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On their heads were towering, indescribable affairs of feathers, flowers and tinsel, faintly reminiscent of those fantastic headdresses affected by the lamented Gaby. The music was furnished by a gamelan, or orchestra, of half-a-hundred musicians playing on drums, gongs and reeds, with a few xylophones thrown in for good measure.
In the performance of their somewhat limited functions they display considerable skill and histrionic capacity, but the piece resembles a ballet rather than a drama. The recitations of the dalang are accompanied by the music of the gamelan, which, as in the case of the wayang, forms the orchestra. A topeng company numbers eleven persons the dalang, six actors, and four gamelan musicians.
I am no judge of music, but it seemed to me that when the gamelan was working at full speed it compared very favorably with an American jazz orchestra.
This wayang is especially useful as serving to keep alive some knowledge of the literary dialect among the common people. The wayang gedog differs from the former in so far as its subjects belong to a later period, and no Kavi verses are recited. The gamelan also which accompanies the dalang is somewhat different.
It is customary for the native princes to keep a dalang at their palaces; in this case, of course, the figures and gamelan do not belong to the dalang, but to the prince.
At intervals he broke into a dialogue, when he worked the puppets' arms and legs with wires, so that they seemed to be acting their several parts. Behind the dalang was a gamelan, or series of gongs mounted on a wooden frame much like an ordinary couch. These gongs were struck with wooden hammers by other members of the company, and thus served as an orchestra.
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