Page 112 - The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand Vol.XIII-2021

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XIII – 2021

and figures. Baroque composers, likewise, applied these distorted elements and

integrated them into Baroque musical styles serving as entertainment to please
the French elite classes. The nineteenth century, although, marked as a new era in

which cultural elements of Southeast Asia entered the gates of the western world,
the culture of Southeast Asian continued to be distorted due to the authoritarian
mindset of western power. Major cities of several European countries and United

States organized international exhibitions to satisfy the desire for orientalism and
exoticism among their people and to draw money into their pockets. Victims of
their Colonialism were put on display at the expo festivals, representing a clear

image of the uncivilization of the others. Notable among these was the 1889
exposition universelle (Universal exposition) that was held for six months from
May to November in Paris. The exposition featured cultures from the Americas,

North Africa, West Asia, and Southeast Asia. As for the Southeast Asian cultures,
a Javanese village, Vietnamese pavilion, and Cambodian pagodas were on display

to present living exhibits of the colonies (Young, 2008). The Javanese village
featured daily life of the Javanese that was filled with music and dance.

The gamelan music of West Java draw attention from many French composers.

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) witnessed the Sari Oneng performed by Sundanese
gamelan and was stunned with the colotomic structure and percussive sound. He
adopted the sonic effect of gamelan music as one of his compositional devices and

conveyed the idea to several of his works including The Pagodes movement in his
piano suite Estampes (1903) and his Cello Sonata (1915). Maurice Ravel (1875-

1937) was another French composer who was amazed by the Gamelan sound and
attempted to transfer this sonic identity to the third movement Laideronnette,
impératrice des pagodes: Mouvt de marchehis (Little Ugly Girl, Empress of the

Pagodas) in his composition Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) in 1910. Both composers
had never studied Gamelan music or laid foot in Indonesia. The result of their
works, therefore, were at an exotic level in which the idea of colotomic structure

was presented in their scores through overlapping musical layers of different note
groupings and displacement of accents and register to imitate various percussive
instruments of the gamelan (Young, 2008). While western composers were excited

102 Southeast Asian Musical Heritages in Contemporary Composition