Title: Baris/Gambang Betjak
Performers: Gamelan Gong of the village of Peliatan
Culture: Balinese (Gamelan Gong Kebyar)
Instrumentation: Specifics are unknown, Gongs, Keyed instruments (metallophones with struck keys), gong chimes, Suling playing melody in many places
Reaction:
For this week’s blog entry I began to listen to music from the album “Music from the Morning of the World” by David Lewiston. Lewiston traveled to Bali for the first time in 1966 and made the first recordings of Balinese music. The first track on the record is of a style of music known as “Gamelan Gong Kebyar” which did not appear in Bali until the early 1900s . This particular subtype of Gamelan music is very complex, and features frequent tempo changes, rapid dynamic changes, reductions and increases in texture size. To me, it resembles many elements of the orchestral styles of Western European traditions, only with different instrumentations. The musicianship present in these recordings is remarkable. I am unsure of specific performance practices for these pieces, but from what I am hearing, it appears that they are composed works, which are not notated, but nonetheless performed widely by many in Bali.
The exact instrumentation used in this performance is unknown; David Lewiston did not write it in the liner notes. However there is a standard instrumentation for Gong Kebyar, which consists of Gongs a (membranophone), Keyed instruments similar to vibraphones but higher pitched and more ornate (metallophones), Many kinds of chimes and pans, and purely melodic instruments such as the Suling (aerophone), similar to a recorder.
