This album follows a previous one – Musica Coniuncta – Bach to Cage through Gamelan – published by Yantra in 2014. It follows the same concept and actualization. While the first one mainly targeted Western classical pieces and had them in turn joined-up with gamelan and other world musics, the present album focuses on very recent creations by mostly young Balinese musicians and has their original gamelan pieces invaded and ‘contaminated’ by Western and diverse musical expressions.
In the concise notes attached to the first album, we read that the idea about Musica Coniuncta originated a few decades ago, suggested by a serendipitous happening. I had recorded two pieces from the radio at different times and, in order to save space, the pieces were recorded in mono on adjacent tracks of a two-track tape. Only at some time later I realized two things. First, the pieces had the same duration. Second, and more important, they sounded incredibly well fused when played together, which would naturally happen listening to the tape in stereo mode. The latter discovery was so startling that I refrained from doing anything about it, as if I had been given a mysterious gift or sign that was not to be investigated. Many years later I timidly began to try intentional operations of the kind, saw that they could work in certain circumstances, so I decided to consider it a permanent concept-project, at any time open to register hints that appeared worthy of elaboration. The Musica Coniuncta album of 2014 includes the serendipitous combination (of Ligeti and Stockhausen).
