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                                              May  01, 2006
                                  Additions:  June 18, 2006


                                         A_HOUSE_IN_BALI
                                                  
               McPhee loses interest in           
               composition in the midst of        
               his ethnographic musical
               studies in Bali:

                                "I was now entirely absorbed in work.
                                Everything seemed of greatest interest,
                                from the detail of the 'flower parts'
    Is this a problem           in a far-off village by the sea, to the
    with excessive study?       bare and simple melodies of the
                                mountain _gamelans_.  As the days
    There's always              passed, I found myself thinking less
    another book to read,       and less of composing.  I began a work
    another predecessor         for orchestra, but I knew I should not
    to become familiar          finish it.  I wrote a few short pieces
    with...                     and forgot about them a week later.
                                The urge to write music had left, it
    It's really easy            seemed.  I recognized this with
    to get lost in              indifference, with relief even, and I
    this maze.  You             suddenly felt free and happy, liberated
    can feel like               from some opressive responsibility in
    there's no point            which I no longer believed." -- p. 158-9
    in tossing yet
    another unexamined
    work on the pile.

      If you're interested in
      a field, shouldn't you                 Or maybe he wasn't ever
      know what's been done                  much of a composer?
      in it?  If you don't
      want to bother, why
      should someone else?


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