It was 1970. I was a student in Warsaw. Once a week our composition class would gather at the Academy for an analysis course. We were an odd bunch, a Hungarian pianist, a black Cuban composer, a conductor, two spirited Polish girls, and myself. But we were also typical of the sort of international group that had assembled in the Polish conservatoires at that time—musicians brought together by a common fascination with the Polish School, which was still very much in full flight, and by a determination to unravel its technical and aesthetic mysteries.

It was the title that made me stop: A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, 1947, first edition, 5p. At that price it was irresistible; but what was such a recondite book doing in a junk shop in Camberwell—who was the author, and what was the significance of the ‘house’ in the title? As I looked through the book it became apparent that McPhee was a composer. I had never heard a note of his music, but one thing in particular fascinated me: inside the book cover was an announcement:

Three of the author's transcriptions for two pianos of Balinese gamelan music have been published by G. Schirmer of New York. Under the title ‘Balinese Ceremonial Music…’.

It is always frustrating, in these days of necessarily limited rehearsals, when the all-too-short time that one has allocated to a piece becomes beset by boring textual problems. Valuable minutes can slip away, while the point under discussion may make no appreciable difference whatever to the actual performance; and it is all the more galling when (as often in the present work) dissection eventually reveals the score to be more likely at fault, the parts probably correct, and therefore the dissection itself to have been an entire red herring.