Guide to Sundanese Music - Free EBooks Library

TERMS AND PRINCIPLES
the cycles are short, and in sekar ageung they are long^. When learning a
Javanese piece, we start by learning the balungan melody. Sundanese pieces
do not have balungan. Some fast passages in gamelan and degung might sound
as though they do, but such saron melodies are not standardized like
balungan: they are just one of many possible realizations.
In practice, sekar alit (small pieces) are used most of the time. Sekar
ageung are harder to learn, and less flexible in performance. Older
musicians complain that no-one bothers with the sekar ageung any more.
2«1'2 Patokan; goong. kenong. pancer. pangag^t
Sekar alit are based on a framework of destination pitches^. These
frameworks are called patokan or kenongan^. Within this framework there
exists a hierarchy:
1) Most important is the pitch (are the pitches) marked by the goong. Many
sekar alit consist of more than one goong phrase.
2) Next most important is the pitch at the mid-point of the goong phrase,
referred to as kenong'*.
3) Next most important is the pivot note played between the goong and kenong
pitches, called pancer^.
Although sekar alit can be slowed right down (into 4 wilet) to last a
long time. Some classifiers refer to sekar tengahan (medium-sized pieces)
when this happens. Conversely, sekar ageung may be played fast.
2
These destination pitches are rather like seleh notes in Javanese
gamelan.
koma (ie
The nearest equivalent
comma, not coma).
term to seleh I have heard used in Sunda is
Patok means a stake for marking out land, and patokan can mean
something fixed, a rule, norm or standard. The term kenongan in the sense of
patokan is potentially confusing for those used to Javanese gamelan; so
although it is rather common, I shall use patokan instead.
Again, this usage is potentially very confusing for those used to
Javanese gamelan. Forget all you ever learned about the kenong in lancaran,
ketawang, ladrang etc.. Remember that few Sundanese gamelan have the
instrument kenong. It really does just mean the pitch arrived at half-way
through the goong cycle.
Just to add to the confusion, kenong/2 is also a note-name, otherwise known
as lorloran.
Pancer is another terra which will be familiar to players of Javanese
gamelan, where it refers to something rather different (though clearly not
totally dissimilar). The pancer in gamelan Sunda is of greater structural
importance.
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