bouts of self-destructive depression and alcoholism. He desperately missed Bali, its way of life, his strong friendships with his group of Balinese musicians, and the daily experience of a music, the mysteries of which he had so painstakingly unraveled for himself and, through his books, the world. His precarious existence did not change until the doyen of American ethnomusicologists, Mantle Hood, offered him a salaried position in 1960 at the recently created Music Department at UCLA. By this time, he had been commissioned for the first time and had composed his Symphony No. 2 (1957) and a work called Nocturne (1958), now both recorded, and both expressing the quintessence of nostalgia for Bali, his dream country. He died in California in 1964 of cirrhosis of the liver.
During the 1990s, McPhee’s musical achievements began to be acknowledged, and today his position in world music is assured. In America and Europe, there are now many hundreds of Balinese gamelans being studied and performed on by non-Balinese musicians. Many composers have written for the gamelan or used a knowledge of gamelan to inform their work for Western instruments. Of McPhee’s house in the kampong in Sayan, the setting for A House in Bali, nothing remains except the remnants of the original foundations and his music studio, which has long been renovated. Still extant are some of the original instruments of The Club if Small Men, and indeed, several of the small men themselves, now great-grandfathers in their seventies.
JAMES MURDOCH
Ubud, Bali
January 2002
CONTENTS
Part One
The Port
Den Pasar
The House in Kedaton
Nyoman Kalér
The Masks
A Shadow-play
The Design in the Music
The Gods Descend
Kesyur
Portrait of a Prince
Chetig
Farewell Feast
Part Two
The House in the Hills
Durus
The Temple of the Dead
Primeval Symphony
The Regent
Sampih
Ida Bagus Gedé Expels the Demons
The Story of Sampih Continued
Lapse of Time
Lotring
The Cricket-fight
The Cremation in Saba
A Second Departure
Part Three
Two Years Later
The Gamelan of Semara
The Guru
The Children’s Music Association
The Lights in the Valley
ILLUSTRATIONS
Between pp. 64-5.
Gateway to Besakih, Mother Temple of Bali.
Temple offerings.
Cakes, fruits and sweetmeats for the gods.
Trompong player.
The deep-toned jégogans carry the bass.
The gangsas fill the air with ringing sound.
In the temple courtyard young girls perform the ceremonial rejang.
The little lélong dancers perform for the pleasure of both gods and mortals.
In the Temple of the Dead the women of Sayan dance before each shrine.
Each afternoon for a week the young girls from twenty villages gathered to dance at a harvest feast in Tabanan.
G’ndérs play the melody for the Wong dance.
The children’s orchestra.
The author’s Gamelan of Semara, the Love God.
Cymbals and little bells add shimmer to the music of Semara the Love God.
The guru, I Lunyuh.
The dalang opens his puppet-box.
We kill a pig for the galungan holiday.
Mask play.
The beloved but terrifying barong.
The witch Chalonarang.
Between pp. 160-1.
The garden at the house in Sayan.
Sampih dances kebyar: the opening.
The dance comes to an end.
Jews’ harps.
Arja musicians.
A feast delicacy—grilled sticks of turtle meat.
Rantun, the cook.
The ancient and holy Selunding gamelan that came out of the sea.
The soft-toned flutes of the ancient gambuh play.
Gedé Manik, drummer, dancer, composer of kebyar.
Sampih.
Lotring, the composer, was also famous for his subtle spicing of feast dishes.
Gusti Lanang Oka, a musician.
Kuta fishermen.
Durus.
Prince and Princess in the gambuh play.
Prince Panji and Perebangsa.
The
