
Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds
Carol J. Oja
After hearing rare recordings of the Balinese gamelan--a percussion orchestra with delicately layered textures and clangorous sounds--McPhee traveled to Bali to learn more. There, he worked closely with Western anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. McPhee became a devoted and meticulous chronicler of Balinese musical culture in classic texts like Music of Bali while integrating Balinese and Western music into an imaginative hybrid that anticipated work by John Cage, Lou Harrison, and Steve Reich.
A fascinating portrait of an unconventional artist-scholar, Colin McPhee evocatively looks at key issues in composition and ethnomusicology while describing the profound experience of a composer striving to comprehend a new musical language.
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About Carol J. Oja
Reviews for Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds
Larry Polansky, Ethnomusicology "Carol Oja has recounted his story with outstanding thoroughness and sensitivity. . . . McPhee's legacy is a small body of specialized work, creative and scholarly, that suggested new paths in the music of this century. It deserved
indeed, awaited
the full and well-balanced study Oja has given it."
John Beckwith, American Music