Colin McPhee
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Colin McPhee (February 15, 1900, in Montreal or Toronto, Canada - January 7, 1964, in Los Angeles, CA) was a Canadian composer and musicologist. He is primarily known for being the first Western composer to make an ethnomusicological study of Bali, and for the quality of that groundbreaking work. He also composed music influenced by that of Bali and Java decades before such world music–based compositions became widespread.
Chronology
McPhee studied with the avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse before marrying Jane Belo, a disciple of Margaret Mead's, in 1931. He was involved in the circle of experimental composers known as the "ultra-modernists" and was among those—along with the group's leader, Henry Cowell, John Becker, and Cowell protégé Lou Harrison—particularly interested in what would later become known as "world music." McPhee is said to have first encountered Balinese music while listening to a record in New York City.[>] He and his wife moved to Bali together for Belo's anthropological work. Once there McPhee became so interested in the local music that he studied, built, and wrote extensively about the gamelans. McPhee, who was gay, divorced Belo in 1939. In the early forties he lived in a large brownstone in Brooklyn, which he shared with Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten, among others. In the late forties he fell into an alcohol-fueled depression, but began to write music again during the fifties. He became professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA in 1958 and was also a respected jazz critic.Published works
McPhee's A House in Bali, the chronicle of his life there, is one of the best introductions to Balinese culture—essential reading for anyone visiting the island. His posthumoustly published Music in Bali was the first comprehensive analysis of Balinese music published in English.His best-known musical work is Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra, composed and premiered in Mexico in 1936. Its title translates as "collection of percussion instruments," and it combines Balinese and traditional Western musical elements. It is scored for traditional Western orchestra, but according to McPhee the core of the orchestra is a "'nuclear gamelan' composed of two pianos, celesta, xylophone, marimba, and glockenspiel," giving it a highly percussive balance of sound. The orchestra is augmented by two Balinese gongs and cymbals. The work is in three movements: "Ostinatos," a flute-inspired "Nocturne," and a syncopated "Finale." Some of the themes in it derive from Balinese folk sources.
External links
- [UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive] including a slideshow and movies about Colin McPhee
Listening
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