The Aesthetics of Musical Integration in Wayang Kulit Purwa Performance

Abstract

Music is a decisive structural element of theatrical performance, yet the mechanism by which musical structure and dramatic form become integrated remains under-theorised, particularly in traditions where music organises rather than merely accompanies the action. Indonesian pedalangan scholarship has developed a sophisticated emic vocabulary for this integration, while international ethnomusicology has documented Javanese gamelan from without; the two bodies of work have rarely been read together. This article examines the aesthetic composition of karawitan pakeliran in wayang kulit purwa performance, asking how melodic patterns and formal gending structures interact with narrative meaning to shape a unified performance. The study is conceptual and library-based, working from a corpus of Indonesian-language pedalangan and karawitan scholarship published between 1960 and 2023, English-language ethnomusicological and anthropological studies of Java, and documented performance material for a single lakon, Irawan Rabi, read through a standardised Javanese gending compendium alongside its published English translation. The analysis follows an emic–etic procedure in which Javanese categories — sanggit, garap, mungkus, nglambari, and nyawiji — are first described in their own terms and only then read against general aesthetic theory. The findings show that the aesthetic function of gending operates on three levels: framing the dramatic action, reinforcing its mood, and merging with the unfolding narrative; that these functions are institutionalised in training repertoire rather than merely descriptive of it; and that tonal choice carries cosmological as well as dramatic weight. The article contributes an integrated account in which music, narrative, ethics, and cosmology converge.