Berlayar and the Christoffel Plantin Award
Berlayar in Malay means to set sail. In 1995 Robert Casteels moved from a temperate climate with huge grey skies to an equatorial climate. He spent hours in solitude, experimenting with instruments whose sophisticated tuning system puzzled him. The power of the tropical sun echoed the metallophones. He started to write music again, but his compositional language moved away from the Eurocentric 12-tone tuning to a centrifugal 19-tone tuning, i.e. where the octave is divided into 19 equidistant semitones. Casteels drew charts of the Slendro and Pelog orchestra. In 2004, he completed a PhD thesis on gamelan and contemporary composition.
Expanding his PhD research, he recorded and analysed 160 individual gamelan sounds. The most challenging was how to read the data and draw valid conclusions. To start with, the reading of the sonograms disproved the common belief that all bonangs, kenongs and kempuls behave acoustically like inharmonic vibrating plate instruments, while saruns and genders are harmonic vibrating bar instruments. As an example, the following sonogram analysis of a kempul 6 sound reveals a d sharp at 153.3 Hz, a sharp b flat at 122 Hz, and a bandwidth from 59.5 to 62.5 Hz.
The x-axis expresses time in seconds and the y-axis the frequency in Herz. Colours are graduated from white (no energy) to red (weakest level) to blue (stronger signal) to green (higher level of energy). Furthermore, the analysis of the bandwith enabled Casteels to combine organically this sound with non-gamelan instruments.
The results of this research were published in a two-volume totalling 1487 pages monography, entitled ‘Berlayar’.
In recognition of his “contribution to cross-cultural research” (quote from citation), Dr Robert Casteels was the youngest laureate and one of only three musician laureates to receive in 2001 the Christoffel Plantin Award, the highest cultural award presented by the Flemish Government. This prestigious award recognises only one recipient per year for an “extraordinary contribution in the fields of arts and science”.
Expanding his PhD research, he recorded and analysed 160 individual gamelan sounds. The most challenging was how to read the data and draw valid conclusions. To start with, the reading of the sonograms disproved the common belief that all bonangs, kenongs and kempuls behave acoustically like inharmonic vibrating plate instruments, while saruns and genders are harmonic vibrating bar instruments. As an example, the following sonogram analysis of a kempul 6 sound reveals a d sharp at 153.3 Hz, a sharp b flat at 122 Hz, and a bandwidth from 59.5 to 62.5 Hz.
The x-axis expresses time in seconds and the y-axis the frequency in Herz. Colours are graduated from white (no energy) to red (weakest level) to blue (stronger signal) to green (higher level of energy). Furthermore, the analysis of the bandwith enabled Casteels to combine organically this sound with non-gamelan instruments.
The results of this research were published in a two-volume totalling 1487 pages monography, entitled ‘Berlayar’.
In recognition of his “contribution to cross-cultural research” (quote from citation), Dr Robert Casteels was the youngest laureate and one of only three musician laureates to receive in 2001 the Christoffel Plantin Award, the highest cultural award presented by the Flemish Government. This prestigious award recognises only one recipient per year for an “extraordinary contribution in the fields of arts and science”.
last updated on 13 Oct 08