He exposed by owning a pronounced modernist Edgard Varèse before marrying Jane Belo, who experienced exposed using Margaret Mead, in 1931. Them moved to Bali together for Belo's anthropological work, once there McPhee became therefore concerned in the local music he exposed, built, & wrote extensively of the gamelans. McPhee & Belo divorced within 1939. around the early forties he sleep in the big brownstone in Brooklyn, shared out by using Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten among others. In the late forties he fell into an alcohol fueled depression, but began to write music once again a fifties. He became prof of ethnomusicology at UCLA in 1958 and was also the respected jazz critic.

McPhee's A House in Bali, a story of his life there, is one of the better introductions to Balinese culture. The must understand for anyone attend vist Bali. His posthumoustly promulgated Music in Bali was the 1st comprehensive analysis of Balinese music published in English.

His right-known act, Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra, was composed within Mexico in 1936 & combines both Balinese and traditional American musical elements. These are scored for traditional American orchestra, however based on data from McPhee a core of the orchestra occurs as "'nuclear gamelan' composed of two pianos, celesta, xylophone, marimba, and glockenspiel," yielding it the extremely percussive balance of healthy. A orchestra is augmented by 2 Balinese gongs & cymbals. A function is around triad movements, Ostinatos, Notturno, & Finale. A bit of of the themes within it derive from either Balinese folk sources.