Sundanese Reverberances: Untangling Contradictions about the Gamelan Spectacle at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair

ABSTRACT

This article revisits the gamelan performances at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, providing an updated and comprehensive study of the scenic specificities displayed and the intersecting interests that contributed to shaping them. Drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined press accounts and transcriptions, and close familiarity with Sundanese and Javanese music and dances, it delves into the performance practices carried out, revealing the many ways in which the staging concept—driven largely by commercial concerns and logistical challenges—diverged from the homeland’s usual practices. It also aims to resolve inconsistencies regarding the socio-cultural background of the performers and the repertory exhibited, and uncovers musical and choreological procedures still present in modern Sundanese customs. Furthermore, the recent discovery and examination of the 1889 gamelan by the authors (in January 2024) has been crucial in understanding how its particular tunings and scales presented a challenge to European musical conventions in the late nineteenth century.

on monday, 6 may 1889, the Exposition Universelle—the fourth of its kind to be held in Paris—officially opened its doors. Passing under the newly erected Eiffel Tower, then the tallest building in the world, thousands of guests, ordinary citizens, and foreign travellers marvelled at the main exhibition space. However, the show that would be most talked about for the next six months was not taking place there, but in the side space reserved for French overseas possessions. In spite of the reluctance of the Dutch monarchy, whose colonial empire then included a large part of the islands of present-day Indonesia, the French Republican government had wanted to re-enact the showcase of traditional life of the archipelago displayed six years earlier at the International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam. After complex negotiations, it was finally agreed that a ‘Javanese village’ would be settled at the corner of Rue de Grenelle and Rue de Constantine, right in front of the Hôtel des Invalides.¹ The main attraction of that kampong javanais was the gamelan spectacle, which took place on a bamboo stage several times a day.

As Jean-Pierre Chazal and Pak Sumarsam have pointed out, those performances had little to do with what could be witnessed in the Indonesian archipelago at that time.² However, since it had never before been possible to listen to a gamelan in Paris or to see the dances of Java, the fair-goers assumed nothing of the sort, neither those fascinated by the peculiarities of the instruments and costumes, nor those bewildered by the challenge that the overall spectacle presented to Parisian tastes. Historical perspective has allowed us to understand the extent to which later generations fantasized about the impact the gamelan had on the composers who listened to it. Yet even today, despite the existence of a wealth of documentation on the subject and some outstanding studies on this exhibition and its performative dimension, the show itself is often mentioned without considering the peculiar circumstances from which it was born. Moreover, at the end of the exhibition, the gamelan seemingly vanished, giving rise to all kinds of speculations about its features.

In this article we aim to clear up some of those speculations and many of the misunderstandings that have arisen around the 1889 spectacle: first of all, the provenance and social background of the Javanese dancers (regarded till now as belonging to a royal court), and the repertory performed, inaccurately associated with classical genres such as serimpi³ or langendriyan.⁴ Secondly, the gamelan itself, whose location was discovered in January 2024 by the authors of this study.⁵ The finding of the instruments and the subsequent examination of their characteristics and tunings have also significantly contributed to a better understanding of how Parisian listeners ‘acclimatize[d] exotic modes’, in Jann Pasler’s words,⁶ in their attempts to accommodate the gamelan musical system into a Western one. Furthermore, this research has uncovered new piano compositions of the time that are based on the music heard in the kampong, offering new insights into how Sundanese musical processes were perceived.

We also seek to clarify the musical and scenic specificities of those performances, thus expanding the scope of the studies initiated by the aforementioned Jean-Pierre Chazal and further developed by Annegret Fauser in her Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair.⁷ Living in the Indonesian archipelago since 2010 and being immersed in the practice of its diverse classical and popular performing arts has allowed us to conduct a thorough inspection of both the extant sources and a wealth of new ones, going a step further in deciphering the procedures reported in 1889. In this article we delve into the choreological aspects of the show and, drawing on the dance categories of the time, untangle many inconsistencies surrounding the performances of the Javanese dancers. But above all, we trace back some of the musical procedures of the Sunda (West Java) region that, although not acknowledged (or simply ignored) by Parisian listeners in 1889, are still distinctive Sundanese practices today.

gamelan and living villages in the international exhibitions

The 1889 gamelan show was a centrepiece of a broader agenda that can only be fully grasped by taking into account its nuanced connection to the kampong javanais, a main feature of the Dutch exhibits since 1883. The kampong sought to recreate, in an idealized form, the traditional life of the Dutch East Indies, depicting their diverse architectural styles and peoples, and illustrating their interaction with the rural environment. This is how, starting with the 1883 Amsterdam exhibition and again at all the following international expositions until the end of the century, bamboo buildings, vegetation, animals, and human groups were assembled to give shape to a portrayal of the colonies. This ‘anthropological sensation’ (as defined by Marieke Bloembergen in Colonial Spectacles) featured a gamelan show as its centrepiece.⁸

A fusion of ethnographic practice, trading goals, and colonial arrogance, the kampong was among the many manifestations of what Blanchard and others have called ‘human zoos’, of the mid-nineteenth century onwards.⁹ Just as it happened to inhabitants of other territories under European colonial rule, peoples from various regions of present-day Indonesia were shipped to successive exhibitions in the Western world, enduring gruelling work hours and living abroad for months in inhumane conditions.¹⁰ These showcases aimed not only to confirm the teleological vision of the history of a humanity increasingly distanced from nature, but also to justify the civilizing mission of the Westerners. The justification was particularly crucial in the case of the East Indies, where the brutal war waged by the colonial government against the Sultanate of Aceh since 1873 was causing fervent public outrage in the metropole.¹¹

Jann Pasler has shown how instruments and musical systems served as a means of classifying people in nineteenth-century France, while emphasizing the role of performances in reinforcing Europe’s perception of higher development.¹² Thus, the exhibitions aimed not only to offer a lesson in anthropology, but also to perpetuate hierarchies between colonizers and the colonized, with music playing a significant role in this process. If ‘traveller’s tales and engravings were no longer enough to satisfy the public’,¹³ they were even less effective in conveying the sounds of those distant cultures. It took time for the nascent anthropology to give music a central place in its studies. Yet nineteenth-century bourgeois society made music an essential element of both public and private life, and international exhibitions targeted precisely that society to shape their agendas. World fairs served as expansive stages for comparing the perceived levels of civilization without requiring travel. Although the organizers did not always prioritize the performing arts, music and dance shows were often the most discussed and attended attractions. They exhibited sound and bodies in movement as manifestations of a culture—that is, cultures regarded as primitive when originating from distant lands, and depicted as savage and barbarous, in the particular case of the French colonies.

In the European mindset, however, Java represented something markedly different: a land with courts, princes, and a sophisticated millenary culture. Fascinating and sensual, it was perfect for letting the imagination wander, as illustrated in Balzac’s fictitious Voyage de Paris à Java, published in 1832. The Netherlands’ pride lay precisely in controlling such a territory and aligning it with the ‘progress’ so highly endorsed by the evolutionism of the time. The aim was not to conceal the colony’s refined arts but to emphasize them while integrating them with nature and a manual labour culture. Thus, the successive kampong displayed in the international exhibitions of the nineteenth century ultimately presented a much more complex and compelling image of the Dutch East Indies. Alongside a bamboo village, whose inhabitants ate with their hands while sitting on the ground, impressive gamelan bronzed instruments, beautifully carved, would accompany the gentle movements of young bejewelled courtly dancers. Besides being an attractive lure for boosting sales of tea and coffee—to be consumed while watching the show—the implicit involvement of Javanese princes would raise the pride of the Dutch empire. While Dahomey women at the colonial exhibits were depicted as ‘“uncivilized” and dangerous’, the Javanese dancers portrayed ‘exotic women as bearers of art and culture’, as posited by Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère.¹⁴

The international exhibitions also offered occasional opportunities to explore whether the musical practices of distant peoples matched imagined sonorities. Yet, compared to other ‘exotic’ musics, European knowledge about the gamelan was still limited in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Although in the early 1800s a few gamelans from Central Java began to arrive on European soil,¹⁵ it was not until the Colonial and National Trade Exhibition in Arnhem in 1879 that this type of ensemble could be heard for the first time. Listeners such as the composer Daniël de Lange were stunned by the vast repertory of an impressive double pelog-slendro Javanese gamelan, brought directly from the court of Mangkunegara IV in Surakarta, Central Java.¹⁶ A few years later, a gamelan from a rival Javanese court in Yogyakarta was sent to London for the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1882, sparking scholarly intrigue about the tuning of the instruments and the musical procedures used.¹⁷ Expectations began to build.

Grappling with financial issues was a constant obstacle during the organization of nineteenth-century world’s fairs. While the instruments, and most importantly, the performers, began to be regarded as excellent attractions to pique the curiosity of European society eager for the exotic, disagreements between Dutch and Javanese elites thereafter hindered the granting of courtly gamelans. Consequently, a gamelan that had already been showcased at the 1878 Paris and 1880 Berlin exhibitions—shipped from the then Rijks Ethnographisch Museum in Leiden¹⁸—was to be the one played at the 1883 International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam.¹⁹ It comprised one gong ageng, a set of five kempul, one kempyang, two bonang, one kendang, four saron, one gambang, and one rebab. Finely carved—most likely made to order by Daniël Veth, responsible for shipping ethnographic objects for the exhibition—this gamelan is indeed atypical, as observed more recently by Sue Carole De Vale and Jan Willem Terwen.²⁰ Featuring stepped-pyramidal keys, it was noted at that time for being ‘foolishly adapted to the European tonal system’.²¹

In 1883, the court of Mangkunegaran did not grant aristocratic musicians either. Instead, Gustav Mundt, one of the administrators of the tea and coffee plantations in the mountains of Parakan Salak, provided a group of workers of that Sundanese region, fifteen of whom would be in charge of the evening musical performances after completing their duties for the tea company.²² During the shows, these musicians accompanied three dancers, also of Sundanese origin but coming from the vicinity of the court of the Sunan of Surakarta, another rival court to Mangkunegaran. But the musical practices of the plantation workers on that unconventional gamelan could not compete with the courtly Javanese instruments and musicians of 1879. Jan Land explicitly showed discontent in the preface for Groneman’s De Gamĕlan te Jogjåkartå, when referring to ‘the sad gamelan performances at the Colonial Exhibition in Amsterdam in 1883, which probably could not have been better arranged due to a lack of funds’.²³ De Lange himself also expressed profound disappointment this time.²⁴ Despite the dissatisfaction, this experience laid the foundations for what would happen in Paris.

unfortunate logistics bring out unconventional scenic formats: the 1889 troupe

Since the Dutch crown did not want to support an event that was meant to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, it was individuals and small companies that financed the kampong javanais in 1889. Thanks to Marieke Bloembergen’s meticulous study, we have in-depth knowledge of various logistical aspects of this initiative.²⁵ Under the management of Martin Wolff, a young entrepreneur from Amsterdam, a commission led by the engineer Cores de Vries arrived on the island of Java in December 1888 to collect materials for building the village, as well as to gather the craftsmen, the gamelan, and the dancers. According to De Vries himself, two of the administrators in the West Java region—Eduard J. Kerkhoven and, again, Gustav Mundt—agreed to provide forty workers from the plantations of Parakan Salak, and also to take active part in the exhibition by directly selling tea and coffee at the kampong. Mundt would lend his own gamelan and a collection of wayang golek puppets as well.²⁶ As in the 1883 exhibition, the workers on the plantations would be the ones who played the instruments.

As for the dancers, their provenance was one of the questions that most fuelled oriental fantasies among Parisian spectators. Similar to the excitement stirred by rumours that the Middle Eastern belly dancers were part of a harem—a phenomenon discussed by Zeynep Çelik and Leila Kinney²⁷—this fascination also extended to the Javanese women. The official account of their origins, as highlighted by Bloembergen, states that when De Vries tried to obtain dancers from Mangkunegara V in Surakarta, the young monarch refused. However, he did grant ‘all kinds of objects’, including a set of wayang kulit puppets and ‘beautiful costumes for the dancers and musicians’.²⁸ It took De Vries a while to solve the problem, and he was only able to set sail for Europe with the dancers on the 24th of March, two weeks after the departure of the bulk of the workforce and building materials.²⁹ His own recounting of the facts asserts that A. J. Spaan, the Resident of Surakarta, mediated with Mangkunegara V, eventually securing ‘some celebrities from his corps de ballet’.³⁰

Nevertheless, the Dutch ex-planter Judocus Jeremias, who lived on the island of Java for many years, surprises us with another version of the events, never before referred to in the literature. In his article dated 9 September in the Java Bode, he mocks readers for not being aware of the many fictions told in official exhibition booklets. Among these is the claim that the dancers were part of the corps de ballet of a prince of Solo (another name for Surakarta), a tale he presents as made up by ‘the Amsterdammer’ Wolff. His recount is explicit: ‘What people don’t do to advertise! They are simply the langendrias of a European in Solo, known locally as si Gotlieb.’³¹ In a later article in the same newspaper, Jeremias writes sarcastically: ‘What did I see? One of Kang Gotlieb’s langendriyos—oh, pardon me, gentlemen operators of the Javanese kampong (?), I mean ‘one of the jolies bayadères du Prince de Java’.³²

The name of ‘Gotlieb’ is enlightening indeed. A German-Indonesian batik merchant, during the 1870s Gottlieb Kiliaan had developed a Mangkunegaran version of langendriyan—a genre of opera-dance created in the neighbouring court of Yogyakarta—in collaboration with Raden Hario Tandhakusuma, choreographer of Mangkunegara IV.³³ During the years of creation and rehearsing of the new style, Kiliaan utilized the all-female employees of his textile factory, who had developed abilities in tembang macapat (sung poetry) while working on batik.³⁴ As Mangkunegara V was reluctant to lend any dancers from his own palace, it seems likely that the ‘corps de ballet’ sent to Paris ended up being made up of Gottlieb Kiliaan’s batik workers. The archives of Prince Roland Bonaparte—which record the names of the islanders and their professions at the kampong—corroborate this suspicion: mothers and sisters of the dancers brought to Paris were actually employed as ‘fabric designers’.³⁵

Other purchases and recruitments of staff were to be handled by the commission in Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya. Then, on 9 March 1889, the British ship Samarang departed from the port of Batavia, Tandjong Priok, carrying forty-six ‘well-dressed’ ‘natives’ and numerous objects from various regions of the archipelago, including a large portion of the bamboo dwellings.³⁶ Under the supervision of Mr Bernard, they arrived in Paris on 9 April.³⁷ Ten days later, De Vries came on the scene, bringing with him ten Javanese women.³⁸ The four youngest were soon to become the stars of the exhibition.

Once the kampong javanais was settled, its doors would open to the public every morning. During the day, men and women fulfilled domestic tasks under the visitors’ staring eyes. They worked on batik and other handicrafts, or prepared tea, coffee, and traditional dishes to be purchased. In the evening, the show came on. The series of music and dance spectacles were introduced by an angklung procession of Sundanese men shaking their bamboo instruments, as a lure for pedestrians who had ended up, perhaps by chance, in that corner of the Esplanade des Invalides.³⁹ The travelling orchestra led the public to the pendopo—a kind of rustic café-concert where around 150 spectators would sit and enjoy Dutch beer and chocolate.⁴⁰ There, on a poorly lit stage, a succession of two contrasting dances would be performed, accompanied by the gamelan. Then, at the end of the show, the angklung procession escorted the audience to the exit of the kampong, bringing back a new crowd of fair-goers a few minutes later.⁴¹

a treasure finally found: the 1889 gamelan

The question of which gamelan was played in the Exposition Universelle of 1889 has been the topic of a great deal of unresolved speculation. At the time we began writing this article, the whereabouts of the instruments were still unknown. However, through a close study of the Dutch and French press of the time, coupled with a thorough examination of diverse German sources, we have not only uncovered new information about this gamelan, but also successfully traced its current location: the storage of the Museum am Rothenbaum—Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), in Hamburg. The instruments arrived in the French capital together with the islanders, the materials, and a few angklung, temporarily lent by Gustav Mundt for the exhibition. But in fact, they were a gift to his native city: ‘When the chests containing the gamelang [sic] were opened at the time, donated to the museum in Hamburg by Mr Mundt, a tea planter in Preanger, but now on loan to the kampong, it was a great surprise to also find an ankloeng in it.’⁴²

After fulfilling its mission over six months, the gamelan was brought to its final destination: the museum formerly called Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg. In December 1889, sixty-seven items—including musical instruments, wayang golek and wayang kulit puppets, and various theatrical props—were donated by Mundt to this museum.⁴³ Among these props, Menakjingga’s magic weapon known as the gada wesi, carried by one of the dancers, as revealed in an archival photo from the kampong (see Pl. 1), was pivotal in identifying the collection in Hamburg.

pl. 1.

Left: Sariem dressed as Menakjingga, carrying the gada wesi on her left arm. Photo courtesy of Pura Mangkunegaran, Surakarta. Right: A 2485, Mundt Collection. Photo by the authors by the courtesy of the Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), Hamburg

Our research has been able to verify that the most significant part of Mundt’s collection is still preserved today in that institution, although at the moment it is not open to the public.⁴⁴ It comprises two demung, three saron, two peking, one gender, one gambang kayu, one gambang gangsa, one kendang, one small bedhug, one kenong, two goong, a rebab, two sets of ten horizontal gongs (without their corresponding racks), and most importantly—since it is the instrument that allows us to identify the gamelan—the peculiar bonang shown in the Parisian iconography (see Pl. 2). The considerable number of instruments and the aesthetic coherence of their decoration match the description of the Dutch press, according to which the gamelan was excellently designed and furnished,⁴⁵ a complete set that could accommodate more than twenty persons: ‘He wants to give his beautiful gamelang [sic] as a gift to his native city of Hamburg, and he has kindly agreed to lend the entire device, which is played by twenty-three musicians, in advance of the Paris exhibition.’⁴⁶ Prince Roland Bonaparte’s list of participants also corroborates this number, with a report of twenty-two musicians coming from Parakan Salak.⁴⁷

pl. 2.

Left: Bonang. A 2427. Mundt Collection. Photo by the authors by the courtesy of the Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), Hamburg. Right: ‘Le joueur de bona’. Lucien Huard, Livre d’or de l’Exposition (Paris, 1889), 299

However, it seems that only a tiny part of Mundt’s gamelan was displayed at the kampong. French sources of the time show substantial discrepancies in the terms used to refer to the instruments that were seen on the stage, often borrowing descriptions from other publications. In most cases, no more than five instruments at a time are mentioned.⁴⁸ Only Julien Tiersot—the observer who described them in the most detail and carefully transcribed the part of each instrument—offers us a longer list:⁴⁹ to start with, a rebab (a ‘kind of two-stringed violin’), a gambang (‘type of xylophone made of vibrating wooden bars’), one single saron-barong (whose keys were made of a ‘copper and tin alloy’) and a bonang-ageng (‘composed of metal basins resting on stretched ropes’).⁵⁰ According to Tiersot, the latter was a family of two instruments, divided into a ‘low-pitched one’ and a ‘high-pitched one’,⁵¹ corresponding to what, in modern Sundanese terminology, are called bonang and rincik respectively. Tiersot continues mentioning hanging gongs ‘of diverse kinds and all dimensions’,⁵² finishing with what he calls ‘the percussion instruments’: a ‘tambour’ (called kendang in Sunda) plus ‘a sort of sistrum’ (undoubtedly the kecrek, so characteristic of Sundanese music).⁵³ However, he does not mention the selompret (tarompet in modern terminology) nor the suling, both present in some engravings and written accounts.⁵⁴

So even Tiersot counts no more than eight instruments—less than half of the number donated by Mundt—and the iconography does not support the idea of the whole ensemble on the stage either. It never shows us more than a rebab, a kendang, a bonang, and a set of five hanging kempul.⁵⁵ There is no record of the other eight keyed instruments that composed Mundt’s gamelan, the kenong or the big and beautifully carved gong rack with its two gong ageng. It is difficult to speculate about the decisions that caused the ensemble to be so drastically reduced, but it may have been due to the limited stage space provided by the organization. Another factor may have been that the elevated bamboo platform was not strong enough to support the whole of the heavy solid wood instruments, or that bringing them onto this stage would have been in itself a difficult task.

These logistical considerations may also explain another riddle, namely, why a small set of five kempul appear in the 1889 iconography but are not in the list of objects that Mundt donated to the current MARKK (see Pl. 3). This set of kempul, which belonged to the reserve of the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum in Leiden and were used during the 1883 exhibition in Amsterdam, was to replace Mundt’s large gongs for the 1889 exhibition. The set of kempul is stored today at what is now called the Wereldmuseum, making it possible to compare the instruments with the available iconography and thereby to address any lingering doubt about its presence in Paris.⁵⁶

pl. 3.

Left: Set of kempul belonging to the reserves of Wereldmuseum. Photo: Archives of Prince Bonaparte, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Right: Detail of ‘Les Danseuses du Kampong Javanais à l’Esplanade des Invalides’ showing the set of kempul in 1889. Huard, Livre d’or de l’exposition, after 183

Tiersot’s descriptions leave no substantial uncertainty about the types of instruments he is referring to. However, the role he attributes to them sometimes contradicts both historical and current Sundanese practices. This is particularly evident with the ‘high-pitched bonang’ (the rincik). At odds with Sundanese practices today—where it typically plays octaves on the off-beats in what is known as kemprangan—Tiersot assigns it two tasks, first in charge of the melody during the slow section (in unison with the rebab) and later performing a series of rapid notes heard ‘above the other instruments’ in the fast section (Ex. 1, first stave).⁵⁷ This latter procedure, called gumek, is usually associated with the low-pitched bonang today. However, in 1889 this instrument only played single notes on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th beats, without interlocking with its high-pitched counterpart (Ex. 1, fourth stave).⁵⁸ The role of the gambang is intriguing as well. Tiersot transcribes it only performing the aforementioned kemprangan (Ex. 1, third stave), an uncommon technique for this instrument, which, instead, as both hands can wander with agility over its wide register, usually serves a prominent melodic and embellishing function.⁵⁹ Were the roles of the instruments interchanged in 1889, or is it simply that Tiersot captured only a single minute out of the four hours daily over the six-month duration of the exhibition? The question remains unsolved.

ex. 1.

‘Thème de danse’. Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 41. From top to bottom, the five staves correspond, according to Tiersot’s descriptions, to high-pitched bonang (1st), rebab (2nd), gambang and saron-barong (3rd), low-pitched bonang and gongs (4th), and tambour and sistre (5th)

The scarcity of sources on Sundanese gamelan during the nineteenth century makes it challenging to determine if the musical procedures in Paris 1889 did correspond with those common in Sunda at the time. Nonetheless, insights from a figure closely linked to Tiersot, Léon Pillaut, who wrote two pivotal articles in 1887 and 1889, strengthen the suspicion that the procedures described by Tiersot were specific to the exhibition. Pillaut’s observations about the rapid notes played by the gambang and the accompanying role of the bonang align with current practices in Sundanese music, yet contrast sharply with Tiersot’s accounts.⁶⁰ It is plausible to argue that the Sundanese workers at the kampong had to adapt their performance to the available instruments and to the limitations imposed by some of them being non-professional musicians. Moreover, they probably had to accommodate the need to accompany dancers from a different cultural background. Communication between the four Javanese dancers and these musicians would also have been difficult, given the profound linguistic differences between Sundanese and Javanese.⁶¹

At this point, it is inevitable to ponder the kind of spectacle that could emerge from such a convergence of traditions. Descriptive reports from spectators help to retrace some of the scenic aspects of the 1889 show. However, new contradictions quickly arise. The interchangeable terminology, which sometimes refers ambiguously to both the dancers and the genres they performed, has spurred various speculations to this day. For instance, since the Javanese dancers were often referred to as serimpis or bedhayas, did they perform classical courtly repertory? Were they simply bayadères, as they were occasionally labelled, re-enacting supposedly seductive behaviours towards an imagined sultan? By examining the inconsistencies in terminology within the cultural context of the performers in 1889, we aim to disentangle these uncertainties.

A text from the archives of the Mangkunegaran Palace in Surakarta—already translated and discussed by Jean-Pierre Chazal in 2002—is of invaluable help here.⁶² It provides relevant first-hand data about the items sent from the court: alongside ten masks and a set of forty-one wayang kulit puppets, the first page of this text describes an array of costumes, jewels, and accessories corresponding to eleven specific wayang wong male and female theatre characters.⁶³ Did these properties serve for the representation of stories using the codes and practices of wayang wong as performed in this Javanese court at that time? Was it instead, considering all the performers were women, an enactment of legends in the recently created langendriyan opera-dance genre?

Further information in the second page of that text, implicitly confirmed by sporadic testimonies from Parisian sources, allows us to shed new light on this issue. The starting point is the very structure of the programme, the core of which was initially highlighted by Annegret Fauser:⁶⁴ a ‘dance from Solo’ accompanied by ‘gamelan song from Bandung’ (the capital of the Sunda region), followed by a ‘dance from Bandung’.⁶⁵ In the next two sections we delve into observer accounts of both pieces in order to bring to the surface the nature of the repertory and the specificities of the performance practices carried out.

scene i. a melancholic mangkunegaran fashion show: four javanese dancers to the sundanese song dahonn-maas

The spectacle begins. After tuning its strings, the rebab starts chanting.⁶⁶ On its last notes, as if signalling the dancers, a percussive cadence gives way to ‘a kind of slow, plaintive moan’,⁶⁷ over which the four young female dancers approach the bamboo stage. After a gesture of reverence towards the audience from the four girls, the dance, accompanied now by the whole orchestra, begins: ‘lente, grave et mystérieuse’,⁶⁸ mostly made of ‘postures hiératiques’ and ‘noblement rythmées’,⁶⁹ where feet, often anchored to the floor, move ‘with infinite sweetness, with slow steps, skimming the ground with their toes’.⁷⁰ This quiescence of the feet and the impassivity of the face harmonizes with the upper limbs in their ‘slow, mournful contortions of the wrists, hands held in the air and fingers spread like ghosts’.⁷¹ Whining voices, like ‘distressed cat meows’, but ‘with sacramental volubility’, randomly emerge from the back of the stage, awakening those spectators that, eventually, have succumbed to boredom.⁷² The pace quickens and, suddenly, the music stops.⁷³ The four girls greet the audience and leave.

Tiersot himself and several other sources of the time present the music that accompanied this first dance either with the original title, Dahonn-Maas (‘Gold leaf’) or with its French translation, La Feuille d’or.⁷⁴ Unfortunately, no Sundanese piece with that name seems to exist today,⁷⁵ but the introduction by the rebab and the fragments for bronze instruments transcribed by Tiersot are exquisitely Sundanese, as Sumarsam has argued.⁷⁶ The piece was perceived as melancholic,⁷⁷ ‘plus bruyant que brillant’,⁷⁸ and featuring a ‘mélodie triste et monotone’.⁷⁹ In some listeners, however, this could arouse a special charm:

Imagine a melody from another world, elusive, and yet penetrating, of mobile rhythms in a psalmodic and sacred monotony, translated into the sound of muffled bells, dampened strings, softened woods, attenuated gongs and cymbals … This music of minor impression… seems to come from distant paradises, where, around the blessed, burn eternal perfumes in inexhaustible incense-burners.⁸⁰

If for the Sundanese musicians and the Javanese dancers this extravagant performing format was completely unusual, its artistic result was no less unfamiliar to Western audiences. But since gamelan musical practices were hardly understood, attention mostly fell on the dancers, their costumes, make-up, finger movements, wrist contortions, and flying scarves.⁸¹ Of course, all kinds of imaginative projections of the harem fed the exoticist expectations of onlookers.⁸² As Henri Lavedan wrote: ‘their young and firm chest lifts the velvet and the gold pendants which cover it, and, seeing them like this, walking, sliding, passing, ironing, so serious in their exquisite and interminable carrousel …, we have the delightful impression of an Asian minuet danced … under the despotic and jaded eye of a Louis XV of the yellow race’.⁸³

As for the specific genre performed, it is difficult to draw conclusions based on the extant iconography, which generally depicts four women on stage in four different costumes—two male and two female—moving simultaneously in a graceful manner (see Pl. 4). Audience testimonies, on the other hand, do not manage to avoid certain incongruities related to the costumes and the roles played by the dancers. It might be too presumptuous to expect that Parisian spectators were aware of the implications of the terms they used to refer to the dancers, considering that they often borrowed them from previous publications. However, a few observations on the issue can shed light, at least, on what did not happen on the stage, helping to clarify those inconsistences.

pl. 4.

‘Les Danseuses du Kampong Javanais à l’Esplanade des Invalides.’ Huard, Livre d’or, hors-texte after 591

For instance, contemporary sources often refer to these dancers as bedhaya or serimpi, but neither their costumes, performance situation, nor social status would have deemed it suitable to define them (or their dance) with these two terms. As discussed earlier, the performers were batik workers, and their personal names, reported in the archives of Prince Roland Bonaparte, confirm this modest origin:⁸⁴ they lack the honorific titles typical of dancers directly serving the court, who are the only ones to be considered bedhaya or serimpi. The dances themselves would only be categorized as bedhaya if there were nine performers, or serimpi if there were four, all wearing identical costumes and performing the same choreography.⁸⁵ In fact, it was Bonaparte himself who assumed that the dance in Paris was serimpi. This assumption, however, stemmed from a misreading of 1817 Thomas Raffles’s description of the Javanese dance categories and its costumes, which Bonaparte largely paraphrased in his article.⁸⁶

The Mangkunegaran Archive text of 10 October 1929, although clarifying the specific theatrical costumes provided by the monarch, only creates confusion. The text mentions the term wireng—warrior dances in which battles are symbolized in pairs—specifically referring to the character Bondobaja.⁸⁷ However, although the iconography consistently presents one of the typical headdresses of this character, it does not seem likely that a wireng dance was performed, since this would have involved the use of weapons in some segment of the choreography.⁸⁸

The same text, when referring to the female cast, also makes use of the word langendrijo. As Sumarsam already pointed out, it is unlikely that it was properly langendriyan since, in this genre, the dancers take turns in performing sung dialogues while standing motionless, and there is no evidence of this in Paris.⁸⁹ Thus, the term could have related to the workers from Gotlieb’s factory who, during the 1880s, were involved in the practice of langendriyan—a genre whose scenes, always performed by women, are based on the legend of Damarwulan.⁹⁰ Indeed, according to some sources of the time, this first dance could have been intended to represent an episode starring the characters Damarwulan and Menakjingga. The costumes of two of the dancers match these two male characters and the other two match those of Wahita and Puyengan, the two main female roles in the story. Moreover, the director of the kampong, Mr Bernard, had translated for Le Gaulois ‘the soft and sweet cantilena’—whose lyrics refer to a fragment of the story—as performed by one of the indigenous mandours, specifying that this song ‘should have accompanied this dance in his country’.⁹¹ But the Sundanese musicians could not accompany this elaborate genre of opera dance. Anyway, who would care? The Soerabaijasch Handelsblad, when announcing that the dancers were leaving for the exhibition, did not hesitate to affirm untroubledly that ‘without a director, not much will come of their play, which also involves acting, but they perform for an audience that does not understand one thing or another’.⁹²

Considering it was already an extravagance to pair a Javanese dance with Sundanese music, it is not far-fetched to assume that the supposedly courtly dances were subject, on this occasion, to the display of costumes and accessories from an opulent court that also wanted to put its noble stamp on the spectacle. Indeed, during the years of the Paris exhibition, Mangkunegara V was experimenting with new aesthetics in theatrical costumes and enriching them with new fabrics, gold, and precious stones.⁹³ There is no doubt that the attitudes and moves of the dancers adhered closely to courtly conventions of the time. The sixteen graceful sketches embellishing Lavedan’s chapter for La Revue illustrée meticulously capture many poses that remain integral to classical Javanese dances today (see Pl. 5).⁹⁴ However, the often-recalled ‘aristocratic’ Javanese dance of 1889 might well have been, without further ado, a sort of parade where the young ‘petites idoles’, accompanied by the Sundanese piece Dahonn-Maas, displayed the latest fashions and complements designed by Prince Mangkunegara V.

pl. 5.

Three sketches from Lavedan’s ‘Les petites javanaises’ (43–8), depicting Javanese dance poses. From left to right: tanjak kanan (legs), featuring tawing (left arm) and mingkis kain (right hand); ingsetan (legs), with both hands performing menjangan ranggah; and ula nglangi (left leg), with both arms in kapang-kapang position, while right hand features njimpit sampur

scene ii. rhythm meets movement: vani-vani and a ketuk tilu pantomime of love

In Paris, however, the Sundanese gamelan not only accompanied the dancers from Surakarta, but also the ‘dance from Bandung’ mentioned in the text of Mangkunegaran. This second piece, ‘moins sérieuse, moins classique’ than the previous one,⁹⁵ was performed by a man and a woman (in this case Sundanese), dressed in ordinary clothes.⁹⁶ It was recounted by Tiersot as the ‘dance of the people’, emphasizing that they enjoyed it particularly ‘both from a musical and choreographic point of view’, being most often presented by the musicians as an ‘example of their music’.⁹⁷

So far, the scholarly literature has not suggested any hypotheses regarding what this second dance might have been.⁹⁸ However, contemporary testimonies allow us to advance a proposal: based on the actions and movements carried out by the performers, and the particular dialogue between music and dance, it could have been what is known today, as well as in 1889, as ketuk tilu. Originating as a fertility rite but evolving into pure entertainment during the nineteenth century, ketuk tilu is a popular genre where a professional singing-dancing woman, traditionally called ronggeng, dances alternately with the men present at the event.⁹⁹

In fact, some critics in 1889 insistently noted it as a love scene during which the couple performed a series of seduction games.¹⁰⁰ Emilia Pardo Bazán describes the woman’s attitudes as those of a ‘ramera’ (a harlot),¹⁰¹ which corresponds to the figure of the ronggeng being linked to prostitution. Tiersot also recalls this theme: ‘the dance, far from assuming a general character, is composed solely of the figures and movements of the two dancers, the man and the woman chasing each other and constantly fleeing, following a motif as old as humanity, and which we find in the popular traditions of all races’.¹⁰²

Another previously unmentioned source consistently supports the idea that this second dance was a sample of ketuk tilu. René de Pont-Jest, a French journalist and naval officer, had the chance to attend such performances in the north of Sunda. There he could witness how the ‘public dancer’ and one of the participants provoked each other until the male ‘uttering a cry of triumph, took his dancer into his arms, to disappear with her’. According to Pont-Jest, Paris’s spectacle was ‘a very timid pastiche of the passionate choreography’ he had seen during his travels.¹⁰³ Yet, spectators often observed a certain physical proximity and intimacy between the male and female dancers. Pougin refers to this kind of interaction: ‘This pursuit, often graceful, of the man and the woman, this alternation of coming together and moving apart of either sex, ultimately leading to a definitive union, bringing us the truly human and passionate element.’¹⁰⁴ Illustrations of the time allow us to observe these characteristic interactions of ketuk tilu (see Pl. 6), such as the nangkis position of the woman’s hand, symbolizing her rejection of the man (behind her) during their flirtation.¹⁰⁵

pl. 6.

Nangkis position of the hand in ‘Tandak. Danse Populaire’. Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 4

Although attributing an improvised character to the poses and actions carried out by the dancers—who apparently did not follow any fixed choreography—sources often emphasize a strong connection between music and movement, describing the musical accompaniment in ‘intimate relationship with the dance’.¹⁰⁶ This observation is quite significant, especially considering the continuous fluctuation of tempo perceived throughout the piece.¹⁰⁷ Indeed, in ketuk tilu performances, music is inseparable from the action. The required ensemble is of small dimensions: three (tilu) small horizontal gongs (ketuk), along with a kendang and a kecrek, over which a melody can be performed by either a rebab, tarumpet, or singer. Indeed, the absence of many of Mundt’s instruments on the stage might not have been an obstacle for performing such a genre. Thus, the length of the structure can be decided spontaneously through a tight dialogue between the kendang and the dancers, always matching the interactions between the couple.

Two alternating main sections emerge from this double interplay: mincid and mencug.¹⁰⁸ In the mincid sections, the dancers walk around the stage in a regular and repetitive manner,¹⁰⁹ while the kendang plays in a stable tempo adjusting to the same metre as the bronze instruments. Mencug, in contrast, consists of a series of dynamic gestures and moves that conclude, simultaneous with the gong, with momentary poses. These frozen postures, reached through gradual changes in speed, serve as pauses between phrases. They are followed by a reduction in the density and volume of the sound, creating the sensation of an ephemeral ending. During mencug, the kendang and the kecrek enhance the movements of the dancers—synchronizing with them—creating an independent rhythmic layer that follows a different conception of tempo and adheres to other metrics, subdivisions, and accentuation.¹¹⁰

Descriptions from 1889 emphasize this alternation between dynamic sections—where dancers moved freely through the space—and static moments, where they became motionless. The pauses of the dancers were tailored by a gamelan that aligned in tempo and dynamics. Whether the interruptions were reached gradually or abruptly, they occurred fleetingly and recurrently, giving the spectators the impression of a dance ‘without end’.¹¹¹ There is a momentary stillness during the poses before resuming the action: ‘and yet the dance does not end with this energetic and eventful episode: it resumes its slow rhythm and, always decreasing, finally stops on a last note that we do not foresee, without concluding, leaving the attention suspended, the musical sense unfinished’.¹¹² American press recounts that ‘when musicians and dancers both came to a pause, the wonder still remained what it was all about’.¹¹³ Other viewers also stress the subtleties of this interaction:

The orchestra—the gamelan—plays more and more softly and hesitantly—and finally becomes mute. Man and woman stand opposite each other, bent backwards, the eyes half closed, fingertips pressed against the chest, knees and hips trembling. The music begins again: nothing but a long, mourning sound, growing and fading.¹¹⁴

If Dahonn-Maas had enchanted the audience with its plaintive melody, the music of this Sundanese dance was perceived as more rhythmical.¹¹⁵ According to Tiersot, the melody turned out to be of little prominence and the rebab was often overshadowed by the resonance of the other instruments.¹¹⁶ His overall impression was that the music showed ‘less effort and complications in its development’ as well as ‘more logic and clarity’.¹¹⁷ Yet the polyrhythms between bronze instruments and drums aroused the interest of the most attentive ears; it is well known that Debussy referenced the percussive rhythmic intricacy and counterpoint of ‘Javanese’ music, which would have reduced that of Palestrina to ‘child’s play’.¹¹⁸

Both Tiersot and Kernoa present this piece under the title of Vani-Vani.¹¹⁹ No ketuk tilu piece called Vani-Vani, though, seems to exist nowadays. However, a song called Wani-Wani, belonging to the courtly repertory known as lagu gede—literally ‘large song’—was compiled and transcribed by R. M. A. Koesoemadinata in the 1930s.¹²⁰ The obvious similarity between both titles should not lead to hasty conclusions, but there are some intriguing similarities between Koesoemadinata’s transcription (see Ex. 2, bb. 18–22 in particular) and the ‘rhythmical’ main theme of Vani-Vani transcribed by Tiersot (Ex. 3) and Kernoa (Ex. 4)—a point already made by Sumarsam, who collected various written and oral testimonies, with special attention to Henry Spiller’s research.¹²¹ In fact, the correspondences are reduced to just a fragment of Koesoemadinata’s lengthy transcription. Additionally, Wani-Wani, as other Sundanese songs, may be primarily defined by a specific sequence of structural pitches rather than melodic patterns, making it difficult to draw connections between the two songs.¹²²

ex. 2.

Fragment of Koesoemadinata’s transcription of Wani-wani, bb. 15–25. Transliterated from numeric Sundanese notation into Western notation by the authors

ex. 3.

‘Vani-vani’ (complete) as in Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 44

ex. 4.

‘Vanivani’, bb. 10–16. Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 7

Nevertheless, it does not seem far-fetched that a rendering of that Wani-Wani was performed in 1889, considering that Pangeran Sugih—the father of Pangeran Mekkah, the highest local authority in Sumedang (West Java) at the time of the exhibition—is acknowledged as the author of several works in the lagu gede repertory. One of these songs is precisely entitled Wani-Wani.¹²³ Indeed, the long structures of lagu gede have been traditionally used for tayuban dance, an aristocratic version of ketuk tilu.¹²⁴ The man who danced in Paris did not hold a noble title, and therefore it could not be a proper tayuban performance, but the interactions among dancers and musicians are the same in both versions. And while the amount of instruments displayed in 1889 was smaller than in the courtly ensembles used for tayuban, a simplification of texture could have made it possible to approach these aristocratic forms. In any case, there is no doubt that the second scene of the daily performance at the kampong reflected regional practices of the time. However, the dance transitioned from a social practice in Sundanese villages to a staged art form for Parisian spectators, thereby stripping ketuk tilu of its original context and function. In the following sections, we will delve into the musical specificities of these performances, drawing on the available contemporary transcriptions.

the sundanese revealed, the sundanese perceived

Many inaccurate conclusions about the sound of the gamelan in 1889 stem from the mistaken assumption regarding the musicians’ origins, often referred to as Javanese.¹²⁵ Although Westerners have used the term ‘Javanese’ to describe anything coming from the island of Java, at that time—and still today, in Indonesia—‘Javanese’ has usually referred not to the island as a whole, but just to its central and eastern regions. West Java is historically a different land and culture, commonly known as Sunda.¹²⁶ Today we know that the musicians came from Paroeng-Kuda, in the mountains of Parakan Salak, Sunda, but fair-goers in 1889 would not have been aware that many of the musical artefacts and procedures shown at the exposition related specifically to Sundanese identity. The angklung stands out as a prominent example, but other features were also present, as revealed by transcriptions.

Among them is a simple three-note pattern preceded by a rest, found in the few measures of Kernoa’s ‘Vanivani’ (see Ex. 5). This upbeat formula serves as the main rhythmic accompaniment in the mincid sections of ketuk tilu, where it is regularly repeated by bronze instruments, kendang, and kecrek. Frequently ignored in the literature on Sundanese gamelan and lacking formal terminology, it has been referred to as ‘high-low-high’ by Henry Spiller,¹²⁷ although the order of pitches can vary or be perceived differently. In fact, if more instruments than three ketuk are involved—as in the kampong setting—the emerging pitches are the result of confluences between the different strokes of various instruments played contrapuntally. Since this rhythmic ostinato is usually reinforced by the kecrek, it often blends into a single repeated sound. In one way or another, all the 1889 scores include such patterns—which we will now term ‘headless ostinato’—either descending, ascending, or repeating the same note. It appears as such in one of Tiersot’s fragments (see Ex. 6).

ex. 5.

Headless ostinato in ‘Vanivani’, bb. 5–8. Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 7

ex. 6.

Headless ostinato in ‘Thème de danse’ (bb. 5–8, 3rd stave). Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 41

This rhythmic element must have been very noticeable to the ears of the Parisians, although there are no specific comments about it in the first-hand accounts. It does, however, feature prominently in one of the most peculiar outcomes of listening to the kampong shows: ‘Danse Javanaise’, composed by Louis Benedictus and published in 1889 in Les Musiques bizarres à l’Exposition (see Ex. 7). It also constitutes the unifying element in the final brief piece of another fanciful publication of that same year, Danses et marches javanaises, a short suite featuring three pieces by Ludovic Ratz (see Ex. 8).¹²⁸

ex. 7.

Headless ostinato in ‘Danse Javanaise’, bb. 20–2. Benedictus, Les Musiques bizarres à l’Exposition, 10–11

ex. 8.

Headless ostinato in Ratz, Danses et marches javanaises III, 3

Tiersot, Kernoa, Benedictus, and Ratz all agree on another noteworthy feature: the transcription of double triplets over a single note at the end of melodic phrases, a pattern often notated across different registers simultaneously.¹²⁹ Referred to by Tiersot as ‘one of the favourite rhythmic procedures of the Javanese’ which disrupts ‘in a singular way the regularity of the general movement’,¹³⁰ this practice remains common in present-day Sundanese music,¹³¹ while it is seldom used in Java.¹³² The repeated notes in triplets, sometimes called triul,¹³³ are typically played in unison by the entire ensemble. They serve as transitional elements between sections, anticipating events such as the entrance of vocalists or the actions and movements of dancers. This practice is clearly audible in the wax cylinder recordings made by Benjamin I. Gilman in 1893, during one of the gamelan performances at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.¹³⁴

Parisian transcriptions render this pattern in a very graphic way. It is simple and direct, in the case of Kernoa (see Ex. 9). Tiersot offers us more intricate details; in his most surprising transcription, whose rhythmical complexity recalls Stravinsky, repeated notes appear in four diverse ternary patterns within a single bar (see the second bar of Ex. 10). Throughout Benedictus’s ‘Danse Javanaise’, triplets appear three times (bb. 10, 16, and 44) before becoming, in an extended version, the final peroration (bb. 80–1; see Ex. 11) that leads to the fortissimo conclusion, an artistic solution that makes of this transcription a truly concert piece.

Even more creative is Ratz. He distributes the triplets throughout the first of his Danses (bb. 9, 16, 24–5, 32–3, 50), assigning them different roles, from accompaniment patterns to brilliant rhythmic passages that involve more complex harmonies (see Ex. 12).

ex. 9.

Double triplets in ‘Vanivani’, bb. 1–9. Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 7

ex. 10.

‘Thème de danse avec le contrepoint et les autres parties accompagnantes’, bb. 3–4. Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 41. The five staves correspond, from top to bottom, to high-pitched bonang (1st), rebab (2nd), gambang and saron-barong (3th), low-pitched bonang and gongs (4th), and tambour and sistre (5th)

ex. 11.

Double triplets in ‘Danse javanaise’, bb. 79–82. Benedictus, Les Musiques bizarres à l’Exposition, 17

ex. 12.

Ratz, Danses et marches javanaises I (left: bb. 32–3; right: bb. 49–50), 2–3

‘if debussy had heard madenda during 1889’

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the gamelan was still relatively inaccessible in France,¹³⁵ although Tiersot did record observing the gamelan display at the Conservatoire National de Musique.¹³⁶ There were several publications available that analysed tuning systems such as pelog and slendro, as well as some of the pathet (modes) built on them.¹³⁷ Yet the statements made by Tiersot on the nature and procedures of the Javanese musical system during the Exposition Universelle and his allusion to one single scale—identified by him as the typical one ‘in China and the entire Far East’¹³⁸— suggest he may not have been aware of these scholarly studies:

It is a mistake that certain listeners, too biased by current misconceptions, believe they recognize intervals different from those of our Western scale, particularly the quarter tones. The Far Eastern scale not only knows no intervals smaller than the semitone, but it does not even use the semitone.¹³⁹

However, in the specific case of Sundanese music, the situation is more complex, and the fact that the 1889 gamelan was Sundanese is, in this sense, especially important. If a Javanese gamelan had been brought to Paris, the tuning systems of the instruments, whether fixed or variable, would have been pelog or slendro in any case. Sundanese music, on the other hand, features additional scales such as the one known today as madenda (or sorog, according to the terminology of the late-nineteenth century).¹⁴⁰ By including two intervals of a minor second (see Ex. 13), this scale did not conform with the expected pentatonicism, being the perceived epitome of the ‘oriental’ in music.

Actually, in his commentary on Dahonn-Maas (Ex. 14), Tiersot observed that in the rebab part ‘notes are heard outside the range of five tones in which the gamelan instruments are tuned (B♭ and E♭)’.¹⁴¹ But this fact did not lead him to reconsider his certainty, preferring to assume a ‘foreign influence’ for these two notes.¹⁴² A closer examination of the transcription clearly reveals that the frequently mentioned ‘melancholic’ and ‘plaintive’ melody accompanying the Javanese girls’ dance was, in fact, composed of the notes of the madenda scale (see Ex. 14).

ex. 13.

Madenda, incorporating Sundanese modern numerical notation

ex. 14.

‘La Feuille d’or (Dahonn-Maas), mélodie de danse’. Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 42

In the context of the Sundanese gamelan—where madenda (or pelog) can be played by variable pitch instruments like the rebab, while the bronze instruments are tuned to salendro—another phenomenon tends to occur: various laras (tuning systems) can coexist within the same piece, not only alternately, but also simultaneously. From this possibility arises the concept of surupan, which establishes links between different laras by maintaining certain common notes called tumbuk.¹⁴³ This was precisely one of the greatest challenges for attendees of the 1889 kampong javanais performances, and one of the most overlooked to date.

In fact, Tiersot’s transcriptions bring us even closer to this Sundanese tradition. As shown in Ex. 10 above, during the 1889 exhibition, Tiersot assigned the pitches C–D–E–G–A to the bronze instruments of the gamelan. Simultaneously, the melody—in which C and E were lowered to B♭ and E♭—was played by the rebab, as Tiersot himself declares.¹⁴⁴ The rebab remained anchored to the gamelan, though, through coincidence on three notes (A, G, and D, the so-called tumbuk), also played by the bronze instruments (Ex. 15). This specific superposition of scales is nowadays referred to by the scholarly community as laras salendro surupan madenda ti 4 = Tugu.¹⁴⁵

ex. 15.

Slendro (salendro, in Sundanese spelling) and madenda scales. Squares mark the common notes (tumbuk) in the so-called laras salendro surupan madenda ti 4 = Tugu

In her 1977 doctoral thesis, often cited in recent texts, Sue Carole de Vale wrote ‘If Debussy had heard madenda during 1889 …’, assuming that the Amsterdam 1883 and Chicago 1893 gamelans were tuned to the madenda scale, and so likewise the one in 1889.¹⁴⁶ However, our frequency measurements at the MARKK conclusively confirm that the bronze instruments and the gambang used in 1889 were tuned in salendro. And yet it is certain that Debussy heard madenda in Paris. It was played by the rebab, though, giving rise to that peculiar superposition of scales, one of the most captivating characteristics of Sundanese music. No hexatonic scales, no pentatonic scales. If we were to look for similarities with the European avant-garde movements at the turn of the twentieth century, it would be more appropriate perhaps to speak of bitonality. The next section explores the various ways in which the Parisian audience accommodated the co-existence of diverse tuning systems and scales within Western tempered and tonal conventions, highlighting their struggle to discern the exact pitches to which the gongs and keyed instruments were tuned. In each case, their approaches blended with personal imaginative contributions, resulting in unique renderings of Sundanese music.

fantasizing sundanese musical processes

For over a century, ‘oriental’ music had been generically associated with the scale known since 1864 as ‘pentatonic’, laying the foundations of what Jeremy Day-O’Connell defined as the ‘pentatonic tradition’.¹⁴⁷ However, when listening to the actual instruments as they are preserved today, any attempt to translate their pitches into equal temperament proves unrealistic.

Danièle Pistone noted, ‘an evocation of the oriental scales in equal temperament is a priori false and makes any translation impossible’.¹⁴⁸ Tiersot and Kernoa leave us an excellent example of this. While agreeing on a ‘pentatonic’ tuning of the bronze instruments—consisting of major seconds and minor thirds—they differ in the key signatures they use for their pieces. This inconsistency may have a psychoacoustic basis: the inharmonic spectra of the bronze instruments often mislead the ear, hindering a clear perception of the fundamental frequency.¹⁴⁹ Moreover—and this is something that we can finally ensure today—the far-from-tempered tuning of the 1889 instruments makes it impossible to establish that distribution of major seconds and minor thirds. Indeed, although the frequencies of most of the instruments could be roughly transcribed as C♯–E–F♯–G♯–B, there is an enormous deviation of some isolated keys and gongs, which in some cases can sound closer to D, D♯, F, G, A♯, or C.¹⁵⁰ Thus, it is possible that, depending on the instrument—or even its specific register—three different pentatonic scales (understood as subsets of a Western major scale) can be heard.¹⁵¹

In this regard, it is not surprising that, while Tiersot assigns the bronze instruments the notes C–D–E–G–A (Ex. 16), Kernoa transcribes the corresponding figuration using the notes G–A–B–D–E (Ex. 17). Strikingly, this divergence does not occur with the instruments that have flexible tuning. Both Kernoa and Tiersot write the introductions of the pieces—which, according to the latter, were played by the rebab—using the same absolute pitches and similar sequences of intervals, albeit with a significantly different rhythm.¹⁵² Tiersot had written the rebab introduction twice, first as a separate fragment and then followed by the beginning of Dahonn-Maas (see Ex. 18).

The overall absolute pitches of both the introduction and the beginning of the melody (bb. 1–4) largely coincide with those transcribed by Kernoa in the fragment he calls ‘Gamelang’ (Ex. 19). However, where Tiersot had heard a B flat, Kernoa hears a B natural. Thus, madenda’s distinctive interval of a minor second having been omitted in favour of a major one, the character of those three bars becomes a new one. No dissonance or clash is apparent solely from the score: a pure anhemitonic pentatonic scale dominates throughout.

This transcription, a fiction in itself, juxtaposes musical fragments of diverse nature onto a single staff: after the introduction (bb. 1–4), a segment of the melody of Dahonn-Maas is shown (bb. 5–11), interspersed by triplets on repeated notes (bb. 8–9) and followed by the fast figurations typically assigned to the high-pitched bonang by Tiersot (bb. 12–15). A similar simplification is evident in Kernoa’s ‘Vanivani’ (see Ex. 20) where the introduction reappears (bb. 1–4), followed by the ‘headless ostinato’ (bb. 5–8), triplets (b. 9), a melodic fragment reminiscent of Tiersot’s interpretation of the Vani-Vani melody (bb. 10–16),¹⁵³ and shimmering figurations (bb. 17–23). Nevertheless, a ‘foreign’ C note emerges during the melodic section in this piece (bb. 10, 11, and 16). It could reflect a note played by either the rebab or the tarumpet, the latter being an instrument also present in 1889, and traditionally related to ketuk tilu.¹⁵⁴

ex. 16.

High-pitched bonang motif in ‘Formule de contrepoint javanais’. Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 40

ex. 17.

‘Gamelang’, bb. 12–16. Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 7

ex. 18.

‘La Feuille d’or (Dahonn-Maas), mélodie de danse’, bb. 1–5. Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 42

ex. 19.

‘Gamelang’ (complete). Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 7

Louis Benedictus’s piano transcriptions represent a bigger step towards the composition of autonomous works, although they draw on material gathered from direct listening. In the second of the pieces, ‘Danse javanaise’ (see Ex. 21), surprisingly forgotten as a Debussyan antecedent until Richard Mueller and then Annegret Fauser took notice of it,¹⁵⁵ the author employs a key signature with four sharps, with an additional sharp on A indicated throughout the score. Still, we find the melody of Dahonn-Maas (bb. 5–9), the triplet pattern (bb. 10, 16, 44, and 80–1), and a persistent figure derived from the ‘headless ostinato’ (bb. 20ff.), which reappears later in the central section (bb. 46ff.), now profoundly varied and strongly accentuated.

A fascinating aspect of this transcription is the attention given to two other elements: frequent tempo changes (poco accel., molto rit., molto accel., etc.) and variety in articulation and accentuation corresponding to each new rhythmic-melodic figure, as if the piano intended to evoke the different resonance of various instruments (non legato sempre, b. 5; legg. stacc., b. 12; p ma marcato, b. 20; très rythmé, b. 46).

Even more interesting is how Benedictus deals with scales. As would happen eleven years later with his composition Gamelan Goedjin (Danse javanaise),¹⁵⁶ where the pelog tuning of the gamelan at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 was completely ignored, the madenda scale in Dahonn-Maas is also disregarded in favour of a pentatonic one (B–C♯–D♯–F♯–G♯). However, a second pentatonic scale is present—that of F♯—by adding an accidental sharp to A at the beginning of the piece. Whether Benedictus intended to juxtapose two pentatonic scales or superimpose them—implicitly hearing that A♯ throughout the piece—remains uncertain.

ex. 20.

‘Vanivani’ (complete). Kernoa, Programme explicatif illustré, 7

ex. 21.

‘Danse javanaise’, bb. 1–17, in Benedictus, Les Musiques bizarres à l’Exposition, 9–10

Another intriguing piano piece based on the music at the kampong javanais was composed by Tiersot himself: the first movement of his Suite Rapsodique sur des thèmes javanais et arabes, published in La Revue universelle illustrée in 1889, explicitly entitled ‘La Feuille d’Or (Dahonn-Maas), Danse Javanaise’ (see Ex. 22). Without ever abandoning its flavour as a fin de siècle salon piece—in what seems a sentimental arrangement of his own transcription included in Musiques pittoresques—the composition blends scales and keys in a collage that does not fail to transmit the tonal uncertainty while offering a surprising variety of vertical and horizontal harmonic confluences.

ex. 22.

Tiersot, ‘La Feuille d’Or (Dahonn-Maas), Danse Javanaise’, bb. 1–21

By stressing the notes of a pentatonic scale (E–F♯–G♯–B–C♯)—through elaborated melodic turns not previously seen in his transcriptions of the rebab introduction (bb. 1–4)—Tiersot recalls the salendro tuning of the gamelan right from the start of the composition, in this case roughly corresponding to the tuning of Mundt’s high-pitched bonang. But soon he takes us into a first section of the theme, meticulously adhering to his earlier transcription of Dahonn-Maas in Musiques pittoresques (see Ex. 14 above), albeit transposed a major third higher. The accompaniment serves as a comfortable mattress for a diatonic melody crafted within the tonal framework of F sharp minor. However, with the introduction of G natural in bar 16, it becomes apparent that Tiersot is dealing with a madenda scale—implicitly present from the beginning but cleverly concealed by omitting the notes E, A, and G♯.

An orchestral re-exposition of the melody (bb. 20–2) is framed by two sets of triplets, functioning here as a modulatory device throughout the piece, akin to tumbuk, or common notes between tuning systems. The continuation is no less interesting. The inclusion of D♯ and B♯ (bb. 25–7) bring us into the new key of C sharp minor, unexpectedly echoing the madenda passage from bar 16 transposed up a major second (bb. 28–31). Even more compellingly, the same madenda scale persists with the notes C♯, D♯, and F♯ (b. 32), marking the start of a genuine recapitulation of the main theme. These three notes are shared by two different madenda scales: one spanning bars 28–33 and the other extending from bar 31 onwards. All this occurs without departing from a clearly tonal structure, to which the ‘Javanese’ inspiration (here, for once, far from any pentatonicism) only brings a certain sense of vagueness, epitomized by the blurred texture of the final F sharp minor chord.

This tendency towards interval normalization finds its most extreme example in Ratz’s Danses et marches javanaises. If the second piece of the suite reflects the constant shaking of the angklung and the third (already quoted as Ex. 8 above) consists of a repetitive two-handed ostinato—probably aiming to evoke the rhythmicality of Vani-vani—the first one clearly shows Dahonn-Maas. The overall structure aligns with that described by Tiersot and other listeners: an introduction played by the rebab, followed by the main melody. Then a transition to a faster tempo, explicitly indicated here by the ‘poco piu animato’. The final section, more extensive and elaborate, recalls the semiquaver pattern of the high-pitched bonang, interspersed with varied contrapuntal formulas and triplets in broken chords.

The melodic material of Dahonn-Maas is unmistakably recognizable with its three consecutive descending notes and the dotted crotchet on the first beat (Ex. 23, b. 5). However, the treatment of pitches and keys is quite compelling. Both melody and accompaniment are constructed on a pentatonic scale A–B–C♯–E–F♯, using a three-sharp signature. This major-key mood, nevertheless, carries a minor-mode sensation, conveyed by the persistent B in the bass line, in a kind of implicit B minor chord (although it always lacks the third).

ex. 23.

Ratz, Danses et marches javanaises I (bb. 1–12), 2

The final ‘gong’ on the note A (a major second below B, b. 9) recalls Tiersot’s impression that the note of the lower-pitched instruments of the gamelan was ‘foreign to the key of the music’, obliterating, in his opinion, the possibility of any tonal relation.¹⁵⁷ Here, by contrast, there is no doubt: this A serves as the tonic of the scale in which the piece is conceived, which, in fact, will conclude with an unequivocal A major chord.

Throughout this ‘transcription’, everything remains gentle and consonant. No pitch clashes occur during the composition—as the notes characteristic of a madenda scale are never introduced over the pentatonic foundation—and still, an ‘exotic’ element floods the mood. It was perfect for a piece available for sale for 1 franc directly at the kampong javanais, as specified on the cover itself (Pl. 7).

pl. 7.

Cover of Danses et marches javanaises. Transcrites pour le piano par L. Ratz

the exotic on sale

Just as the piano pieces were suitable for the Parisians’ domestic reality, so the islanders and their performances fulfilled the need to escape from it. However, as evidenced above, the whole operation was still the result of disparate decisions taken to address every new arising obstacle. Marieke Bloembergen has highlighted that there was an overall lack of cohesive ideas when displaying the Dutch colonies during international exhibitions.¹⁵⁸ This was especially true for the music and dance spectacles, which, for the merchants of the colonies, primarily served as a marketing strategy to boost the sales of coffee and tea. As we have seen, the legendary and influential ‘Javanese’ gamelan itself—to which posterity would devote many pages despite not being able to study it directly—was the result of a skilful move by Gustav Mundt, who managed to deliver it free of charge to the museum in his hometown. He simply had to put the instruments on a train at Paroeng-Kuda station, and ‘the exhibition’ would do the rest, sending them to their final destination, which was Hamburg, not Paris.

What Tiersot, Debussy, and thousands of others heard as ‘authentic Javanese music’ was primarily a product of logistics. Dancers, costumes, musical genres, and instrumental abilities became intertwined in Paris without any significant cohesive or overarching artistic vision. However, the prominent position of the gamelan in the display of the Dutch colonies proved to be successful: the involvement of bronze instruments, Javanese princes, and supposedly aristocratic dancers not only boosted the credit of the conquest but also produced extremely positive results for the promoters. Sales were consistent, and more shows were deployed at subsequent fairs.¹⁵⁹ ‘The exhibits themselves became a kind of tradition’, recalled Burton Benedict.¹⁶⁰ In fact, this assemblage of Sundanese and Javanese artists remained a standard practice until the exposition in Tokyo in 1970.¹⁶¹

The kampong javanais—a troubling human showcase where ‘natives’ were on display for months under the gaze of visitors—was the ideal setting for all this. The diorama of bamboo architecture evoked a connection with primordial nature, while solemn movements, jewellery, and silk provided evidence of a sophisticated, sensual, and mysterious culture. No doubt it was an extravagant show, far removed from the practices that any of the performers would have carried out in their homeland, but the elements that could most captivate the European imagination were there. The dreamlike sonorities produced by gamelan instruments—now known to have been of excellent quality—created an evocative soundscape that seemed to match orientalist reveries and, most importantly, were able to ‘charm delightfully the ears’.¹⁶² Steps and gestures could not resemble any courtly or mystic Javanese dance, but no one in the audience was able to notice it: the enchantment was generated by the very presence of the young, adorned bodies with saffron-hued skins, ready for consumption.

It is true that, from the harmonic point of view, the music of the gamelan was perceived as precarious. In a time when notions of progress and evolution in music were linked to the development of harmonic structures, the fact that Sundanese music did not exhibit a progressive transformation of tonal areas was considered simple, monotonous, and ultimately ‘primitive’. Tiersot himself, so sincerely curious and so attentive in describing every aspect of what he heard at the kampong, proved incapable of detaching himself from his prejudices. He did not hesitate to attribute the vertical harmonic constructions of the Sundanese to the mere whim of chance: ‘I doubt very much that there are any rules in this country concerning the combinations of simultaneous sounds.’¹⁶³ But it is no less true that the musical processes of the Sundanese were praised for their textural complexity and rhythmic intricacies, as well as exhibiting a fascinating connection between sound and movement.

However, the enigmatic singularity of the tuning proved largely incomprehensible. Even spectators well-versed in music theory showed their inability to understand and appreciate the most characteristic peculiarities of the Sundanese music performed in Paris—and it could hardly have been otherwise. New stimuli were forced into existing concepts and the ‘pentatonic’ scale permeated everything, obscuring the presence of the madenda scale and some fascinating Sundanese musical processes, such as the surupan, which were subsequently neglected.

It is significant that in an exhibition in which both critics and organizers placed great emphasis on local specificities, as Jann Pasler has pointed out, regional practices were often misinterpreted as inauthentic, or simply overlooked.¹⁶⁴ A popular ketuk tilu dance was performed—even regarded as the ‘real’ dance of the ‘ordinary’ people—but it did not capture the attention received by the luxurious costumes worn by the four Javanese dancers. In fact, the Sundanese dance couple faded into oblivion. If the visual element, as Raymond Corbey has sharply argued, played a central role in the processes of appropriating otherness at universal exhibitions, the reception these performers received is a perfect illustration of this recurring reality: ‘their own voices and views … were neutralized’.¹⁶⁵

It is difficult to say whether these specificities insinuated themselves into the minds of those who attended the kampong shows, or at least hinted at the suspicion that behind the cliché of ‘the Orient’ were hidden the ‘multiple Orients’ of which Ralph Locke wrote.¹⁶⁶ But the whole spectacle attracted attention and became part of many people’s imagination, ‘set[ing] the stage for generations of javaphiles to come’, in Henry Spiller’s words.¹⁶⁷ Those gamelan performances became not only a major attraction during the fair but also the starting point of a series of fantasies that accompany us to this day, often fed by a curious web of clichés about scales, instruments, textures, and systems of sound organization of which only a small circle of scholars has any consistent knowledge.

Leaving aside the ethnographic pretensions that legitimized this display of the ‘exotic’ at world’s fairs, the gamelan shows at the kampong proposed a way in which the charm of the exhibition was inseparable from a format familiar to the European public: that of a café-chantant, and so much so that for the next Parisian exhibition in 1900, a Théâtre Exotique was built where Javanese dancers, also from Surakarta, performed alongside a series of stage curiosities from other distant worlds. However, the new staging format, stripped of its social and contextual dimension, did not offer the same kind of distinctive attraction as the 1889 spectacle. As a result, the long-awaited Javanese dances ended up being largely unnoticed, or were even disappointing to some viewers.¹⁶⁸

Transforming the exotic from a spectacle for the contemplation of ‘the Other’ into a business was also intended to drive tourism—a sector that was, indeed, pioneered by the same entrepreneur from Amsterdam who managed the logistics of the 1889 troupe, Martin Wolff.¹⁶⁹ If the exhibition could bring a corner of the island of Java to the heart of Paris, it was equally compelling to propose the reverse journey. An example of this reaction is Robert Godet, who so often accompanied Debussy on his repeated visits to the kampong. In 1896, he ventured to the court of Mangkunegaran to witness first-hand what had so enchanted him, leaving us with a fascinating and detailed account of the whole experience.¹⁷⁰ Godet, however, travelled to Surakarta and Yogyakarta, not to the mountains of Parakan Salak. For him, as for the rest of the fair-goers, the spell came from the courts of Central Java.

The same spell did not work the other way around. Endless working days under the mocking, tough, or indifferent gazes of passersby,¹⁷¹ freezing nights in the bamboo huts,¹⁷² grief over the sudden death of a group member,¹⁷³ and the prohibition on even walking along the Parisian boulevards,¹⁷⁴ did not seem worth the monthly 40 francs (80 for the dancers) and the daily applause.¹⁷⁵ Exploitation became harsher during the 1898 Exhibition of Women’s Labor in The Hague, to the point where the troupe even went on strike.¹⁷⁶ For the 1900 Exposition Universelle, the colonial government imposed strict terms and conditions to prevent the islanders from being exhibited again ‘as a herd of wild animals, this time at the Paris exhibition, from which they would return completely demoralized’.¹⁷⁷ But Sariem, Wakiem, Soekia, and Taminah, the four Javanese dancers, would not come back to Paris. The impresario of the 1900 Théâtre Exotique, overcome with disappointment, exclaimed: ‘Indeed, one is left astounded by such ingratitude! Did they think the French were not gallant enough, or perhaps too gallant?’¹⁷⁸ Javanese women, for their part, had expressed that ‘they find Europeans repugnant, because of the unpleasant odor they emit, even the most fragrant and clean ones’, as Pardo Bazán recounted. This was hardly surprising, concluded the Spanish writer, given that the Javanese bathe four times a day.¹⁷⁹

The fact that, even today, it is so common to refer to the 1889 gamelan as a ‘Javanese gamelan’ is in itself rather telling, almost an echo of those days when, in Paris, musicians from the mountains of Sunda were not always acknowledged for who they really were. The kampong javanais was dismantled on 22 October.¹⁸⁰ Thirty-one days later the troupe arrived in Batavia on the Princess Amalia and the musicians then took a train to Paroeng-Kuda.¹⁸¹ Afterwards, their performances largely faded from memory. Today, we know what their instruments looked like and have an approximate idea of how they might have sounded. The musical transcriptions of the time, along with the recently uncovered piano compositions by Ludovic Ratz and Julien Tiersot—though the latter are filtered through tempered tuning and fin de siècle salon tastes—further provide us with new insights into the musical practices exhibited during the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. ‘Headless ostinati’, one-note triplets in unison, madenda scale, and its particular overlap with salendro tuning now constitute fresh material to explore when searching for the fingerprints of those musicians or calling upon their Sundanese reverberances.

Footnotes

1

Marieke Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles: The Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies at the World Exhibitions, 1880–1931 (Singapore, 2006), 120–31.

2

Jean-Pierre Chazal, ‘“Grand Succès pour les exotiques”: Retour sur les spectacles javanais de l’Exposition Universelle de Paris en 1889’, Archipel, 63 (2002), 114–27; Sumarsam, Javanese Gamelan and the West (Rochester, NY, 2013), 92–103.

3

Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles, 132.

4

Chazal, ‘Grand Succès’, 115; Annegret Fauser, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (Rochester, NY, 2005), 168 and 180; and Sumarsam, Javanese Gamelan, 96–8.

5

A detailed description of these instruments will be presented in Ángela López-Lara and Luca Chiantore, ‘Hidden in Hamburg: Uncovering the Long-lost Gamelan of the 1889 Exposition Universelle’, Galpin Society Journal, 78 (2025).

6

Jann Pasler, ‘The Utility of Musical Instruments in the Racial and Colonial Agendas of Late Nineteenth-Century France’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 129 (2004), 24–76 at 73.

7

Fauser, Musical Encounters, 165–82.

8

Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles, 2.

9

Pierre Blanchard et al. (eds.), Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires (Liverpool, 2008), 1–49. On human exhibits and their role in colonial expansion see also Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and the World’s Fairs 1851–1939 (Manchester, 1988), 82–111.

10

On the inhumane treatment of the exhibited peoples from the Dutch East Indies during the exhibitions see Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles, 89, and Jan Willem Terwen, Gamelan in the 19th-Century Netherlands: An Encounter between East and West (Utrecht, 2009), 147.

11

Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles, 32.

12

Jann Pasler, ‘The Utility of Musical Instruments’; and ‘Theorizing Race in Nineteenth-Century France: Music as Emblem of Identity’, Musical Quarterly, 89 (2006), 459–504.

13

Blanchard, Human Zoos, 7.

14

Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère, ‘Between Knowledge and Spectacle: Exotic Women at International Exhibitions (Paris 1889 and 1900)’, in Rebecca Rogers and Myriam Boussahba-Bravard (eds.), Women in International and Universal Exhibitions, 1876–1937, Routledge Research in Gender and History, 28 (London, 2017), Kindle positions 4922–5041.

15

As early as 1816, Thomas Raffles brought two gamelans to England. In the decades after, a few more arrived in the Netherlands. See Terwen, Gamelan in the 19th-Century Netherlands, 24–6 and 39–40.

16

Ibid. 79–90.

17

That was the ensemble that allowed English scholars to delve into the mathematization of the tunings of the gamelan. See W. Stephen Mitchell, ‘Musical Instruments of the Javanese’, Journal of the Music Society of Arts, 30/1558 (29 Sept. 1882), 1019–21, and ‘Javanese Musical Instruments’, Journal of the Music Society of Arts, 30/1563 (3 Nov. 1882), 1072–3; Alexander Ellis, ‘On the Musical Scales of Various Nations’, Journal of the Society for Arts, 33/1688 (Mar. 1885), 508–14.

18

Terwen, Gamelan in the 19th-Century Netherlands, 60 and 109.

19

Jean-Pierre Chazal, ‘La Musique en silence: Des instruments javanais en France avant 1889’, Archipel, 65 (2003), 163–79 at 173–5. We warmly thank Jean-Pierre Chazal for the several personal observations about these events.

20

On the unusual features of this gamelan see Terwen, Gamelan in the 19th-Century Netherlands, 153, and Sue Carole De Vale, ‘A Sundanese Gamelan: A Gestalt Approach to Organology’ (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1977), 67.

21

Jan P. N. Land, ‘Vorrede over onze kennis der Javaansche muziek’, in Isaac Groneman, De Gamĕlan te Jogjåkartå (Amsterdam, 1890), 1–24 at 6: ‘dwaselijk naar het europesche toonstelsel is ingerigt’. All translations are our own.

22

‘Nieuws uit Ind. Bladen’, De nieuwe vorstenlanden (23 May 1883), 2.

23

Land, ‘Vorrede’, 3: ‘De treurige gamelan-bespelingen bij de Koloniale Tentoonstelling te Amsterdam in 1883, die waarschijnlijk uit gebrek aan fondsen niet beter konden worden ingerigt.’

24

See De Lange, ‘De Gamelan op de Internationale Tentoonstelling te Amsterdam’, Het nieuws van den dag van zaterdag (21 July 1883), 8.

25

Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles, 126–8.

26

De Vries, Nederland op de wereldtentoonstelling te Parijs in 1889 (Enschede, 1890), 83, already set forth by Bloembergen (Colonial Spectacles, 128).

27

Zeynep Çelik and Leila Kinney, ‘Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the Expositions Universelles’, Assemblage, 13 (Dec. 1990), 34–59.

28

‘Binnenlandsche Berichten’, Delftsche Courant (24 Apr. 1889), 2: ‘allerlei voorwerpen’; Venloosche Courant (13 Apr. 1889), 1: ‘zijne fraaie kleederdrachten in bruikleen af te staan, voor de danseressen en voor de muzikanten’.

29

De Vries, Nederland, 83.

30

Ibid. 84: ‘eenige corypheeën van zijn corps de ballet’.

31

Judocüs Jeremias, ‘Brieven uit Parijs’, Java Bode (9 Sept. 1889), 2: ‘Wat men al niet doet om réclame te maken! Het zijn eenvoudig de langendria’s van een Europeaan te Solo, in de wandeling bekend als si Gotlieb.’

32

Jeremias, ‘Europeesche reisindrukken van een geëmeriteerden planter’, Java Bode (15 Jan. 1890), 5: ‘Wat zag ik? Eene der langendrio’s van kang Gotlieb—och pardon, heeren exploiteurs van den Javaanschen kampoeng (?), ik bedoel ‘une des jolies bayadères du Prince de Java.’

33

Lindor Serrurier, De Wajang Purwå: Eene ethnologische studie (Leiden, 1896), 156. See also K. G. P. A. A. Prangwadana VII, Pathokan Beksan Mangkunegaran (Beksan Tayungan), a manuscript preserved in the Perpustakaan Rekso Pustoko, the library of the Mangkunegaran Palace in Surakarta, catalogued as G-149. We warmly thank Dr Ibu Darweni and Ibu Hema Surya for their help in searching for and translating the sources.

34

Richard Anderson Sutton, ‘Creative Process and Colonial Legacy: Issues in the History and Aesthetics of Langendriya, Javanese Dance Opera’, Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, 31/1 (June 1997), 97–8; Matthew Isaac Cohen, Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia (Honolulu, 2016), 29, and Hadi Subagyo, Sejarah tari jejak langkah tari di Pura Mangkunegaran (Surakarta, 2017), 63.

35

Chazal, ‘Grand Succès’, 134–5: ‘dessinatrice[s] sur étoffes’.

36

‘Nederlandsche-Indië’, Java Bode (9 Mar. 1889), 2: ‘goed in de kleeren’.

37

‘Buitenland. Frankrijk’, Venloosche Courant (13 Apr. 1889), 1.

38

‘De Mail’, Bataviaasch Handelsblad (25 May 1889), 7.

39

Julien Tiersot recounts eight units of angklung. See his Musiques pittoresques: Promenades musicales à l’Exposition de 1889 (Paris, 1889), 32. For other descriptions of the angklung ensemble see Fourcaud, ‘Le Village javanais’, Revue de l’Exposition Universelle de 1889, i (Paris, 1889), 105–14 at 107; ‘Chronique de l’Exposition: Le kampong javanais’, Journal des débats (28 May 1889), 3; and Paul Le Jeinisel, ‘Le Kampong Javanais’, in Lucien Huard (ed.), Livre d’or de l’Exposition (Paris, 1889), 225–31 at 227.

40

On the pendopo and the stage see Émile Monod, L’Exposition universelle: Grand ouvrage illustré historique, encyclopédique, iii (Paris, 1890), 134–5.

41

On the structure of the spectacle see Arthur Pougin, Le Théâtre à l’Exposition Universelle de 1889: Notes et descriptions, histoire et souvenirs (Paris, 1890), 112–14; Judith Gautier, ‘Les Danseuses javanaises’, Le Rappel (27 May 1889), 1; ‘Un Kampong javanais’, Le Petit Journal (28 May 1889), 1; Le Jeinisel, ‘Le Kampong’, 227; and Les Merveilles de l’Exposition de 1889 (Paris, 1889), 442.

42

‘Op en om de Tentoonstelling’, Algemeen Handelsblad (26 May 1889), 2: ‘Toen indertijd de kisten werden opengemaakt, die den gamelang inhielden, door den heer Mundt, theeplanter in de Preanger, aan het museum te Hamburg geschonken, doch nu aan den kampong in bruikleen gegeven, was het een groote verrassing, er ook een ankloeng in te vinden.’ See also ‘Uit Parijs’, Algemeen Handelsblad (26 Apr. 1889), 6; ‘De Wereld-Tentoonstelling te Parijs’, Vlaardingsche Courant (13 July 1889), 3; ‘De Wereldtentoonstelling te Parijs’, Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad (3 Mar. 1889), 13; Delftsche Courant (24 Apr. 1889), 2; and ‘Van de Parijsche tentoonstelling. Kampong’, Het nieuws van den Dag (31 July 1889), 1.

43

Carl Wilhem Lüders, ‘Museum für Völkerkunde’, Jahrbuch der Hamburgischen Wissenschaftlichen Anstalten, VII Jahrgang, 1889 (Hamburg, 1890), p. lxxxii. The list of items can be found in the Auszug aus der Sammlungs-Datenbank des Museums am Rothenbaum Hamburg MARKK.

44

We wish to thank Dr Jeanette Kokott and Anke Sievers from MARKK warmly for their invaluable help in locating, displaying, and helping us to collect all the data regarding Mundt’s collection.

45

‘Brieven uit Parijs’, Bataviaasch Handelsblad (6 July 1889), 6.

46

‘Buitenland. Frankrijk’, Venloosche Courant (13 Apr. 1889), 1: ‘Deze wil zijne fraaie gamelang ten geschenke geven aan zijne geboortestad Hamburg, en hij is thans zoo goed geweest de geheele inrichting, die door drie-entwintig muzikanten bespeeld wordt, vooraf in bruikleen af te staan voor de Parijsche tentoonstelling.’ Instruments for twenty-five musicians were recounted in ‘De Wereld-Tentoonstelling te Parijs’, Vlaardingsche Courant (13 July 1889), 3, and La Dépêche de Brest (16 Apr. 1889), 2.

47

See Chazal, ‘Grand Succès’, 134–6.

48

Monod (L’Exposition, 136) describes five instruments: kamelong [sic] (‘sorte de xylophone’), bonang, rebàb [sic], selumpret (‘sorte de hautbois’) and tam-tams; Le Jeinisel (‘Le Kampong’, 227) speaks of bona [sic], rebab, and portable bamboo rattles; Henri Lavedan (‘Les Petites Javanaises’, La Revue illustrée (Paris, 1889), 43–48) mentions gender, jenglong [sic], and panderroes [sic]. Lenôtre (‘Le Kampong javanais’, Le Monde illustré, 29 June 1889, 378) refers to rodjek, gender, and rebab; Maurice Dulac (‘Les Danseuses a l’Exposition’, in Huard, Livre d’Or, 187) mentions rodjek, gender, and hanging cymbals. The fact that this ‘gender’ (actually a keyed instrument featuring bamboo resonators) is described by both Dulac and Lenôtre as an ‘assemblage of pots’ (‘rassemblement de casseroles’)—which clearly corresponds to the bonang—gives an idea of how inconsistent the terminology is.

49

An inventory of the instruments on stage has already been listed in Chazal (‘Grand Succès’, 122–3) and Fauser (Musical Encounters, 181).

50

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 32: ‘sorte de violon à deux cordes’, ‘espèce de xylophone formé de lames de bois vibrant’, ‘alliage de cuivre et d’étain’, ‘composé de bassins de métal reposant sur des cordes tendues’. The terms ‘saron-barong’ and ‘bonang-ageng’, as well as the morphological details about them, seem taken from Léon Pillaut’s article, in which he describes the instruments donated by the Netherlands to the Paris Conservatoire in 1887. See Pillaut, ‘Le Gamelan javanais’, Le Ménestrel (3 July 1887), 244–5.

51

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 32: ‘l’un grave el l’autre aigu’.

52

Ibid. 32: ‘de diverses espèces et de toutes dimensions’.

53

Ibid. 40: ‘les instruments à percussion’, ‘tambour’, ‘une sorte de sistre’.

54

Huard, Livre d’or de l’Exposition, hors-texte after 591, and V. Morans, ‘À travers l’Exposition: Le Kampong javanais’, Journal des voyages (1 July 1889), 71–3 at 72. Unfortunately, neither the kecrek, the selumpret, or the suling were part of Mundt’s donation to the Museum für Völkerkunde. We are grateful to Heri Herdini for his help in decoding the Parisian sources regarding the instruments and practices of the Sundanese gamelan.

55

As for the often-cited engraving of a small ensemble in Émile Raoul’s 1889 report, where a saron is depicted (‘Un Gamelang’, in Javanais et javanaises à l’Exposition de 1889, 9), it was based on a photograph taken some years earlier (see ‘Danseres met een orkest op Java’, KITLV 89987).

56

This instrument had already been displayed in the Dutch pavilion during the previous French exposition of 1878. See Chazal, ‘La Musique en silence’, Archipel, 65 (2003), 174.

57

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 40: ‘au-dessus des autres instruments’.

58

On the practices of bonang and rincik see Cook, ‘Sundanese Music’, 41–2; H. Iwan Natapradja, Sekar Gendhing: Catatan pribadi tentang Karawitan Sunda (Bandung, 2003), 134–6.

59

Ibid. 140–2.

60

Pillaut, ‘Le Gamelan javanais’, 244; Léon Pillaut, ‘La Musique exotique’, Journal officiel de la République Française (14 Nov. 1889), 5663–6 at 5665. It is not impossible that this second article—published after the closing of the fair—was influenced by the gamelan at the kampong (to which Pillaut explicitly refers), but the instruments he describes might allude to an ‘ideal’ model, probably inspired by the gamelan in the Paris Conservatoire.

61

The Dutch press recounts that, as they spoke different languages—Malay, Javanese, and Sundanese—the various peoples gathered at the kampong could not understand each other. ‘Buitenland. Frankrijk’, Venloosche Courant (13 Apr. 1889), 1.

62

We would like to thank Jean-Pierre Chazal warmly for providing a copy of this typewritten document dated 10 Oct. 1929. A specific search carried out onsite in July 2022 for the present article—with the collaboration of the staff of the archive where it should be found, the Perpustakaan Rekso Pustoko—did not yield any results; the original seems to be missing.

63

Most of these items ended up in the Rijks Ethnographisch Museum in Leiden, where they are properly catalogued but not currently on display to the public, as confirmed by a recent in-person visit.

64

Fauser, Musical Encounters, 168–72.

65

Mangkunegaran Archive text, 10 Oct. 1929, 2: ‘djogéd Solo… gamelannja lagoe Bandoeng’; ‘djogéd Bandoeng’.

66

‘Chronique’, 3; Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 39.

67

Ibid. 42: ‘une sorte de gémissement lent et plaintif’.

68

Pillaut, ‘La Musique exotique’, 5665.

69

Les Merveilles, 442–3.

70

Lavedan, ‘Les Petites Javanaises’, 45–6: ‘avec une infinie douceur, à pas lents, rasant le plancher de leur orteil’.

71

Jean Lorrain, ‘Chronique de Paris: Le Kampong. Un coin de l’Exposition’, L’Evénement (19 May 1889), 1: ‘Lentes et lugubres contorsions de poignets, les mains tenues en l’air et les doigts écartées comme des spectres.’

72

Lenôtre, ‘Le Kampong’, 378: ‘miaulements de chat en détresse’; Fourcaud, ‘Le Village javanais’, 112: ‘avec une sacramentelle volubilité’; and Gautier, ‘Les Danseuses’, 1.

73

‘Chronique’, 3, and Gustave Geffroy, ‘Chronique: A l’Exposition’, La Justice (30 May 1889), 1.

74

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 42, and Pougin, Le Théâtre à l’Exposition, 114.

75

However, a piece entitled Udan Mas does. Interestingly, Udan Mas was often performed in different venues in Paris in the 1930s, as can be read in L’Oeuvre (30 Sept. 1932) and Les Annales coloniales (13 Oct. 1932). In addition, it was recorded by Hornbostel in 1928 in his seminal collection Musik des Orients; indeed, no striking similarities are shown between the 1889 Dahonn-Maas transcriptions and this Udan Mas recorded less than forty years later, besides the scales employed. But who knows if, besides changes in the melodic outline, an inversion of the syllables of the first word of the title might have occurred?

76

Sumarsam concludes that the fragment transcribed by Tiersot corresponds to the saron part of the Sundanese piece Bendrong (Javanese Gamelan, 99–100).

77

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 42; Pougin, Le Théâtre à l’Exposition, 114; and Waliran, ‘Brieven van de Tentoonstelling’, Soerabaijasch Handelsblad (15 July 1889), 2.

78

Pougin, Le Théâtre a l’Exposition, 113.

79

Les Merveilles, 443.

80

Fourcaud, ‘Le Village javanais’, 112: ‘Imaginez une mélodie de l’autre monde, insaisissable et pourtant saisissante, aux rythmes mobiles dans une monotonie psalmodique et sacrée, traduite en sonorité de cloches assourdies, de cordes étouffées, de bois attendris, de gongs et de cymbales atténués … Et cette musique d’impression mineure… semble venir des lointains paradis, où brûlent, autour des bienheureux, d’éternels parfums en d’inépuisables cassolettes’.

81

On the sensation caused by the costumes, see Monod, L’Exposition, 135–6; Pougin, Le Théâtre à l’Exposition, 110; and Gautier, ‘Les Danseuses’, 1.

82

See Monod, L’Exposition, 135; Lenôtre, ‘Le Kampong’, 378: Tout-Paris, ‘Les Vieilles Lunes de Java’, Le Gaulois (2 June 1889), 1; and ‘Village javanais’, Exposition de 1889: Guide Bleu du Figaro et du Petit Journal, 275–6.

83

Lavedan, ‘Les Petites Javanaises’, 46: ‘leur jeune et ferme poitrine soulève le velours et les pendeloques d’or qui la recouvrent, et, à les voir ainsi, marcher, glisser, passer, repasser, si sérieuses dans leur exquis et interminable manège … on a la savoureuse impression d’un menuet d’Asie dansé … sous l’oeil despotique et blasé d’un Louis XV de race jaune’.

84

This point was already highlighted by Chazal, ‘Grand Succès’, 113.

85

On bedhaya, see Subagyo, Sejarah tari, 31–2; on serimpi, see Robertus B. Soedarsono, Theresia Suharti, and Jiyu Wijayanti, Misteri Serimpi (Yogyakarta, 2000), 2–5.

86

Roland Bonaparte, ‘Les Danseuses javanaises’, Revue-Magasin (21 July 1889), 457–9. For the original description of the Javanese dances, see Thomas S. Raffles, The History of Java (London, 1817), i. 379–80.

87

On wireng, see Subagyo, Sejarah tari, 61–2.

88

Jean Kernoa claimed that some of the performers, playing male roles, carried swords (keris) on their backs, but there is no record of these weapons being used on stage. See Kernoa, Exposition Universelle 1889: Programme explicatif illustré (Paris, 1889), 5.

89

Sumarsam, Javanese Gamelan, 103.

90

On langedriyan, see Cohen, Inventing the Performing Arts, 29–30, and Subagyo, Sejarah tari, 63–4.

91

‘Les Vieilles Lunes’, 1–2. Kernoa also describes this same legend in relation to the dance of the Javanese. However, he does not make clear whether the performance was part of the official show or something that occurred off-stage (Programme explicatif, 5).

92

‘Nederlandsch-Indie’, Soerabaijasch Handelsblad (11 Mar. 1889), 2: ‘Zonder regisseur zal er van haar spel, waarbij ook acteeren te pas komt, wel niet veel terecht komen, doch ze treden dan ook op voor een publiek, dat er tittel noch jota van verstaat.’

93

Thus reads the Pathokan Beksan Mangkunegaran. See also Subagyo, Sejarah Tari, 55 and 89.

94

We would like to thank Daryono Darmorejono for his invaluable help in deciphering the postures of the dancers in the sketches (Lavedan, ‘Les Petites Javanaises’, 43–8).

95

René de Pont-Jest, ‘Les Femmes exotiques à l’Exposition’, Le Figaro. Supplément littéraire du dimanche (27 July 1889), 118.

96

Pardo Bazán, ‘Cartas sobre la Exposición IV’, La España Moderna. Revista Iberoamericana, 1/10 (Oct. 1889), 85–107 at 90; Monod, L’Exposition, 137.

97

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 43–4: ‘danse… du peuple’, ‘tant au point de vue musical que chorégraphique’, ‘type de leur musique’. On the ‘popular’ character of this dance, see also Monod, L’Exposition, 137; Pougin, Le Théâtre à l’Exposition, 114; and Pardo Bazán, ‘Cartas’, 90.

98

Fauser stressed the fact that it was a popular dance by a ronggeng (Musical Encounters, 172).

99

On ketuk tilu, see Henry Spiller, Focus: Gamelan Music (New York, 2008), 162; Irawati Durban Arjo, ‘Women’s Dance among the Sundanese of West Java, Indonesia’, Asian Theatre Journal, 6 (1989), 168–78; Ben Suharto, Tayub: Pertunjukan dan Ritus Kesuburan (Bandung, 1999), 67; and Endang Caturwati, Tari di Tatar Sunda (Bandung, 2007), 95.

100

See Monod, L’Exposition, 137; Kernoa, Programme explicatif, 4; and Les Merveilles, 442.

101

Pardo Bazán, ‘Cartas’, 90.

102

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 43: ‘la danse, loin de prendre jamais un caractère général, se compose uniquement des figures et des évolutions des deux danseurs, l’homme et la femme se poursuivant l’un l’autre et se fuyant sans cesse, suivant un thème aussi vieux que l’humanité, et que l’on retrouve dans les traditions populaires de toutes les races’.

103

Pont-Jest, ‘Les Femmes’, 118: ‘jetant un cri de triomphe, enlevait entre ses bras sa danseuse, pour disparaître avec elle’, ‘qu’un pastiche bien timide de la chorégraphie passionnée’.

104

Pougin, Le Théâtre à l’Exposition, 115: ‘cette poursuite, souvent gracieuse, de l’homme et de la femme, ce rapprochement et cet éloignement alternatifs de l’un et de l’autre sexe aboutissant à un accord définitif, en nous rendant l’élément vraiment humain et passionnel’.

105

Our sincere thanks to Daud Agus Kusnandar for helping to decipher the engravings and for his availability in teaching the movements, attitudes, and interactions in the ketuk tilu tradition.

106

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 44: ‘la relation intime avec la danse’.

107

Ibid. 44: ‘ce morceau change de mouvement plusieurs fois de suite’.

108

Spiller uses the terms ‘mincid patterns’ and ‘cadential patterns’ to refer to mincid and mencug respectively. Erotic Triangles: Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java (Chicago, 2010), Kindle positions 1126–7.

109

In the Sundanese language, mincid means literally ‘walking’, and Parisian sources often record this peculiar interaction between the dancers, who slowly chased each other in space (Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 44, and Les Merveilles, 442). On the different dance sections of ketuk tilu see Spiller, Focus, 174.

110

Spiller describes this peculiar interaction in this way: ‘drum parts are more closely aligned with dance phrases, which do not always correspond neatly to musical phrases, than they are with musical structure’ (Erotic Triangles, Kindle positions 747–8). On the intimate connection between drumming and dance, see ibid., position 665. See also Spiller’s ‘Continuity in Sundanese Dance Drumming: Clues from the 1893 Chicago Exposition’, World of Music, 38/2 (1996), 23–40, where he analyses these procedures based on Gilman’s wax cylinders.

111

‘Chronique’, 3: ‘En certaines poses … la musique et la danse cessent brusquement, sans finir.’

112

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 45: ‘Et cependant la danse ne s’achève pas sur cet épisode énergique et mouvementé: elle reprend son allure lente, et, diminuant toujours, s’arrête enfin sur une dernière note que l’on n’a pas prévue, sans conclure, en laissant l’attention suspendue, le sens musical inachevé.’

113

‘Javanese Dancers. One of the Most Interesting Sights at the Paris Exposition’ [from The Atlantic], Barton County Democrat (12 June 1890), 1.

114

Schulte-Smidt, Bleistift-Skizzen, 68, quoted in Fauser, Musical Encounters, 172.

115

‘Javanese Dancers’, 1.

116

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 44.

117

Ibid. 44: ‘moins de recherches et de complications dans son développement … avec plus de logique et de clarté’.

118

Claude Debussy, ‘Du goût’, Revue musical S.I.M., 15 (Feb. 1913), 47–9 at 48: ‘un jeu d’enfants’.

119

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 43–4, and Kernoa, Programme explicatif, 7.

120

R. M. A. Koesoemadinata, Lagu-Lagu Gede Sunda, preserved in the Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan Provinsi Jawa (Bandung).

121

Sumarsam, Javanese Gamelan, 100.

122

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for this insightful observation.

123

During the second half of the 20th c., Pangeran Sugih’s Wani-Wani was recorded several times by the Sari Oneng Parakan Salak gamelan, considered one of the ensembles of pride of this local regent. Unfortunately, resemblances between those recordings and Koesoemadinata’s transcription of Wani Wani are not particularly evident.

124

Our sincere thanks to Yusuf Wiradiredja for his help in piecing things together. On tayuban in the 19th c. see Irawati Durban Ardjo, Tari Sunda Tahun 1880–1990 (Bandung, 2008), 41.

125

Although recent research on the 1889 exposition acknowledges the Sundanese origin of the gamelan, musicological literature, especially that focused on Debussy, has often insisted it was Javanese. See Edward Lockspeiser, Debussy: His Life and Mind (Cambridge, 1962), i. 115; Richard Mueller, ‘Javanese Influences on Debussy’s Fantaisie and Beyond’, 19th-Century Music, 10 (1986), 157–86 at 171; Roy Howat, The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier (New Haven, 2009), 111; Roger Nichols, The Life of Debussy: Musical Lives (Cambridge, 1998), 57; Simon Trezise (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (Cambridge, 2003), 26; and Stephen Walsh, Debussy: A Painter in Sound (New York, 2018), 66.

126

In fact, the term ‘Sunda’, as Spiller points out, does not refer to any particular place, but to a group of people (Focus, 110).

127

Ibid. 171.

128

This composition had already been pointed out by Sylvia Parker in her ‘Claude Debussy’s Gamelan’, College Music Symposium, 52 (2012), DOI: 10.18177/sym.2012.52.sr.22, without further analysis.

129

See Kernoa, Programme explicatif, 7; Benedictus, Les Musiques bizarres, 8, 9, 13, and 17; Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 40, 41, and 44.

130

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 39: ‘un des procédés rythmiques favoris’, ‘d’une façon singulière, la régularité du mouvement général’.

131

As an example of this practice, listen to Udan Mas in a 1987 recording where triplets are played by the kecapi before the beginning of every new verse of the song, with the single note reinforced by both the suling and the voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LYmH1OysDw. Similarly, in this 2023 recording of Wani-Wani the pattern is played by the entire gamelan throughout the piece at structural points, including the entrance of the vocalist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtwT54aKaI.

132

Triplets can be heard in contemporary Javanese classical dances, particularly during the fast-paced srisig walks. However, they are only carried out by the kendang.

133

Heri Herdini, pers. comm., 23 Oct. 2023.

134

In Gilman’s cylinder no. 13 (no. 4.336 according to the Field Collections catalogue), the triplet pattern in unison coincides with Gilman’s own note ‘Entry of dancing girls’. See Dorothy Sarah Lee, The Federal Cylinder Project: A Guide to Field Cylinder Collections in Federal Agencies, viii (Washington, DC, 1984), 8. The same procedure can be heard in other cylinders. Listen, for instance, to nos. 14, 15, and 16 (4.337, 4.338 and 4.339). We are grateful to Judith Gray, from the American Folklife Center, Washington, DC, for allowing us access to the recordings.

135

See Chazal, ‘La Musique en silence’, 167–77.

136

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 33.

137

See Terwen, Gamelan in the 19th-Century Netherlands, 169–75.

138

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 36: ‘en Chine et dans tout l’extrême Orient’.

139

Ibid. 36: ‘C’est à tort que certains auditeurs, trop prévenus par des idées fausses ayant cours, ont cru reconnaître des intervalles autres que ceux de notre gamme occidentale, particulièrement des quarts de ton. Non seulement la gamme d’extrême Orient ne connaît pas d’intervalles plus petits que le demi-ton, mais elle ne se sert même pas du demi-ton, les seuls intervalles ci-dessus énoncés étant le ton et le ton et demi.’

140

R. M. A. Koesoemadinata coined the term ‘madenda’ in the 1930s, and since then it has become widely adopted. According to Natapradja (Sekar Gending, 61), this change may have been made to avoid confusion with one of the fundamental modes of the pelog scale, which is also referred to as sorog.

141

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 42: ‘l’on y remarquera des notes étrangères à la gamme de cinq tons sur laquelle sont accordés les instruments du gamelang (le si bémol et le mi bémol)’.

142

Ibid. 42: ‘influence étrangère’.

143

Mariko Sasaki and Juju Masunah developed a detailed study of the possibilities of superposition of laras madenda and pelog on a gamelan salendro in their article ‘Sorog and Pelog Scales in the Vocal and Rebab of Sundanese Gamelan Salendro’, Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 419 (2020), 125–8. On surupan in Sundanese music see also Asep Saepudin, ‘Laras, surupan, dan patet dalam Praktik Menabuh Gamelan Salendro’, Resital, 16/1 (Apr. 2015), 52–64 at 55.

144

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 42.

145

Saepudin, ‘Laras, surupan, dan patet’, 59; Spiller, Focus, 121; Sasaki and Masunah, ‘Sorog and Pelog Scales’, 127. Although without mentioning the madenda scale, Sumarsam had already pointed out the possibility of superposition of scales in Sundanese salendro gamelan music—in this case referring to a pelog one—when analysing the musical procedures in 1889 (Javanese Gamelan, 103).

146

This confusion could have arisen because ‘sorog’ (literally ‘deviation’) is both a term to refer to the madenda scale and a key word in the definition of the pathet (modes) in Javanese pelog. The sorog mode as a ‘species of pelog’ in De Vale’s definition (‘A Sundanese Gamelan’, 185) was already mentioned in 1882 by Mitchell (‘Javanese Musical Instruments’, 1072–3), who also mentions two other pathet derived from it: sorog barang and sorog danso.

147

Jeremy Day-O’Connell, ‘Debussy, Pentatonicism, and the Tonal Tradition’, Music Theory Spectrum, 31 (2009), 225–61 at 226.

148

Danièle Pistone, ‘Les Conditions historiques de l’exotisme musical français’, Revue internationale de musique française, 6 (Nov. 1981), 15: ‘une évocation des échelles orientales en tempéré égal est a priori fausse et que toute traduction est rendue par-là même impossible’.

149

See in this regard the seminal work by William A. Sethares, Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale (London, 2005), 202–17. Tiersot himself claimed to have difficulties in recognizing the exact pitches of the gamelan (Musiques pittoresques, 36).

150

Fortunately, gamelan instruments mostly feature long-lasting tunings, as already proven by De Vale in 1977 when she analysed the gamelan recorded by Gilman in 1893 (Lee, The Federal Cylinder Project, ix).

151

Lou Harrison also emphasized that one can perceive three different pentatonic subsets within a single slendro gamelan. See his ‘Thoughts on “Slippery Slendro”’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, 6 (1985), 111–17.

152

Tiersot remarks that the rebab introductions were ‘presque toujours la même’ (Musiques pittoresques, 39). According to Sumarsam, the first notes are indeed ‘typical of the introductory melody of a Sundanese piece’ (Javanese Gamelan, 99).

153

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 44.

154

Durban Arjo, ‘Women’s Dance’, 169.

155

See Mueller, ‘Javanese Influences’, 167–77, and Fauser, Musical Encounters, 182.

156

Louis Benedictus, ‘Gamelan-Goedjin’, in Judith Gautier, Les Musiques bizarres à l’Exposition de 1900 (Paris, 1900), 11.

157

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 38: ‘étrangère au ton de la musique’.

158

Bloembergen, Colonial Spectacles, 320.

159

According to Bloembergen (ibid. 134) the kampong received a total of 875,000 visitors during the exhibition.

160

Burton Benedict, ‘International Exhibitions and National Identity’, Anthropology Today, 7/3 (June 1991), 5–9 at 5.

161

Communication by Sumarsam to De Vale (‘A Sundanese Gamelan’, 98).

162

Camille Saint-Saëns, ‘Les Instruments de musique’, Le Rappel (10 Oct. 1889), 1: ‘charment délicieusement l’oreille’.

163

Tiersot, Musiques pittoresques, 37: ‘je doute fort qu’il existe dans ce pays des règles concernant les combinaisons de sons simultanés’.

164

Jann Pasler, ‘Listening to Race and Nation: Music at the l’Exposition 1889’, Musique, Images, Instruments (Revue française d’organologie et d’iconographie musicale, Paris), 13 (2012), 53–74 at 57.

165

Raymond Corbey, ‘Ethnographic Showcases, 1870–1930’, Cultural Anthropology, 8/3 (Aug. 1993), 338–69 at 364.

166

Ralph P. Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge, 2009), 176–8.

167

Henry Spiller, Javaphilia: American Love Affairs with Javanese Music and Dance (Honolulu, 2015), 6.

168

See, for example, Adolphe Brisson, ‘Promenades et visites a l’Exposition: Un déjeuner chez les japonaises’, Le Temps (8 May 1900), 2; ‘La Semaine dramatique: Le théâtre exotique à l’exposition’, La Presse (23 July 1900), 2; and Henry Detouche, ‘Exotisme à l’Exposition’, La Vogue (1 Apr. 1900), 200–8 at 203.

169

Among his various enterprises, Wolff, the promotor of the kampong, established the ‘Bevordering van het Vreemdelingenverkeer’ in 1885, the first Dutch tourism firm. See Martin Wolff, Vlugschrift tot bevordering van het vreemdelingen-verkeer te Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1885).

170

Robert Godet, ‘L’Ame javanaise’, Revue de Paris (1 Nov. 1896), 193–224.

171

Pardo Bazán, ‘Cartas’, 89.

172

René de Pont-Jest, ‘De Paris à Java: Rentrée des danseuses du kampong a Solo’, Le Figaro (8 Feb. 1890), 22.

173

‘Courrier de l’Exposition’, Le Figaro (5 July 1889), 2; Pougin, Le Théâtre a l’Exposition, 115.

174

‘Nederlandsch Indië’, Bataviaasch Handelsblad (27 Sept. 1889), 4.

175

Pont-Jest, ‘Les Femmes’, 118.

176

Terwen, Gamelan in the 19th-Century Netherlands, 208–9. See also ‘Binnenland’, Arnhemsche Courant (4 Apr. 1900), 1; and ‘Menschententoonstelling’, De Locomotiev (26 Mar. 1900), 3.

177

‘Nederlandsch-Indië’, Soerabaijasch Handelsblad (9 Mar. 1900), 5: ‘als een troep wilde dieren te exposeeren, ditmaal op de tentoonstelling te Parijs, waarvan die menschen geheel gedemoraliseerd zullen terugkomen’.

178

Brisson, ‘Promenades et visites à l’Exposition’, 2: ‘En vérité, on reste confondu par tant d’ingratitude! Ont-elles jugé que les Français n’étaient pas assez galants, ou qu’ils l’étaient trop?’.

179

Pardo Bazán, ‘Cartas’, 90: ‘les repugnan los europeos, á causa del olor desagradable que despiden, aun los más perfumados y limpios’.

180

‘Chronique de l’Exposition’, L’Univers illustré: Journal hebdomadaire (26 Oct. 1889), 679–82 at 679.

181

‘Frankrijk: Vertrek der Javanen’, Bataviaasch Handelsblad (23 Nov. 1889), 10.

Author notes

*

Complutense University of Madrid; [email protected]. Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya; [email protected].