Admissions are fairly simple. All prospective students register in an online database in April/May. In June, they are called to their respective departments for an entrance exam. In the karawitan exam, students are called two at a time into a gamelan room where two dosen (professors) are waiting. The students are asked to choose a gendhing that they both know well. If the students are more advanced (like those from SMKI), they test on gender, rebab, and kendang. If they are less advanced, they test on bonang or some balungan instrument. [In my case, me and my partner chose Ladrang Wilujeng on gender/rebab/kendang]. The large majority of prospective students pass the entrance exam, and following this have a short one-on-one meeting with the head of the department.
Once the department accepts a student, there is a large amount of paperwork to submit to the central administration. Payment is submitted in full at this time.
My own observations (and I can only speak for the karawitan department) are that the bar for admissions is quite low, and most students who express a genuine interest will be accepted. This is in accordance with ISI's founding principle, which is to provide an affordable and practical arts education for working-class students. I do not have the exact figure, but in the last admissions cycle around 40 out of 65 prospective students were accepted into the karawitan program. About half of these students are recent graduates of SMKI, and the other half are novices or have some informal experience playing gamelan. Counting myself, there are four students who are significantly older and have spent time working before deciding to return to school.
The SMKI graduates are generally very advanced on one or two instruments, but lack broader conceptual knowledge. For this reason, all students start from the very beginning with lancaran and bubaran. All practical classes have two sessions, one for the more advanced "A" group, and another for the "B" group. That being said, all students learn essentially the same material in more or less detail.
Semester 1 is particularly heavy on lecture-based classes, with only three classes that actually involve playing music. Subsequent semesters contain a greater proportion of practical classes.
Here is a class-by-class account of my first semester at ISI:
Karawitan Yogya Alit
- Lancaran Bindri sl sanga, Lancaran Manyar Sewu sl manyura
- Bubaran Udan Mas pl barang
- Ladrang Jagung-Jagung sl manyura
Tabuh Wiraga
- Kendang (semua kendang kalih)
- Lancaran gaya Yogya, Lancaran gaya Solo (lancar, tanggung, dados)
- Bubaran (tanggung, dados, dados langsung dari buka)
- Ketawang gaya Yogya, Ketawang gaya Solo
- Ladrang gaya Yogya (tanggung, dados, dados kentrungan), Ladrang gaya Solo (tanggung, dados)
- Gender
- Ladrang Wilujeng sl manyura
- Ketawang Puspawarna pl barang (khusus buka gender sl manyura)
- Ladrang Jati Kumara pl nem
- Rebab
- Ladrang Wilujeng sl manyura
- Ketawang Puspawarna sl manyura
Titilaras
The first in a series of singing classes. Every session starts with vocal exercises in slendro or pelog. The target range is from high 3 (the last key on a gender barung) to low 5, or about two octaves. The exercises are followed by each student presenting notation (gerongan or dolanan, generally), and the rest of the class singing it.Sejarah Karawitan
This class presents an overview of the history of Javanese arts, from the contents of 8th century prasasti (stone/metal inscriptions) up until the Treaty of Giyanti in 1755.The semester ended with an all-day field trip to Surakarta:
- Museum Radya Pustaka, the oldest museum in Indonesia
- Mangkunagaran
- Gamelan sekati in the courtyard of Masjid Agung Kraton Surakarta
- Wayang wong performance
Sastra Jawa
Addressing issues of phonetics, spelling, and grammar in formal Javanese. Presumably (all the students are native Javanese speakers), this class is preparation for correctly interpreting and singing the Kawi texts used in karawitan.[This is one class that I will need to retake. Try studying the formal structures of a language you do not speak at all, through a second language that you know only poorly.]
Pengetahuan Karawitan
An introduction to basic concepts and terminology in karawitan- The distinction between Irama and Laya (tempo within a particular Irama)
- The distinction Laras and Mbat (fine tuning within each Laras)
- The relative structure of gendhing Yogyakarta versus gendhing Surakarta
- Yogya: buka, lamba, dados, pangkat dawah, dawah, sesegan, suwuk
- Solo: buka, tanggung, merong, ngelik, umpak, umpak inggah, umpak-umpakan, inggah, sesegan, kalajengaken, kaseling, suwuk
Teori Budaya
A very open-ended class about anything and everything relating to culture. Some topics covered:- What is "culture?" What is "art?" What is the purpose of art?
- Case study: the specific gendhing performed during formal events at Keraton Ngayogyakarta versus at Keraton Surakarta
- Gamelan in Japan and the United States
- Various Javanese traditions (marriage, death, birth, Selamatan, Garebeg, etc.)
- The basic features of pathet. Example, pitch hierarchy of slendro sanga:
- 5 (nada dasar/dong)
- 1 (kempyung bawah/dang)
- 2 (kempyung atas/deng)
- 6 (pelengkap/dung)
- 3 (pantangan/ding)
Filsafat Pancasila
The philosophy behind the national ideology of Indonesia,. The teacher spent most of the class pointing out how the Indonesian public does not quite live up to the standards of the Pancasila, particularly with regard to Kemanusiaan Yang Adil dan Beradab and Persatuan Indonesia.Agama
It is a university-wide (perhaps country-wide?) requirement that all incoming freshmen take a class on religion. Nearly all students choose Islam, which winds up being a very crowded class with lots of homework. A much smaller group of students sign up for a Christian/Catholic class. Smaller still, there is a Hinduism class with fewer than 10 students (most or all of whom are Balinese). To my knowledge, there is no "Kepercayaan Tionghoa" (Confucianism and Other) class offered.[I had the smart idea of signing up for Buddhism class, thinking it would be interesting and an opportunity to improve my language skills. To make a long story short, this class exists only on paper, and I was never able to arrange a meeting with the adjunct teacher requested by the university.]
Musik Teori Barat
An introductory class on Western music, with the primary focus being how to read and write standard notation. One interesting aspect of music education in Indonesia is that cipher notation is used for just about everything - gamelan, angklung, lagu nasional, pop, etc. - so standard notation is a rather specialized skill and unfamiliar to most freshmen.
Musical terminology seems to be a mixture of Dutch and Indonesian. For example, the word for scale is the Indonesian "tangga nada" (lit."ladder of notes") but the names of intervals are from Dutch: Prime, Seconde, Terts, Kuart, Kuint, Sext, Septime, and Oktaf. The nomenclature for pitch alteration is also in the old European style: Gis = G#, Ges = Gb. Most students are familiar with solfeggio, although they prefer to use the Javanese syllables ji ro lu pat ma nem pi.
