Towards an Assessment of the Javanese Pelog Scale
A. M. Jones · Ethnomusicology · 1963
But Professor Mantle Hood maintains that the Pelog tuning has an elastic quality, whereby intervals may be stretched or compressed, so that to speak of a fixed standard tuning is not in accord with the actual situation. Indeed Kunst himself (1949:251-2) states that gamelans of the Principalities are classed into different species both according to their absolute pitch and according to the mutual relation between the intervals. In the case of pitch the Javanese, he says, recognise three classes-low, medium and high: the distinction 'according to intervals chiefly in the interval . . . bemgulu. The question therefore arises whether Kunst's averages were too facile a summary of his tunings and whether the latter have not more to tell us about the nature of the Pelog scale. Our concern is not primarily with the pitch of the notes but with the interval-relationships of the notes in an octave. The stretching of the scale by tuning the octaves sharp is a separate issue which lies outside our immediate investigation. In order to gain a clear picture of comparative tunings, the charting of cents intervals is not the best way: it is far better to use what we have called 'Cumulative Cents' figures. In this method we select one note-and we shall choose the note Pelog-and call it 'O': we than progressively add the intervals below it and above it, and assign the totals to the respective notes. Thus Kunst's normalised Pelog in Cumulative Cents, when Pelog is 'O', will be: