7.1 A pentatonic pitch system in Sunda

Much of the music in Sunda, the mountainous western part of the Island of Java in Indonesia, also employs pentatonic pitch systems (Cook, 2014). You can hear an example of this music in Audio 3, an extract from a performance of a piece called Bendrong, performed by the Gamelan Galura ensemble. The ensemble is an orchestra incorporating a range of instruments, including gongs, gong-chimes (smaller pot-shaped gongs), xylophone-like instruments, drums, and a kind of fiddle called a rebab.

The ensemble you have just heard is a Gamelan Saléndro ensemble, so named because it makes use of a pitch system called saléndro. This system is forged into several of the instruments that play as part of the gamelan, including gongs, gong-chimes, and xylophones. Figure 10 is a picture of a saron, whose tuned metal bars produce distinct notes when struck. If you look very closely, you may be able to see that the keys have been numbered 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 from left to right, indicating the 5 notes of the pitch collection (keep in mind however that most of the numbers are upside down in the photo).

Simon Cook (1992) explains that each of the five pitches in the version of saléndro used in music played by the Gamelan Saléndro ensemble is associated with a name (or names) and a number. With the lowest on the bottom left and the highest on the top right, this is as follows:

Notice how in this system, the lowest pitch is accorded the highest number. This is the reverse of how notes are numbered in the Western gamut, where, if C is 1, D is 2, E is 3, and so on. In fact, in Sunda, many musicians use the word ‘low’ to describe what Western – and many other Indonesian – musicians call ‘high’ notes and vice versa (see Cook, 1992, p. 3–4, and note several caveats). To avoid confusion, these course materials will always use the terms ‘low’ and ‘high’ in the conventional Western sense.

Three broader points become evident in considering the examples of Aka and Sundanese music. First, the number of notes within an octave can vary from pitch system to pitch system. Second, notes within these systems may be named and numbered in culturally specific ways. Third, just as 7-note and 12-note gamuts are built into the piano, so too are pitch systems such as Sundanese saléndro built into instruments such as the saron.