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| Introduction |
| Up until the twentieth century, or more specifically up until the formation of the government's Department of Fine Arts in the 1930s, ensemble types apparently varied considerably through time. Today, however, ensembles are percieved according to standard or conventional types. Along with descriptions of instruments, elucidation of these types is perhaps the most important way in which Thai music is "presented" to observers and also figures in how Thai musicians view thier own music. | |
Comtemporary Thai accounts list three standard types of ensembles. These are Wong Pi Phat, Wong Khryang Sai, and Wong Mahori. Wong Pi Phat is an ensemble of percussion instruments and the Pi or oboe. Wong literally means circle; in music, it generally means ensemble (though the instruments of Khawng Wong Yai is a big circle of gongs). Pi is the double-reed wind instrument used in ensemble, and Phat refers to instrumental music, or "to play music" (Morton 1976:104) Wong Khryang Sai is an ensemble of stringed instruments (this is what its name refers to literally), drums and hand-cymbals and Khlui or flute. The ensemble does not, however, include virtually all stringed instruments: it does not include the three stringed saw sam sai. |
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Wong Mahori is frequently described as " a combination of Khryang Sai and Pi Phat ensembles" (Jearaditharporn 1973). However, historically the Mahori did not evolve from the combination of the other two. The ensemble indeed utilizes instrument types found in both Pi Phat and Khryang Sai ensembles, but the Mahori ensemble joins stringed instruments with Khryang Mahori--that is, Mahori-sized xylophones and gong--circles. |
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| These instruments are smaller than Khryang Pi Phat or the Pi Phat-sized xylophones and gong-circles and are about two pitches higher, to match the pitch of the stringed instruments. These small instruments are not always easy to come by nowadays, and many times people use the larger instruments in Mahori. Furthermore, the most important characteristic of mahori instrumentation is the presence of the Saw Sam Sai (which, though stringed, is not used in the Wong Khryang Sai) and the Thon/Rammana pair of drums, though oddly there are the very instruments which some choose now to leave out. |
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On informal occasions, musicians may commonly add instruments to an ensemble, doubling or tripling parts according to how many players are present, though not breaking the essential rules of which instruments belong in which ensemble. For instance, a Wong Khryang Sai might informally include several Saw Duang players, but no Saw Duang player would join a Pi Phat ensemble. One informant claimed such additions were most common among "rural" ensembles and amateurs. |
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In formal performance, the number of players is strictly limited to the standard instrumentation. This means one player or one instrument to a part; when pairs of instruments are played (for example, two Saw Duang in one ensemble), the musicians should play separate roles, one subordiante to the other. Ideally both instruments in a pair should play identically, but this is very difficult and requires much practice. More commonly, one player is designated "first" and the other "second"; the second plays softly, keeping strictly to the most basic melody according to her instrument's character. The first player can improve or deviate from the standard part. The addition of players in precise roles is another feature of the standardized ensemble types of the twentieth century. Each of the three standard ensembles discussed above occurs in standard graded sizes: small, medium, and large. One progresses from smaller to larger sizes for the most part by adding instruments to fulfill the same number of musical roles, not by taking away and changing them, although some changes in wind instrumentation occur due to the pitch level or mode of individual compositions. The effect is of nested boxes which fit neatly inside one another. Even when there is a change in instrumentation (other than adding more) between one size and another, this is perceived as a substitution; this nicely lets us see which instruments are in some way perceived as being equivalent or filling equivalent roles. |
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