The idea of inner melody in Central Javanese gamelan music (karawitan), first presented by Sumarsam in 1975, was a bold departure from the pioneering notions about melodic texture that Jaap Kunst articulated in his monumental book Music in Java. Kunst’s classification (1949:247) of the melodic instruments of the gamelan ensemble into three groups – cantus firmus instruments; instruments playing a more or less independent counter-melody; and paraphrasing instruments – always had its limitations. As is clear from the terms he chose, Kunst likened the gamelan composition known as gendhing to compositions of the European medieval period, which generally consisted of a nuclear theme (cantus firmus) and melodies around it, and he assigned supreme importance to that nuclear theme, which was played by the saron instruments. Sumarsam, in contrast, argued that the saron melody alone is not sufficient to show the entire melodic line of a gendhing, and that there seems to be no single part in the ensemble that is solely responsible for guiding its melodic motion. There is an implicit melody in the minds of musicians, Sumarsam (1984:257-89) contended, that guides them in performance, and every melodic instrument extrapolates its own melody with reference to this inner melody. It is not the explicit saron melody, he asserted, but rather this inner melody that constitutes the basis of performance and allows the melodic parts of the gamelan orchestra to interact with one another as an organic entity.