Paris music museum features the sound of ancient gamelan

By Kunang Helmi Picard

PARIS (JP): There is something unique about this museum: it has a permanent display of 17th century Venetian lutes which rub shoulders with a gamelan orchestra from Java and a synthesizer invented by Frank Zappa.

That was the idea of the museum director, Marie-France Calas, who cherished a burning ambition to transform the new Museum of Music in Paris into a venue of significant encounters with musical culture, both ancient and contemporary.

The museum, with its sober interior design by Hammoutne, opened its curved doors to the public on March 18. It is nestled inside the poetic giant wings of the City of Music created by prize-winning architect Christian de Portzamparc and was inaugurated in 1994.

At last a major part of the rich instrumental heritage of the Conservatory of Music, dating from 1795, has found a suitable home. The permanent exhibition displays 900 instruments, paintings, sculptures and other objects spread over 3,000 square meters on different levels. Here visitors don stereo headphones and listen to important works of music while walking around.

While looking at the miniature model of the theater of the Mantoua Palace where the first opera L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi premiered, ethereal sounds of the music score flood the room. A glimpse at the model shows the visitor what acoustic problems faced the musicians and where the audience sat.

The instruments are also at hand to contribute to an understanding of the elements needed to perform. Nine such focal points exist among instruments arranged chronologically in families. Historical details are denoted clearly on signboards but guided tours are also available.

Among the larger clarinets visitors discover a tiny reed pipe from the island of Nias, off the coast of Sumatra. A gigantic Tibetan trumpet cannot be overlooked. A French guitar built by Jean Voban in 1683 is made from a complete turtle, but sounds cannot be heard resonating out of such a strange body. Neither can we imagine what tones escape from the transparent flute made of rock crystal.

Students of the conservatory are sometimes allowed to play instruments and some lucky visitors may listen to Bach being played live on a precious clavichord. Others who would like to hear the enormous 3.82 meter high stringed octobass weighing 100 kilos built by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in 1850 for the Te Deum by Berlioz will surely be disappointed.

Occasionally pop music or jazz can be heard in the contemporary music section where an electronic violin with its punctured metal body built by Max Mathews draws curious stares. It draws a sharp contrast to the collection of precious violins built by Antonio Stradivari, worth thousands of dollars these days.

Philippe Bruguires, the curator of the "World Music" section of the new National Music Museum, is still not satisfied with the range of instruments in the non-Western division.

"We have such a rich selection of instruments from these countries stored away that we could open many more rooms dedicated to music from Asia, Africa and South America," he said.

He spent years in India learning to play the stringed rudra vina before returning to become an expert based at the Guimet Museum for Asian Art. Bruguires is very excited about the ancient gamelan which has emerged out of its oblivion in the Museum of Mankind. Supposedly from Cirebon, West Java, the deep red set of gamelan instruments was presented in 1887 to the Conservatory of Music by Monsieur Jouslain, the former French Consul in Batavia -- now called Jakarta.

In this museum, earphones invite you to listen to the gamelan Martapura Slendro from Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, directed by Hadi Darminto. A musicologist specializing in Indonesian music, Catherine Basset, can also be booked to lecture on the instruments and music.

The Cit de la Musique, City of Music, which houses the museum has been offering courses for students of gamelan music since it opened. Isabelle Carr from London's South Bank used to teach here three days a week, but now she is based in Oxford and is ably assisted by Gilles Delebarre from Angers. They teach children and the three stages of gamelan to professional adults and amateur musicians.

The gamelan groups have become a favorite item of the Fte de la Musique which is celebrated on June 21 at the beginning of summer all over France. Since the gamelan group of the Indonesian Embassy disbanded with the departure of popular Putra, this is the only one based in Paris and one of two in France.

Gilles Delebarre commutes from Angers in the heart of historical France where the other Indonesian gamelan orchestra is based. In 1973 The Galerie Sonore was created by the former national director of music Maurice Fleuret and is officially known as the National Center of Pedagogical Research. Here children are taught music from all over the world housed in a wonderful old villa in the middle of a quiet park.

Delebarre's spirited approach to teaching and playing music is contagious and his four colleagues are no less enthusiastic. Considering that house music in Europe has declined in the past few decades, it is encouraging to see so many children and adults now taking music lessons together again. It is even more flattering to note how many French people are drawn to Indonesian music and playing to appreciative audiences, including amateurs and professional composers.