Colin McPhee
From Free net encyclopedia
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 any other similar world music influenced compositions.
Contents |
Chronology
He studied with the pronounced modernist Edgard Varèse before marrying Jane Belo, who had studied with Margaret Mead, in 1931. He is said to have encountered Balinese music while listening to a record in New York City. The two 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 house in Brooklyn, which he shared with Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten, amongst 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 — a must read for anyone visiting Bali. His posthumoustly published Music in Bali was the first comprehensive analysis of Balinese music published in English.
His best-known work is Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra, composed and premiered in Mexico in 1936. Translating as "collection of percussion instruments", it combines both 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.
Sources
External links
- UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive including a slideshow and movies about Colin McPhee