Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds (Music in American Life) - Softcover

Oja, Carol J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252071808 ISBN 13: 9780252071805

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2004

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.

About this title

About the Author

Carol J. Oja is the William Powell Mason Professor of Music at Harvard University. Her books include Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War and Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252071808
• ISBN 13: 9780252071805
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376