The Elbphilharmonie’s Gamelan

Text: Tom R. Schulz

Marcilly-le-Châtel is the kind of place where the last grocery shop closed down ages ago. Hardly any traveller wanders by accident into this French village at the northern end of the Massif Central, almost 100 kilometres west of Lyon, at the edge of the Auvergne. Here in Marcilly-le-Châtel, Jean-Pierre Chazal kept something very precious and exotic here, safe and dry, in the basement of a house covered with creepers, set back from the main road.

One particularly hot day in August 2016, Chazal takes three men from Germany down into the basement. They have found out about the object lying unused in his father’s cellar, and they may be interested in buying it. The men are looking for a gamelan for the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
 

In der Elbphilharmonie finden regelmäßig sowohl Konzerte als auch Workshops mit dem Gamelan statt.

In Eastern Asia the gamelan has been in use for hundreds of years on religious occasions, at family celebrations, and to accompany dancing, puppet theatre and shadow puppetry. It is mainly found on the two islands Java and Bali, which are both part of Indonesia. Balinese gamelan music tends to be fast, while the Javanese version is a good deal more leisurely in tempo. That makes it easier to use for amateur players – for people from faraway Hamburg, for example, who generally think it might be fun to play the gamelan when they are already grown-up.
 

It’s exactly this kind of instrument that interested the visitors to Marcilly-le-Châtel. It took them three hours in sweltering heat to drag the orchestra, instrument by instrument, on to a covered terrace. Once everything was set up, they set about testing and playing. They would have needed a good 40 square metres to spread out the complete orchestra. But even on the terrace, there wasn't that much space. »You see, there is one problem with the gamelan«, Chazal tells his visitors. »It takes up a lot of room.« It was lack of space that prompted him to transfer the instruments from Paris, where even storage space is almost unaffordable these days, to the country.

This gamelan had been in the possession of three French enthusiasts since 1999. Parikesit, as a Javanese musician and composer christened the gamelan not long after, belonged to flautist Sylvie Chantriaux, and two amateur musicians, Nicole Scotto d’Abusco and the above-mentioned Jean-Pierre Chazal. Of the three, Chazal, who works in computers and is now close to pension age, was the driving force behind the project right up to the end.

And it was Chazal who first set eyes on this group of instruments, at the time still without a name, in Indonesia in 1998. Until just recently, it had belonged to a wealthy Javanese property owner who lived in Margayudan, a district in the former sultan’s capital of Solo. Ms Daryo had had the gamelan made for herself in the late 1940s. She normally kept it stored in a corner of a large shed, and it was only brought out and played on special occasions. A British enthusiast who knew his way around the area ended up buying the gamelan from her – only to resell it straight away to Jean-Pierre Chazal and his two colleagues. The only thing they had to alter was the big gong, which they swapped for a new one that suited the sound of the ensemble better. The three of them were learning to play Javanese gamelan at the time at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and enjoyed it so much that they even founded a society to promote the use of the gamelan in France, the Association Parikan.

The youngest of the three visitors in Marcilly-le-Châtel was Steven Tanoto. He lives in Hamburg, where he graduated with a master's degree in composition – and interrupted his holiday in France especially to take a look at the gamelan here in the middle of nowhere. Tanoto, 29, was born on Sumatra, his grandparents were Chinese, and he lived in Australia and in Dithmarschen before he came to Hamburg. He speaks German well and is able to notate the intricate, pleasantly soothing Javanese music by ear.
 

This is a huge benefit for the Elbphilharmonie's music education programme. Tanoto is the ideal mediator between the musical culture of East Asia and the needs of the workshop participants in Hamburg. After playing and testing the Parikesit gamelan on the terrace for a while, his advice is to buy it. A gamelan expert from Leverkusen, who had traveled with him, also recommended it. Over the upcoming weeks, Benjamin Holzapfel, the third emissary of the Elbphilharmonie, finalizes the purchase with Chazal.

The gamelan reached its destination, the port of Hamburg, by land shortly before Christmas 2016. Properly packed and well stowed, it made the long journey from Marcilly-le-Châtel to the Elbphilharmonie in a 7.5-ton truck. It was on display there for the first time at the »Family Day« in January 2017, and has since been marveled at in its entirety by many Hamburg pupils in workshops. In fact, it consists of two independent parts, instruments for the five-tone Slendro scale and instruments for the seven-tone Pélog scale.