The author of this tale, German composer Dieter Mack, called the piece "Selisih" (gap, discrepancy). Nonchalantly and in fluent Indonesian, Mack moderated the concert night organised by Goethe Institute, explaining that he gave his music a certain talking character without using conventional text. Important for him was the communication, the relationship between the individual voices.

The individuality of the four musicians on stage, "Ensemble Selisih" - comprising the two saxophonists, a flutist and a pianist - was a matter of course for Mack. "Collectivity is fascinating if it arises from the total of different individualities. That's something I learned from Gamelan music", says the 55-year-old composer and pianist.

Dieter Mack, born in the Western German town of Speyer, probably passes for the best German connoisseur of Balinese Gamelan. As a student of contemporary composition and classic piano at the Music University in Freiburg, he stumbled almost accidentally onto an ethno-music seminary where he had to prepare a paper on Balinese Gamelan.

"I felt a mixture of fascination and total incomprehension", Mack recalls. Becoming curious about the exotic music, he saved up his money and spent his next holidays in the Island of the Gods. That was in 1978.

Mack, coming from a settled middle-class family, had never been abroad before and underwent complete culture shock spending seven weeks in the Balinese village of Saba, near Gianyar. There, Mack lived in a simple bamboo hut surrounded by fish breeding ponds, and couldn't communicate at all.

"What I experienced there was so incredible for me, that it changed my life 180 degrees," the music professor recalls.

"Before I left for Bali, I already had an identity crisis. This journey ended in a complete re-orientation."

Mack finished his studies and left again for Bali to learn Gamelan and Indonesian intensively for another year. In 1982 he brought a whole set of Gamelan instruments back to Germany and founded the "Anggur Jaya" ensemble with music students in Freiburg - at the time it was one of only two Balinese Gamelan orchestras in Germany.

When the Goethe Institute in Jakarta finally took notice of the extraordinary ensemble, they organised a tour through the whole of Southeast Asia. "It was a big success that changed my whole relationship with Indonesia", Mack says.

"Suddenly I was invited to hold lectures and workshops all the time."

At one of these occasions, the German lecturer provoked his audience by stating that Indonesian music students learned next to nothing about Indonesian music. But the dean of the Indonesian University of Education (UPI) in Bandung was more thrilled than angry, and asked Mack to work with his institute.

So from 1992 to 1995 under the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Mack was conscripted to serve as a lecturer at UPI - asking only that he did not have to teach only Western music.

But there were many more tasks, and the father of a daughter found himself soon drafting new national curriculum for music education at Indonesian junior high schools. In 1994 the curriculum was adjusted to follow his drafts, which were adapted and are still being used in an updated, improved form today.

"At least in West Java, I could move a lot during that time", says the professor, who currently teaches at the Luebeck University of Music in Northern Germany. "But I underestimated the conflicts with the bureaucracy that I stirred up with my drafts. The teachers, too, needed to be further trained, since my method starts with the hearing. Something I miss in German schools as well."

Despite his love for gamelan, Mack doesn't mix many elements of Indonesian music in his own compositions. "I am often asked where the Balinese in my music is to be found. But I don't like ethnomusic that takes elements from other cultures like products from a shop, and mixes everything", says the passionate cook who also prefers tasting nouvelle cuisine or a Balinese feast each for itself.

In the same way, Mack opposes the globalizing unification, but he also doesn't like the attitudes of many ethnomusicologists who want to conserve traditional music like biotopes. "If at our home we want development, then we cannot refuse it there. We have to learn from each other. I don't understand intercultural cooperation in a symbiotic sense, but as a meeting between different cultures on the same eye level. In this variety, I try to find my own position, my own culture. Therefore, every composition is a result of my whole life experience, my current mental state and my vision."

The last piece of the concert last Sunday night had the simple title "Trio III". Here, Dieter Mack brought together an alto-saxophone, a flute and a piano - without giving one of them a classic solo role. The music leads them - playing with, beside and against each other - sometimes excited, sometimes doleful. As Mack explains, he used the piano as a kind of percussion instrument producing muffled, bell-like tones.

"I still try to adopt the idea of Gamelan, and compose music that increases the inter-cultural experience", Mack says.

"With a good performance, I hope to make the audience feel the ritual effect of a composition. But the reaction, of course, varies according to the moment, the location and the social environment."

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