An Indonesian orchestra, including tuned gongs, chimes, drums, flutes, chordophones, xylophones, and small cymbals. These ensembles are most strongly associated with but not limited to the islands of Java and Bali. The ensemble often functions as accompaniment to dance and theater performances, some lasting all night.

During its height, each royal court had its own set and style of instruments, repertoire, and performers. The end of the court system brought an end to many groups, although villages have kept the tradition alive.

The gamelan is led by the drummer, who signaled a change in parts by playing a specific pattern on the two-headed drum. Usually the melody is played by the xylophones; in Bali, the melody instruments are paired and tuned slightly off-pitch to each other, to give the sound a shimmering effect. In some ensembles, melodies are also doubled by flutes or stringed instruments. The gongs and chimes basically mark rhythmic units. There are generally two scales used, PELOG (HEPTATONIC/seven-note) and SLENDRO (PENTATONIC/five-note).

In performing the work, each player has a fairly simple part to execute. However, the parts are cleverly designed to interlock with each other in fascinating patterns. Short melodic phrases are repeated many times, at varying speeds and intensity of volume. The effect is a complicated and rich ensemble sound.

Europe heard its first gamelan at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Interest was great, and recordings circulated. But by the time Western musicologists began serious study in Indonesia, gamelan music was in decline, along with the courts. Western musicologists (and the composer COLIN MCPHEE) studied the instruments, learned, wrote down, and analyzed the music, observed the theater and dance it accompanied, recovered whatever of the older repertoire they could, and, in McPhee's case, helped reinvent a genre (ketchak, the monkey dance). Gamelan is one of the most thriving of world musics today, with new and historic gamelan orchestras found throughout the world.