The pathet (Javanese spelling; also patet) is an organizing concept in gamelan music. It is difficult to explain, but is similar to the melody types, that is, for example, modes, ragas, or maqamat, of other musics. The Javanese language is the spoken language of the people in the central and eastern part of the island of Java, in Indonesia. ... Saron - Indonesian Embassy in Canberra A gamelan is a kind of musical ensemble of Indonesian origin typically featuring metallophones, xylophones, drums, and gongs. ... A melody type is a term used by musicologists and ethnomusicologists to represent a set of melodic formulas, figures, and patterns which are used in the composition of an enormous variety of music, especially non-Western and early Western music. ... This article is about modes as used in music. ... Raga (rāg /राग (Hindi), raga (Anglicised from rāgaḥ/रागः (Sanskrit)) or rāgam /ராகம் (Tamil)) are the melodic modes used in Indian classical music. ... In Arab music a maqam [sic] (plural maqamat) is, a technique of improvisation that defines the pitches, patterns, and development of a piece of music and which is unique to Arabian art music. ...

Javanese often give poetic explanations of pathet, such as "Pathet is the couch or bed of a melody."^[1] In essence, a pathet indicates which notes are stressed in the melody, especially at the end of phrases (seleh), as well as determines which elaborations (cengkok and sekaran) are appropriate. In many cases, however, pieces are seen as in a mixture of pathets, and the reality is often more complicated than the generalizations indicated here, and depend on the particular composition and style.

Classification

In Javanese music there are traditionally six pathet, three for each tuning system, pelog and slendro. The systems correspond to each other in emphasized pitches, as in the table given below (notated in kepatihan), although of course the numbers do not indicate the same frequencies. Pelog is one of the two essential scales of gamelan music native to Bali and Java, in Indonesia. ... Slendro (called salendro by the Sundanese) is a pentatonic (five tone) scale, one of the two most common scales used in Indonesian gamelan music. ... Kepatihan is a type of cipher musical notation that was devised for notation of the Indonesian gamelan. ...

Note that in pélog, 4 is always avoided, and pathet barang is the only pathet to feature 7 as a common note. The avoided notes are only rare as seleh, especially in slendro; in pélog the rare notes are rare anywhere. The names "tonic" and "dominant," though the analogy to Western music is not strong, are used by some sources. Another system of designation, used by Mantle Hood, is Gong Tone I for the stressed note, Dasar for the strong note, and Gong Tone II for another strong note involved in the cadential system. Western music is a broad category of music that includes all musical genres that use a 12-note chromatic scale, including Western classical music, rock and roll, and many other forms of popular music. ... Mantle Hood (? - July 31, 2005) was an American ethnomusicologist who specialized in tn studying gamelan music from Indonesia. ...

Two other terms are sometimes encountered for pélog: pathet bem and pathet manyura. Pathet bem is used as a general term to cover pélog pathet nem and lima, which use the same subset of the pélog scale and are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Mantle Hood found through an analysis of gendhing in these pathet that they remain distinct in their typical patterns.^[2] The other pathet, pélog pathet manyura, is a direct transfer from slendro manyura into pélog, without the substitution of 7 for 1 as in pathet barang. It is observed in a small collection of gendhing.^[3] Mantle Hood (? - July 31, 2005) was an American ethnomusicologist who specialized in tn studying gamelan music from Indonesia. ...

Cadences

According to Mantle Hood, one of the clearest distinctions between the pathet are the typical cadences that appear in the balungan at the ends of the buka and gongan, particularly at the ends of sections. Here the relationship between the pélog and slendro pathet is obscured, as they have different typical formulas, and slendro sanga and pélog nem are made more similar: In Western musical theory a cadence (Latin cadentia, a falling) is a particular series of intervals or chords that ends a phrase, section, or piece of music. ... The balungan (Javanese: skeleton, frame) is sometimes called the core melody of a gamelan composition. ...

• Slendro
  • Nem: 6-5-3-2
  • Sanga: 2-1-6-5
  • Manyura: 3-2-1-6
• Pélog
  • Lima: 5-4-2-1 (old) or 5-3-2-1 (new)
  • Nem: 2-1-6-5
  • Barang: 3-2-7-6
  • Manyura: 3-2-1-6

These cadences appear all in the same octave. Therefore, pélog barang and manyura are quite distinct in their contour, as the penultimate note is in a different register. This preference for certain cadentail contours within a pathet, according to Hood, led to the dominance of a single-octave saron to play the balungan. Saron barung (front, with wooden mallets) and saron panerus (in back, with horn mallet) The saron is a musical instrument of Indonesia, which is used in the gamelan. ...

Use

In an evening of wayang, the pathet of the accompaniment goes from slendro nem to slendro sanga to slendro manyura as the night progresses. The different pathet are often associated with different emotions or ideas, often because of their associations in wayang. Wayang is an Indonesian word for theater. ...

Many pieces can be transposed from one pathet to another. Sometimes this involves some substitutions of notes; this depends on the traditions surrounding a piece. Most cengkok and sekaran have corresponding forms in different pathet.

Footnotes

1. ^ Hood 1977, p. 15; citation from Jaap Kunst, Music in Java (The Hague, 1949), page 72.
2. ^ Hood 1977, p. 232-234
3. ^ Hood 1977, p. 148

References

• Hood, Mantle. The Nuclear Theme as a Determinant of Patet in Javanese Music. New York: Da Capo, 1977.