Cyclic Properties of Indonesian Music

Abstract

Music in Indonesia often has a nondevelopmental, circular, and self-perpetuating nature that may impart an indeterminate and timeless quality to the music — a quality that is, in some areas, clearly related to broader social and religious elements. Many Indonesian music compositions have repeating rhythmic, melodic, tonal, or timbral cycles that can be linked, overlapped, or concatenated. Such “cyclic” music is reverting — rather than progressing — in structure, such that it is always approaching its beginning. One distinctive device used to achieve structural continuity in Indonesian music is the blurring of formal outlines through the placement of the same melodic patterns at the end and beginning of sections of pieces. An analytical examination of five diverse pieces of music from Indonesia demonstrates that cyclic principles underlie Indonesian music as a whole, regardless of its regional or historical origin, its genre or style.