments of AM Jones. In: African Music, Vol. 6, No. 2, International Library of African Music, 1982, pp. 81-93, here p. 84
  10. ↑ Edward Herbst: Bali 1928: Gamelan Gong Kebyar. Music from Belaluan, Pangkung, Busungbiu. World Arbiter, 2010, pp. 1-66, here pp. 12f
  11. ^ Bill Remus: Notation for Gamelan Bali . Gamelan Hawaii, University of Hawaii, 1996
  12. ↑ Michael Tenzer, 2000, p. 28
  13. ^ Andrew C. McGraw: The Development of the "Gamelan Semara Dana" and the Expansion of the Modal System in Bali, Indonesia. In: Asian Music, Vol. 31, No. 1, Fall 1999 - Winter 2000, pp. 63–93, here p. 64
  14. ^ Albrecht Schneider, Klaus Frieler: Perception of Harmonic and Inharmonic Sounds: Results from Ear Models. In: S. Ystad, R. Kronland-Martinet, K. Jensen K. (Eds.): Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval. Genesis of Meaning in Sound and Music. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5493) Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2008, here p. 13
  15. ^ Ward Keeler: Musical Encounter in Java and Bali. In: Indonesia, No. 19, April 1975, pp. 85–126, here p. 123
  16. ^ Andrew Clay McGraw: Different Temporalities: The Time of Balinese Gamelan. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music, Vol. 40, 2008, pp. 136–162, here p. 139
  17. ↑ Michael Tenzer, 2000, pp. 41, 45
  18. ↑ I Made Bandem: The Baris Dance. In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 19, No. 2, May 1975, pp. 259-265
  19. ↑ I Made Bandem: Barong Dance . In: The World of Music, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1976, pp. 45-52, here pp. 51f
  20. ↑ Wayne Vitale: Balinese Kebyar Music Breaks the Five-Tone Barrier: New Composition for Seven-Tone Gamelan. In: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 40, No. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 5-69, here p. 27
  21. ^ Andrew C. McGraw: The Development of the "Gamelan Semara Dana" and the Expansion of the Modal System in Bali, Indonesia, 1999-2000, pp. 65, 81
  22. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi et al: Indonesia. In: Terry Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Handbook of Southeast Asian Music. Taylor & Francis, New York, 2008, p. 392
  23. ^ Ruby Ornstein: The Five-Tone Gamelan Angklung of North Bali. In: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 15, No. 1, January 1971, pp. 71-80, here pp. 73f
  24. ^ Thomas Stamford Raffles : The History of Java. Volume 1. Black, Parbury, and Allen, London 1817, p. 471 ( at Internet Archive )
  25. ↑ Jaap Kunst, 1973, pp. 171f
  26. ↑ Thanks H. Schaareman: The Gamĕlan Gambang of Tatulingga, Bali. In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 24, No. 3, September 1980, pp. 465-482
  27. ^ I. Wayan Sinti, Annette Sanger: Gamelan Manikasanti: One Ensemble, Many Musics. In: Asian Music, Vol. 37, No. 2, Summer – Autumn 2006, pp. 34–57, here p. 38