Colin McPhee - Tabuh-Tabuhan

He also wrote a piece called Balinese Ceremonial Music. He made a recording of it. Benjamin Britten is playing the other piano:

http://www.amazon.com/Benjamin-Britten-performs/dp/B000000WPW/ref=sr_1_2/104-8417987-3521563?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1173115561&sr=1-2

 

Ravel - Ma Mère l'Oye, third movement, 'Laideronette, Impératrice des Pagodes'
Arguably other works of Debussy, including the Prelude 'Canope', and the first two pieces from Images Book 2, 'Cloches à travers les feuilles', and 'Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut'. Also the Fantasie for piano and orchestra has been claimed to derive its melodic shapes from a Javanese piece entitled "Wani-Wani". And some of the rhythmic layering of gamelan music may have influenced some of the writing in the orchestral Images.

Percy Grainger made, with Norman Voelcker a transcription of a Balinese piece 'Sekar gadung' in 1932-33, for an ensemble of Western tuned percussion and voices, and created a full score from a gamelan piece 'Berong pengètjèt'. These were taken from records on Odéon (later re-released on Parlophone) in a set called Music of the Orient. Grainger's Random Round (1912) uses stratified polyphony, initated by strokes on a Javanese gong. Grainger also gave the first British performance of Debussy's 'Pagodes' in 1905, and made an adaptation of both this and Ravel's 'La vallée des cloches' for ensemble involving much tuned percussion (or 'Tuneful Percussion', to use his term for it).

Eichmen's Java (1929) was followed four years later by a piece called Bali. Henry Cowell was fascinated by Balinese music, listening to it together with McPhee; it was probably him who first introduced gamelan music to John Cage and Lou Harrison; some would say that the gamelan influenced some of his own piano music as well. Obviously early Cage prepared piano pieces (such as Amores) are influenced by the gamelan as well, also possibly others such as the First Construction in Metal

There are of course various gamelan allusions in Britten's Peter Grimes, but that was written during the war, so presumably doesn't count in terms of the period you are delineating?

There is a chapter in Jonathan Bellman (ed) - The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998) by Mervyn Cooke entitled '"The East in the West": Evocations of the Gamelan in Western Music' which you might find interesting if you don't already know it. Whilst very mixed (and with some extremely dubious chapters), the book itself is worth getting and can be picked up reasonably cheaply on Amazon.

Thanks for your post, Ian, especially concerning the Debussy examples which frankly I was too lazy to look up ! It made me borrow a CD of the Images which I don't really know. I've never heard the Fantaisie but I have the dots for Wani-Wani so it will interesting to compare.

A gross oversight to forget Grainger of course, although it seems there's no original piece which sustains the gamelan connection. There are passages throughout his work which make the reference - a rather surprising one happens in his version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. A good number of arrangements for (predominantly) tuned percussion, however, including Sekar Gadung (actually Javanese) and Berong Pengetjet which is more familiar under the title Gamelan Angklung. Pity he didn't arrange Godowsky's Gamelan.

I have to disagree with you on Random Round. It's designed to recreate the free polyphony he heard in Raratonga with the harmonic consciousness of a Western composer: the Javanese gong or whistle were suggestions of what the conductor could use as an aural cue near the ends of sections. There's no stratified polyphony. But there is in Cowell's Ostinato Pianissimo which should join the list. Cowell apparently played some gamelan in Berlin (of all places !) in about 1930 - before he met McPhee ?

I've always felt a gamelan connection with Cage's prepared piano music, but as the earliest (Bacchanale) is usually dated 1940 . . .

Interesting you mentioned Mana - I looked into it a couple of years back on the strength of a supposed Varese influence. Any thoughts on that ?