Rhythm

So far we have covered the comparison of harmonic aspects in both pieces, and have seen how Debussy manages to delicately imitate the Balinese gamelan while keeping a balance of his own style and Western music learning. But we cannot forget that another important quality of any music is its rhythm – the pattern of musical movement that either unifies or breaks the piece as a whole.

With an irregular, constantly changing meter, the Gamelan Gong Kebyar features a special rhythmic pattern known as the kotekan, where the interlocking rhythms of melodies in different instruments, thought of in different roles as male and female – nyangsih and polos, accent on different beats (where nyangsih refers to the offbeat accents and polos to the on-beat accents). Similarly, an imitation of the interlocking rhythmic effect is also found in the string quartet. In bars 64-67, violins I and II accent on the 1st and 4th beat, while the viola accents on the 2nd and 5th beat, and the cello on the 3rd and 6th beat.

Bars 64-67: Interlocking rhythmic effect

Likewise, the irregularity of meter is demonstrated in the constant use of duplets and triplets to throw off the regular tempo, as well as in the use metric displacement from bars 148-167, where the time signature 15/8 is split up to form a ‘rhythmic anacrusis’ of 9/8 in the first bar, then continuing in 15/8 in the following bars. In this example, the 1st and 2nd violin share a rhythmic line by playing consecutively in alternation, and the first beat of every 3-quaver grouping is most emphasized when the 2nd violin, viola and cello play together on that beat. The cello first rests on the second beat, then the viola on the third.

Bars 147-151: Metric displacement