Colin McPhee

Colin McPhee
Name	Colin McPhee
Birth date	1900-03-05
Birth place	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Death date	1964-11-27
Death place	New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Composer, ethnomusicologist, writer
Years active	1920s–1960s

Colin McPhee was a Canadian-born composer and pioneering ethnomusicologist whose fieldwork in Bali reshaped Western understanding of gamelan and influenced composers, writers, and filmmakers. He bridged musical worlds by studying Balinese traditions and integrating non-Western techniques into concert music while collaborating with figures across modernism, anthropology, and the avant-garde. His writings and compositions connected audiences in North America, Europe, and Asia through detailed observations and innovative score-making.

Early life and education

Born in Montreal, McPhee studied piano and composition in North America and Europe, drawing on influences from Montreal institutions, Conservatoire de musique, and teachers who worked within networks that included Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, Nadia Boulanger, and Béla Bartók. He relocated to Paris where salons frequented by Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald shaped expatriate culture; connections with Darryl F. Zanuck and Louis Verneuil reflect the era’s interdisciplinary currents. His European training brought him into contact with concert life in venues associated with Sergei Diaghilev, Ballets Russes, Les Six, and the modernist circles surrounding Arturo Toscanini and Pierre Monteux.

Career and major works

McPhee’s early career included composition, criticism, and arranging for ensembles tied to institutions such as Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, New York Philharmonic, and European concert organizations like Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. He published essays and articles alongside ethnographers from American Anthropological Association and collaborated with musicians connected to John Cage, Lou Harrison, Aaron Copland, and Samuel Barber. Major published works and scores were circulated among publishers linked to Boosey & Hawkes, Universal Edition, and performance series at Tanglewood, Mannes School of Music, and Columbia University. His career intersected with film and theater practitioners including John Ford, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Joseph Losey who later adapted world music idioms.

Ethnomusicological studies in Bali

McPhee conducted extended fieldwork in Bali, engaging with Balinese masters in contexts connected to institutions like British Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Royal Anthropological Institute, and universities such as University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, and Oxford University. His observations linked Balinese practice to comparative studies by Bronisław Malinowski, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edward Sapir, Franz Boas, and Ruth Benedict. He documented gamelan ensembles through audio recordings and transcriptions that entered archives alongside collections from Alan Lomax, Frances Densmore, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s contemporaries. Fieldnotes and analyses resonated with theorists like Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Carl Jung, and Mircea Eliade, influencing scholarly discourse at symposia sponsored by Royal Anthropological Institute and universities under the auspices of Fulbright Program and Rockefeller Foundation.

Compositions and musical style

McPhee’s compositional voice synthesized Balinese modal clusters, metallophone textures, and Western orchestration, producing works performed by ensembles associated with Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and chamber groups linked to Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His style shares affinities with pieces by Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Béla Bartók, Olivier Messiaen, and later echoing in the output of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Lou Harrison. Notable compositions appeared on programs curated by conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Monteux, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Arturo Toscanini, and were championed by soloists connected to Glenn Gould, Arthur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, and Isabelle Vengerova.

Film and media contributions

McPhee worked in film, radio, and documentary media, contributing music and consultation to projects in collaboration with studios and broadcasters like BBC, NBC, CBS, RKO Pictures, and MGM. His expertise informed soundtracks and ethnographic films associated with directors and producers such as John Huston, John Ford, Robert J. Flaherty, Margaret Mead, and Alan Lomax. He appeared in programs and lectures for cultural organizations including Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, Asia Society, and festivals like Edinburgh International Festival and Venice Film Festival, helping to introduce Balinese music through recordings that circulated via Columbia Records, Decca Records, and Electrola.

Personal life and legacy

McPhee’s personal networks connected him to writers, artists, and intellectuals including W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Bowles, Isamu Noguchi, Ansel Adams, and Dorothy Brett. After his death in New York City, his manuscripts, recordings, and correspondence were preserved in archives affiliated with New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Bodleian Library, and university collections at UCLA and Yale University. His influence endures in ethnomusicology programs at Cornell University, Indiana University Bloomington, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Washington, and in repertoires of ensembles such as Gamelan Semara Ratih and academic gamelan groups worldwide. Tributes and biographies placed him alongside figures like Bervoets, Nicholas Shakespeare, Timothy Nevill, and scholars producing works celebrating global music exchange and modernist cross-cultural synthesis.

Category:Canadian composers Category:Ethnomusicologists Category:20th-century composers