I deem it necessary to emphasize the importance I attach to the extreme softness of a p mark. To play a genuine pp, both concentrated and sustained effort is required.

—Leopold Godowsky, from "Addendum" to Java Suite

Native music, played by the Javanese on their indigenous instruments, is called Gamelan. The Javanese ensemble is a kind of exotic orchestra, consisting mainly of diversely shaped and constructed percussive instruments of metal, wood and bamboo, comprising various kinds and sizes of bells, chimes, gongs, sounding boards, bowls, pans, drums (some barrel-like), tomtoms, native xylophones, sonorous alang-alang (zephyr-like, aeolian harplike) and other unique music implements.

The sonority of the Gamelan is so weird, spectral, fantastic and bewitching, the native music so elusive, vague, shimmering and singular, that on listening to this new world of sound I lost my sense of reality, imagining myself in a realm of enchantment.

The Gamelan produces most ethereal pianissimos, particularly entrancing when heard from a distance. It is like a perfume of sound, like a musical breeze. Usually the music, beginning very softly and languidly, becomes faster and louder as the movement progresses, rising, at last, to a barbaric climax.

In this, the first of the descriptive scenes, I have endeavored to recreate a Gamelan sonority – a typically Javanese atmosphere.

—Leopold Godowsky