A lot of the time I just want to collect experiences and try new things. This concert was one such case. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, but I decided to go because it sounded so interesting and different.
Aloysius Suwardi is a professor of music, a composer of Indonesian gamelan music and an inventor of musical instruments. He not only composed the score of Planet Harmonik, but also built the musical instruments is is played on. That alone promised this concert would be quite a unique experience.
Before the concert, Aloysius Suwardi sat down for a little Q&A. A radio presenter and specialist in gamelan music was chosen to conduct the interview. I had no idea who the interviewer was and have completely forgotten his name. Which is just as well, because it was a most painful interview! The interviewer talked too much about details that not only didn’t interest us, but also didn’t seem to interest Aloysius Suwardi or help him open up to talk about himself and his work.
Thankfully after a lot of cringing and second hand embarassment on our part, Aloysius Suwardi was finally asked to present his hand made musical instruments to us. And there, he was able to fully shine and infect us all with his joy and love of music and sound. I thouroughly enjoyed hearing him describe what his thought process was in the creation of each instrument and the joyous almost childish names he gave to each one. I have nothing but the utmost respect for someone who turns his back on all the fake seriousness and simply names things by the sounds they make.
Once all the instruments were presented, it was time for the music and Aloysius was joined on the stage by about 15 musicians and one singer.
Planet Harmonik takes its inspiration from the Pythagorean theory of Music of the Spheres. Itís the idea that the proportional relationship between planets is equivalent to the relationship between musical notes ñ that the Sun, the Moon and Earth all emit their own tone. I cannot really comment on that, because I usually don’t like to think too hard when listening to music, but just let the sounds float over me.
I can say that I really enjoyed the concert. Planet Harmonik is made up of about four different pieces each with its own feel and sound. The first in particular felt to me quite uniquely oriental in that the whole tone of the music and the style of singing was very different from what I was used to. I do not know enough about Indonesian music to know if it was typically indonesian, or just a completetly unique composition. It was very refreshing hearing something so different in its forms and thus unsettling but in a good way.
The two middle pieces were closer to what I had been expecting: beautiful instrumental pieces that were melodic and easier. The final piece felt like the most western of them all to my ears. It was quite interesting in a way, how it reminded me of ambient and electronic music, yet was created completely out of percussion instruments based on a traditional format.
If there is one thing I took from this, is that gamelan music despite being a traditional style of music, is not “classical” in the sense that it is not a closed art form with pre-set styles and forms. Also, we in the west sometimes take music too seriously.
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