Phleng-ruang Mahori : A New Invention Thai Musical Genre

Abstract

          Phleng-ruang is an instrumental music created during Ayuthaya period (C 15-16) and usually performed by the piphat (wind and percussive instruments) ensemble. A Phleng-ruang is a series of variety pieces of music put together in kind of medley, a complete phleng-ruang consists of three tempi; adagio (slow), moderato (medium) and allegro (fast) and end up with a coda call phleng-la. There were many pieces of phleng-ruang in the past but nowadays remain only 36 compositions. Because phleng-ruang was never been performed by any other ensembles but the piphat-maikhaneg (hard mallets piphat) so that the researcher created a new type of phleng-ruang called “phleng-ruang mahori” for mahori ensemble which is consisted of three movements: phleng-cha (a slow tempo), phleng-sawngmai (a medium tempo) with vocal music, and phleng-rio (fast tempo) each movement has four pieces, then end up with the finale phleng-la (literally farewell music). This music use to be performed by mahori ensemble which is consisted of saw-sam-sai (three string fiddle), saw-duang (high fiddle), saw-ou (low fiddle), jakhe (floor zither),   khlui (recorder), thon-ramana (a pair of goblet drum and frame drum) and ching (finger cymbals) with no vocalist.  In the phleng-la, traditionally the beats must articulate by klawng-that (barrel drum) but for phleng-ruang-mahori it is substituted with klawng-taphoe.