Culture Break: Colin McPhee: Balinese Ceremonial Music

This popped up on this morning's playlist (yeah, I listen to all sorts of stuff in the morning). McPhee is a fascinating figure in American music, more because of his influence than his actual compositions, which weren't often performed during his lifetime. His book, Music in Bali was tremendously influential on people such as Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. It's somewhat ironic that discussions of Riley's music focus on the influence of Indian raga and tend to ignore Balinese gamelan.

At any rate, here it is. From the introduction on YouTube:

While Canadian composer Colin McPhee lived in Bali only for the decade of the 1930s, he was so enamored of the music of the island's local percussion orchestra, the gamelan, that it shaped his entire compositional style. His Balinese musician friends were, for their part, intrigued when his piano arrived. As described in his book, A House in Bali, they were puzzled by the thick-sounding Western-style chords, but they quickly were impressed by the way one or two people at the keyboard could imitate the multi-layered simultaneous patterns of their own music. While in Bali, McPhee made over 40 direct transcriptions of Balinese gamelan compositions. His partner was the young British expatriate composer, Benjamin Britten. The set of transcriptions comprises three works, arranged in a typically Western fast/slow/fast suite. Since Balinese music with its patterns was an inspiration for minimalism (which McPhee, who died in 1964, did not quite live to witness) this music sounds surprisingly modern.