U.S. composer explores the use of gamelan music

JAKARTA (JP): He sat in a room recording his voice and playing it back into the room. The playback was recorded by another machine and again the result was played back into the room. He repeated the process again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforced themselves so that any semblance of his speech was destroyed, except its rhythm.

We, who are familiar with our room as a place, are rarely aware of its acoustic identity. Alvin Lucier, a composer and professor from Wesleyan University in Connecticut is not as interested in the resonant characteristics of spaces in a scientific way as he is in opening the secret door to the sound situation that we experience in a room.

He is in Jakarta for the Art Summit Indonesia 1998 and will perform his music at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta on Sept. 21 and Sept. 22.

As Pierre Henry in Paris, Lucier's Music for Solo Performer (1965) was the first work using enormously amplified brainwaves and percussion. The alpha rhythm of the brain, with a range of between 8 and 12 hertz, is too low to hear as a pitch, but that high energy, those bursts of alpha, when amplified enormously and channeled through an appropriate transducer, come bumping thorough the loudspeaker. Lucier got the idea of using that energy to couple loudspeakers to instruments. He used gongs, tympany, bass drums, anything that loudspeakers could vibrate sympathetically.

He admits that one of the inaccuracies of the title is that it is not really for a solo performer. He needs someone to run the amplifiers, to pan the sounds around, to turn on one speaker and than turn on another. He usually performs the piece with another player, an assistant. He tried to be very accurate about what the piece really meant: one person, alone, sitting very, very quietly and releasing a flood of energy which permeates the concert space. The idea is that alpha, the small amount of energy which is produced without the person making any physical motion except the opening and closing of the eyes is central to the performance.

Where is the music in all of this? Intentionally he avoids making the piece 'too composerly', and on the other hand he is not interested in the scientific approach to the problem. The question should therefore be posed in another form: How would science be without a sense of poetry, and art without a certain exactitude?

This ambiguity is inspiring, even enlightening, and not just simply provocative.

Accompanied by 12 highly specialized musicians (including The Wesleyan University Gamelan Ensemble), Lucier will also present Music for Voices and Gamelan Instruments (1998) which was composed for the Art Summit Indonesia. We foresee the unpredictable Alvin Lucier, whose sensitivity and honesty lead the way, will discover the hidden evidence: What is the other side of gamelan?

Another composer and brilliant critic, Suka Hardjana, has promised to give the festival an insight into his 'in between' world and what he calls the anti-parametric aesthetic.

His one hour Wulan (1995) for gamelan, gives careful consideration to what is usually regarded as wrong, bad and dubious. The 'missing link' is perhaps that a problem comes from within, not from the outside. There is harmonice mundi' everywhere, as Kepler pointed out in the 17th century.

Another piece of his, Bambam (1998), tried to trace the materiality of gamelan and how it then became what we know as a cultural entity. If we think of our death, beauty emerges from our life. And nothing is lifeless after all. Suka Hardjana is supported by 30 of the best gamelan musicians the Indonesian School of Art (STSI) in Surakarta, some of whom are famous composers in their own right. The performances will take place on Oct. 9 and Oct. 10 at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta.

Besides the two remarkable gamelan compositions by Alvin Lucier and Suka Hardjana, Art Summit Indonesia will also present the work of two women composers, Kaija Saariaho and Jin Hi Kim, two groups from Japan and France, Theo Loevendie from the Netherlands and Tony Prabowo from Indonesia. There are eight music programs in all, besides four dance and four theater programs.

Art is not as complimentary as one might be inclined to believe. It is, like love, the soul of life that we neglect so often. We are used to being busy with what is not always essential. Looked at from this angle, a festival such as Art Summit Indonesia is necessary when wisdom and trust are lacking.

Alvin Lucier's I am sitting in a room was not conceived as an object of entertainment, although nothing is wrong in being so. Instead of using a room for a place to make music, he allows the resonance of the room to manifest itself. Every room has its own melody, hiding there until it is made audible. He composes with the architecture of his mind.

Of his use of speech recorded and played again and again, he explains that it is common to just about everybody and is a marvelous source of sound. It has a reasonable frequency spectrum, noise, stops and starts, and has different dynamic levels and complex shapes. It is ideal for testing the resonant characteristics of a space because it puts so much in, all at the same time. It is also extremely personal.

He has started paying attention to the characteristics of his speech which are unique to him and do not sound like anybody else. He has a stammer, so instead of trying to invent interesting speech patterns, he discovered that he has an interesting speech pattern anyway. The text of I am sitting in a room ends up with him saying: "I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."

The writer is chairman of the Indonesian Composers' Association.