LIV Form Gamelan Trip
This term the LIV Form went to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to perform some Javanese Gamelan as well as learn more about shadow puppetry. The girls were introduced to the gamelan which consists of instruments not too dissimilar to Western xylophones and gongs. However, when playing the instruments, it was very clear that they were based on a very different tuning method. Also, each note was numbered rather than named.
The piece they performed consisted of different groups of the gamelan, performing either the core melody (balungan) or a derivative of the core melody simultaneously, which created a mesh of busy and shimmering sounds. Gamelan music is often performed with shadow puppet shows and the girls were fascinated to hear that a shadow puppet show usually lasted through the night until early dawn.
