Rhythm, ‘Rhyme,’ and Preparatory Repetition in an Instrumental Genre
Cyclical patterning of gong tones is highly schematized in the longest, most complex pieces of traditional music for instrumental ensembles in Central Java. Fortunately, Barry Drummond’s growing database conveys such patterning clearly and consistently for hundreds of notations that specify each piece’s cyclical pattern of gong tones, aligned with the pitch classes of the principal, ‘skeletal’ melody that is played by the ensembles’ saron instruments. For these melodies, indigenous testimony draws one’s attention to one or more pitch classes at the end of the solo introduction that are repeated at the end of its skeletal melody’s repeated iterations for the entire ensemble. Tracing such repetition within the pieces’ cycles reveals a tendency for exact repetition of pitch classes and their rhythm at and just before particular gong tones. Tracking such ‘rhymes’ and preparatory repetitions among various gong tones results in an idiom-wide understanding of cyclical form in the skeletal melodies.