Colin McPhee - Tabuh-Tabuhan (1/2)

Colin McPhee (1900-1964)

Tabuh-Tabuhan (1936)

1. Ostinatos

Colin McPhee (March 15, 1900, in Montreal - January 7, 1964, in Los Angeles) 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 work. He also composed music influenced by that of Bali and Java decades before such world musicbased compositions became widespread.

McPhee studied with the avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse before marrying Jane Belo, a disciple of Margaret Mead, 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 divorced Belo in 1939. In the early 1940s he lived in a large brownstone in Brooklyn, which he shared with Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten, among others. McPhee was responsible for introducing Britten to the Balinese music that influenced such works by the British composer as The Prince of the Pagodas, Curlew River, and Death in Venice. Later in the decade, McPhee fell into an alcohol-fueled depression, but began to write music again during the 1950s. He became professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA in 1958 and was also a respected jazz critic.


McPhee's "A House in Bali", the chronicle of his life there, is still considered a valuable introduction to Balinese culture. 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 Western orchestra, but, in McPhee's description, the core of the ensemble 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.

Eastman-Rochester Orchestra conducted by Howard Hanson

Category:

Music

Tags:

• McPhee
• Bali
• gamelan
• indonesia

[Waldvogel91]

I love this-so rich. When was this recording taken?

[bartje11]

@Waldvogel91 I don't have the CD on hand, but it must have been recorded somewhere in the fifties.

[PieterdeRooijHolland]

An upload of Tabuh-Tabuhan, great! Was looking for this masterpiece here several times already. It's a very important visionary piece and really minimal music avant la lettre! It premiered in 1936 in Mexico City, decades before the name/label 'minimal music' was invented and this genre started to pave its way through the works of. a.o. Steve Reich (b.1936), Philip Glass (b. 1937) and John Adams (b. 1947). Food for thought isn't it?

[bartje11]

And this shows again that the so-called minimal music has its roots in Balinese/Javan gamelan.

Louis Andriessen was the promoter of McPhee back in the seventies (together with Reinbert de Leeuw I think) (and George Antheil for that matter)

[lrodrigu1]

I just heard this piece in my East and West Arts class and it brought me to tears. This is a wonderful piece of music.

[MuseDuCafe]

Bless the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra and Howard Hanson for so many recordings of this repertoire, and much else.

Kind of very refreshing for the ears....

[Enantiodromialist]

Thank you one more time for posting this beautiful piece. I played one of the piano parts in the Saint-Saens Third in school - I would like to play one of the piano parts in this to die happy.

[Enantiodromialist]

The orchestral summit at about 3:40 of Feste Romane is the greatest thing in all music, sorry. But yes, this is a close second.

[Enantiodromialist]

My apologies again, Mr. Bartje.

I will not trade this for the complete works of Mozart.

It is just too obscenely beautiful, it cannot even exist.

Thank you again for uploading.

[sangeee]

Thank you so very much for posting this masterpiece ! I didn't know this (beautiful) version.

[Enantiodromialist]

Truly one of the great masterpieces - thank you very much for posting this.

[sevishmusic]

Wow!!