Pathet

Pathet (Javanese spelling; also patet) is an organizing concept in Central Javanese gamelan music. It is a system of tonal hierarchies in which some notes are emphasized more than others. The word means '"to damp, or to restrain from" in Javanese. Pathet is "a limitation on the player's choice of variation, so that while in one pathet a certain note may be prominent, in another it must be avoided, or used only for special effect. Awareness of such limitations, and exploration of variation within them reflects a basic philosophical aim of gamelan music, and indeed all art in central Java, namely, the restraint and refinement of one's own behaviour." Javanese often give poetic explanations of pathet, such as "Pathet is the couch or bed of a melody." In essence, a pathet indicates which notes are stressed in the melody, especially at the end of phrases (seleh), as well as determines which elaborations (cengkok and sekaran) are appropriate. In many cases, however, pieces are seen as in a mixture of pathets, and the reality is often more complicated than the generalizations indicated here, and depend on the particular composition and style.

In Javanese music there are traditionally six pathet, three for each tuning system, pelog and slendro. The systems correspond to each other in emphasized pitches, as in the table given below (given in kepatihan notation), although of course the numbers do not indicate the same frequencies.

(Note: Pelog lima and slendro nem are not musically parallel.) The musical relationship between pathet makes it possible to transpose some pieces from one pathet to the other, as well as to share cengkok at different transpositions. Some of the direct transpositions of balungan: from manyura to sanga by dropping notes one scale degree; from manyura to pelog barang by changing pitch one to seven, and altering 2126 to 2756; from slendro sanga to pelog nem by playing the slendro balungan in pelog.

Mantle Hood's writing on pathet, no longer considered authoritative, proposed that in pélog, 4 is a "dissonant" pitch; elaborating instruments such as gendér and gambang often play the adjacent pitches 3 or 5 instead. The "avoided" notes are rare as seleh. The terms "tonic" and "dominant," are used by some sources. The Javanese use the terminology padhang and ulihan, or question and answer, to describe the semantics of a balungan or lagu (melody). Another system of designation proposed by Mantle Hood, was Gong Tone I for the stressed note, Dasar for the strong note, and Gong Tone II for another strong note involved in the cadential system.

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