192
rasa LARAS , PATHET ,
and
RASA
Pathet, or Javanese modal practice, has been the subject of a very large proportion of the pages written about Javanese music, beginning with Jaap Kunst’s classic monograph (1973 [1934]). Laras (tuning system), by contrast, is relatively simple: the differences between sléndro and pélog are as visible as they are audible. Why, then, is there so little agreement as to the respective rasas of sléndro and pélog, and relatively more agreement on the rasas of the six pathets?37 The answer has to do with the nature of generalization and of extensional versus intensional meanings of category terms. That is, a generalization will depend on which instances are taken as protoypical of a category. The more vast and heterogeneous the category, the more likely there are to be gross differences in focus from one speaker to another. What this means is that the more specific the musical entity being characterized with respect to rasa, the more agreement there is among Javanese musicians. Thus, the least agreement is on the two tuning systems; there is more consensus about the six pathets; then come specific gendhings; and, finally, the most agreement is to be found concerning single performances of a gendhing.38 An important related phenomenon is the way in which pieces and categories of pieces (such as pathet or laras) mutually influence each other with respect to rasa. That is, the character of a pathet is sometimes discussed as if it were the sum of the characters of all pieces in the pathet. It may also be described as the character(s) of the most typical pieces in the pathet. Sometimes, however, the pathets are spoken of as having characters in and of themselves, so that, other things being equal, the pathet a piece is in can have a determining effect on its character. When assigning characters to the six pathets, musicians tend to agree most on the two extremes of pélog pathet limå (which is overwhelmingly serious) and
37. This observation is based on the oral and written statements of more than twenty Javanese musicians who have commented on the rasas of tunings and pathets. As a reminder, the sléndro pathets, in order from lowest to highest tessitura (and from most serious to least), are nem, sångå, and manyurå, whereas the three pélog pathets are limå, nem, and barang. The full designation of a pathet requires four words (laras x, pathet y), but this is often shortened to one or two words.This is the standard account. In fact, musicians make finer distinctions than these six categories, into which all gendhings are squeezed for the purposes of naming and classifying them.This is because some pieces are borrowed from one laras to another, with the result that within a single pélog pathet you might have pieces borrowed from different sléndro pathets, each with their own melodic conventions. One might speak, for example, of pélog nem manyurå to indicate that a piece being played in pélog nem was originally in sléndro manyurå, and so the patterns to be chosen in working it out should reflect that. But, as these are in essence recombinations of the six basic elements, and as I have no citations characterizing these subdivisions that go beyond the original categories, they need not concern us here. 38. A possible exception to this pattern is the characterization of genres versus that of pieces (see pp. 148–55 and 172–73). Genres are probably even more heterogeneous than pathets, yet there appears to be a fair amount of agreement as to their respective characters.