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Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds

Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds - Music in American Life

1st Ill pbk Edition

Paperback (26 Feb 2004)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Colin McPhee was a performer, writer, and pioneer among Western composers in turning to Asia for inspiration. A close friend of Aaron Copland, Carlos Chavez, Henry Cowell, and Virgil Thomson, he played a vital role in new music activities in New York in the 1920s. But his most important accomplishments emerged from his devotion to the music of Bali.

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.

Book information

ISBN: 9780252071805
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Imprint: University of Illinois Press
Pub date:
Edition: 1st Ill pbk Edition
DEWEY: 780.92
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 353
Weight: 634g
Height: 153mm
Width: 229mm
Spine width: 29mm