Music

Events

Gamelan Concert (with Northwest New Music)

Date: March 6 2012, 7:30pm Location: Evans Hall - Evans Hall

This concert will present gamelan music and various ways in which Western composers have responded to it. Western composers have been inspired by gamelans for over a century, drawn to the otherness of its sounds, instruments, and musical concepts, and perhaps to the allure of the exotic. Debussy heard a Javanese gamelan perform at the Paris world exhibition and found in its sound intriguing scales and sonorities that he either applied directly to works such as Pagodes, or that permeated aspects of his style in general. Time  for marimba is Japanese composer Minoru Miki’s response to gamelan. Miki uses in this piece not directly materials from gamelan music but explores gamelan-inspired atmospheres written with Western compositional techniques. Australian composer Gareth Farr’s work Kembang suling  adapts patterns of especially Balinese gamelan, but it also refers to other Asian music such as Japanese Shakuhachi flute sounds. While Debussy, Miki, and Farr respond to gamelan music in various ways while writing for Western instruments, Lou Harrison is interested in adding Western instruments to a gamelan and writing music that develops out of Javanese sounds. It forces a true interaction between gamelan and Western art music cultures.