Gamelan Music’s Influence on Western Music in the Twentieth Century

As early as the nineteenth century, a new concept of music had been developing in the West. World fairs were a crucial means of introducing gamelan music to Western audiences. Through these historical expositions, gamelan influenced many twentieth-century Western composers and encouraged the incorporation of non-Western musical elements into Western compositions. This influence demonstrates composers’ deep engagement with gamelan music and its distinctive musical characteristics. In addition, gamelan also influenced Western colleges and universities through important historical figures, composers, and events, contributing to the development of the concept of bi-musicality. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of gamelan music on twentieth-century Western music and music education. Using historical research and musical analysis, this article investigates how gamelan music affected the compositional styles of Claude Debussy, Colin McPhee, and Benjamin Britten, and explores how gamelan became integrated into Western academic institutions through the promotion of bi-musicality. The findings indicate that these composers incorporated various elements of gamelan music into their works, including scale systems, textures, ostinato patterns, rhythmic structures, and timbral characteristics. Furthermore, gamelan ensembles and performance-based learning approaches played an important role in expanding ethnomusicological studies in Western universities. The study concludes that gamelan not only influenced the compositional language of major twentieth-century composers but also contributed significantly to cross-cultural musical exchange and the development of music education in the West.