Gamelan is the traditional music of the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali.
The day Claude Debussy heard Javanese music at the Paris exhibition in 1889 seems to have been the beginning of 20th century music. The acceleration of communications and cultural confrontations became a focal point of musical expressions, of which Gamelan seems to have played a significant influence.
In 1580, explorer Sir Francis Drake sailed to the southern coast of the island of Java, where he heard music that was “strange indeed, the sound of which was pleasant and delightful.” The Governor of Java Thomas Stamford Raffles returned from South East Asia with 2 collections of gamelan instruments. In 1817 he wrote: “it is the harmony and pleasure of the sound of all instruments united, which gives to the music of Java its peculiar character. There is a resemblance to the oldest music of Scotland.”
In 1937, Leonard Huinzinga expressed the nature of this music “which does not create a song, but a state”. During his stay on this island, the composer Colin McPhee experienced the ambivalent feelings provoked by this unique music: “bright and dark at the same time, this brooding music seems to express a new spiritual restlessness, an impatience and a lack of direction, for it was unpredictable like the intermittent play of sunlight on a cloudy day.” McPhee was a pioneer who would fall under the spell of Indonesian music. It is common for Gamelan to play for days and nights in a row.
These long rhythmic cycles and these spontaneous developments allow the audience to vary their concentrations: intense listening, even hypnotic, can be alternated with episodes of passive listening, meals, breaks, sleep… Gamelan influences can be detected in the works of John Cage, Harry Partch, Lou Harrisson, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Paul Schutze…. The minimalist musical movement draws its origins from this spirit.
By listening to these sounds and these rhythms, a floating world opens up to us, an elusive and indefinable emergence of forms, a sonorous rain of stars tapping the celestial vault…