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ZIZBILIT presents…
BALINESE CEREMONIAL MUSIC :
sheet music and recordings of Colin McPhee’s transcription of Balinese gamelan for two attuned pianos
This torrent contains sheet music of the piece for two pianos that Colin McPhee is perhaps most remembered for, as well as audio recordings of a performance of this piece. It is a transcription of three traditional works for Balinese gamelan and he composed it for two pianos that were slightly out of tune. In Bali, a solo instrument is not really considered complete; every instrument has its partner that is less than a quarter tone out of tune to produce a ringing tone. Any other sound is considered to be mute and lifeless. The exact contents of this torrent are included overleaf. If you would like any more information on these pieces or Balinese music in general or have some additional material you would like to add to this torrent, please send them to:
[email protected]
FILE CONTENTS
[1] FILE – from PRINCE OF THE PAGODAS
[1.1] Gambangan.mp3
[1.2] Pemoengkah.mp3
[1.3] Taboeh Teloe.mp3*
[2] ZIZBILIT presents – McPhee’s BALINESE CEREMONIAL MUSIC.pdf
[3] Balinese Ceremonial Music.pdf
[4] cover graphic
[5] metadata
LAST UPDATE :
2 November 2016
*It’s interesting to note that the spelling of the titles is a quaint piece of nostalgic antiquity, reflecting the Dutch language used by the colonial rulers at the time.
MORE Background info…
The two pianos Colin McPhee composed for, like the Balinese paired instruments, were intended to be tuned a little apart (as is the case for these recordings). Colin McPhee was a Canadian composer who lived in Bali for the decade of the 1930s. During his stay in Bali he became so enamored of the music of the island's local percussion orchestra, the gamelan, that it shaped his entire compositional style.
His Balinese musician friends were, for their part, intrigued when his piano arrived. As described in his auto-biography, A House in Bali, they were puzzled by the thick-sounding Western-style chords, but they quickly were impressed by the way one or two people at the keyboard could imitate the multi-layered simultaneous patterns of their own music. While in Bali, McPhee made over 40 direct transcriptions of Balinese gamelan compositions.
When he was back in New York in 1941, McPhee recorded the three pieces which were transcribed into the score included with this torrent. These recordings are included with this torrent, although they were taken from the album of Benjamin Britten’s piece Prince of the Pagodas. This work was perhaps not a direct transcription of Balinese music, but it certainly was influenced by the time he spent in Bali with McPhee. It’s also no coincidence that McPhee’s performing partner on this recording was Britten himself.
The set of transcriptions comprises three works, arranged in a typically Western fast/slow/fast suite. Since Balinese music with its patterns was an inspiration for minimalism (which McPhee, who died in 1964, did not quite live to witness) this music sounds surprisingly more modern.
The intention of this torrent was to make this score more accessible to pianists who would consider performing this piece or would like to know more about the influence Balinese music has had on the West.
uploader: Dr Zachar Alexander Laskewicz
profile: http://1337x.to/user/ZIZBILIT/
In addition to the Torrent Resource account, other torrents of ebooks, sheet music, films and recordings primarily of my own compositions/films but also of multimedia material, scores and ebooks which would be otherwise hard to find (one example being the extremely rare Russian Futurist books) can be found through my website's Trading Post:
http://www.nachtschimmen.eu/places/tradingpost.htm
NIGHTSHADES music theatre language ebooks NACHTSCHIMMEN
info: [email protected]
ZIZBILIT is a taken from a Disfodish intransitive reflexive verb: ZIBLIZET. Without the reflexive prefix, ‘BLIZET(OT)’ is a transitive verb and can be used to refer to instruments or toys, i.e. Zätit nidiš blizetìs Dišflôtit ([it is so that] + [he] + [plays] + [flute]. With the addition of the ZI- prefix, the word becomes reflexive, meaning that the noun has three major meanings:
[1] the act of playing oneself (i.e. one’s music);
[2] the act of playing the fool, making jokes at one’s expense;
[3] the act of self-pleasure.
So what is Disfodish and why have I used one of its words as my profile title? It is an entirely fictive language spoken in an entirely fictive country. The relatively new study domain referred to as “Fictive Protolinguistics” is about studying the creation of artificial languages in an effort to better understand how language develops. What better place to teach this subject than at the fictional State University in Votstat; capital of the small unaligned province generally referred to as as ‘Dišfodat’ which also means simply ‘this place’ positioned somewhere between Germany and Belorussia.
I use this fictive language as part of my work as an experimental film-maker to question the efficacy of communication and the limitations it can put on human experience. As a composer I also explore the relationship between music, language and communication. The language and its deliberate artificiality also allows me to step back and ‘play the fool’.
You can find out more about my work at my website, see my films at my YouTube channel, or hear fragments of my compositions at SoundCloud :
WEBSITE : http://www.nachtschimmen.eu
YOUTUBE CHANNEL :http://www.youtube.com/nachtschimmen
SOUNDCLOUD : https://soundcloud.com/laskewicz
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