Paris music museum features the sound of ancient gamelan

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.