Gamelan music had a great influence in the West, notably at the 1889 Grand Universal Exhibition in Paris, where the shimmering timbre of the orchestra made a profound impression on Debussy and Ravel. The gamelan was introduced to the United States at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. This musical style comes from the very diverse Indonesian culture ...
Gamelan is an orchestral tradition in Java and Bali, where every instrument – various gongs and drums – is a member of the percussion family. The tradition emphasizes respect for the instruments and cooperation between the players. In 1887, the Paris Conservatoire acquired a gamelan. In 1889, Debussy went to the Paris Exhibition, where he heard the ...
The gamelan is a percussion ensemble played throughout Indonesia, especially in Bali and Java. A gamelan comprises mainly metallophones, xylophones and gongs. It may also include vocals, the rebab (a two-stringed spike fiddle), the keprak (a slit drum), and the kendhang (a set of three or four double headed, barrel-shaped drums). The kendhang sets the tempo and ...
(1840–93) use of it in the Nutcracker and Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) introduced the xylophone in the 1870s. The lyra-glockenspiel was becoming common in wind bands and a visit by a gamelan ensemble to the Paris Exhibition of 1889 generated a wave of interest among western composers for metallic percussion instruments such as antique cymbals, tam tams and gongs. In Spain ...
a rounded-triangular soundbox and extremely long turned tuning-pegs, known as a rebab (a fiddle-name found commonly in Arabic and other Islamic countries); a similar one is also used with gamelan orchestras in Java. Rabab The Bedouin, Syrian and Jordanian one-stringed rabab or rababah has a more-or-less rectangular skin-covered soundbox, often with extended wooden side-pieces making an ‘H’-shape with ...
the beater to create a sustained singing effect. These temple bowl gongs have a pure tone and are used as an aid to meditation. Introduction | Percussion Instruments Instruments | Gamelan | Percussion ...
Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...
the instrument – about 100 cm in diameter, with a hammered surface and suspended from a frame – is technically called the ‘tam tam’. Gongs feature large in the gamelan music of Indonesia; more recently new-age practitioners of ‘gong therapy’ have used them. Twentieth-century composers also sought to expand its sound range by instructing the percussionist to play the gong ...
soprano Marie-Blance Vasnier become lovers 1884 L’enfant prodigue (‘The Prodigal Son’) wins the Prix de Rome 1885 Goes to Villa Medici, Rome 1888 Visits Bayreuth Festival 1889 Hearing Javanese gamelan music at Paris Exposition has profound effect on him 1891 Becomes friends with Erik Satie 1893 Sees Maurice Maeterlink’s play Pelléas et Mélisande; begins work on his opera Pelléas et ...
, resulting in the classic albums Complete Communion (1965) and Symphony for Improvisers (1966). In 1968 he gathered artists from Europe and America, performing music inspired by the Balinese gamelan and Middle Eastern sounds. Eternal Rhythm, recorded that year, is a fine early document of his jazz-world music fusions. Cherry continued to investigate sounds inside and outside jazz ...
, though a trend was established by Debussy in several piano pieces, chiefly Pagodes and Poissons d’or, which reflect his fascination with the pentatonic aspect of the Javanese gamelan orchestras visiting the Paris international exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. A Final Triumph Das Lied von der Erde, sometimes called Mahler’s farewell to life, was completed in 1908 ...
to alter the pitch and timbre of those notes). This exquisite music is as delicate as anything in the piano repertoire, but the sound is more like a Balinese gamelan orchestra than a Western instrument. The influence of the East on Cage’s music went further still. His conversion to Zen Buddhism led him to eventually abandon the Western idea of ...
Spanish-American, Vietnam is French-Chinese, and Malaysia is Arabic-Chinese-Indian-Portuguese-British. Add the latest economic invasion and it’s a wonder that any unadulterated music survives. But it does. In Indonesia, Javanese gamelan ensembles still play court music that dates back to the eighteenth century; the tribes of Borneo are trying to preserve their folk traditions and the Buddhist orchestras of Myanmar, ...
Musical influences have flowed between peoples in all parts of the world, between continents and across centuries. Claude Debussy (1862–1918) and Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) were entranced when they encountered gamelan music from Java in the late nineteenth century; Olivier Messiaen (1908–92) found inspiration in a thirteenth-century Indian treatise; and minimalist composer Steve Reich (b. 1936) was influenced by the traditional ...
and their impresario Diaghilev after 1909. The Great Exhibitions of 1878, 1889 and 1900 also exposed Parisians to Far Eastern cultures, and Debussy was impressed by the Javanese gamelan he heard there in 1889. Exotic Harmonies It is hard to tell the degree to which Debussy’s use of modes was motivated by these exotic cross-cultural encounters. Still, his ...
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