Page 168 - HandbookMarch1

Figure 3. Javanese dancer at 1889 Exposition, with gamelan in background. (In
L'Exposition de Paris 1889, Supplement no. 27)

Many visitors wanted to recall the music they had heard at the Exposition. In the days before modern recording
technology, transcriptions were a common and popular means for acquaintance with music of all sorts. 11
Concurrently with the Exposition, and for years after, piano transcriptions of exotic music were published and
available for sale. 12 Claude Debussy too remembered the Javanese music he heard at the Exposition. Elements of
gamelan emerged in many of his compositions from that time onward. One particular piano piece, Pagodes,
remains, over a century later, the most famous and effective gamelan in the Western repertory. Debussy wrote
no transcriptions of what he heard at the Exposition. He wrote no academic treatise about gamelan music. Yet
he provides us with detailed understanding through composition
Gamelan

Found throughout Indonesia, the gamelan may be thought of as a percussion orchestra. Its instruments are
mostly metallophones struck with mallets of various sizes, shapes, and materials. Pictured in Figure 4, they
include single hanging gongs and groups of tuned gongs and bars suspended over resonator boxes and
tubes. 13 Their timbres are exquisitely rich, varied, and colorful. They are handmade by skilled craftsmen who
measure tin and copper in special recipes to make bronze, then melt it, pour it into molds, cool it, pound, file,
reheat, strike, listen, pound, and file some more. Figure 5 shows instruments in the making.

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