Here some excerpts from a text, accompanying Ki Mantle Hood's field gamelan recordings (1957-58), released by a very serious label:
Over the centuries, expensive bronze metal has been associated with royalty, wealthy patrons and land owners. Rural communities of modest economic means use inferior, less costly metals such as brass and iron for gamelan construction.
(...)
The gongsmit is a venerated member of Javanese society entrusted with the very important job of gamelan construction as he works with a medium believed to connect the human world with the spirit world. On the neighbouring island of Bali, the Prakempa, a 19th century palm-leaf manuscript about gamelan, outlines the relation between struck bronze and the human spirit. The text describes the sonic affect of struck bronze on a person's inner qualities (sanubari). This is what alters a person's spirit when gamelan music is heard. It is also what motivates people to learn music. According to this Balinese manuscript, a gongsmit or gamelan teacher must be aware that bronze has the power to affect individual's inner qualities (Hood, Made Mantle - Triguna: a Hindu-Balinese Philosophy for Gamelan Gong Geded Music. Unpublished Dissertation, University of Cologne, 2005).
Bronze instruments have contributed to the "survival" of inimitable tuning systems or laras in today's increasingly homogenised, predominantly western diatonic urban soundscape. Gamelan forged from good quality bronze has resisted some of this onslaught because of the crystallization process of the bronze metal itself.
When Gamelan is newly forged (not cast), gongs and keys are tuned by scraping and cold-hammering their surfaces and undersides until the desired fine-tuning is accomplished. After the entire orchestra is fine-tuned, it is played for about a year, the bronze metal enduring repeated strikes from player's hard wooden or paddled mallets during rehearsal and performance. After approximately a year has passed, a gongsmit will once again scrape and hammer any keys or kettlegongs that need adjustment. Depending on how often the gamelan is played, it will be another four or five years before the instruments require another fine-tuning. With the passing of each year, the mollecules of smelted tin and copper become more dense, compact and the metal begins to crystallize, becoming harder, and thus more stable in holding its tone. By the time a good quality gamelan reaches 30 years of age, its tuning has become quite stable indeed, requiring only small adjustments and occasional key or gong replacements (also Hood (2005:77-79).
This does not mean that laras are perfectly preserved, representing tuning systems hundreds of years old in ancient gamelan orchestras. Each generation of tuners that put their smithing tools in action has different reference ponts, personal preference, and an altering sound-scape surrounding them. However, bronze instruments have the added advantage of relative fixity in tuning, unlike string or wind instruments that mutate with contemporary Indonesia's homogenized palette of musical sound. Despite the decline in gamelan tuning diversity in Central Java, as of yet there is no equal or well- tempered tuning system.
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