(b Tapanuli, Sumatra, 21 May 1915). Indonesian composer. His family, from the Batak nobility, was familiar with Western classical music. After studying music at the Dutch high school in Bandung, Pasaribu trained to be a pianist. The first Indonesian to take up a classical music education abroad, in 1936 he continued his piano and cello studies at the Musashino music school in Japan. On his return in 1939 he worked as a cellist in the radio symphony orchestra Oshio Kioku Kangen Goku during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia; in 1942 he studied composition with the Dutch composer James Zwart in Indonesia. Pasaribu was one of the few composers with an academic background in Indonesia in the period after the 1945 revolution. Melodies inspired by the Malay music of his native region and the gamelan music of Java often appear in his technically masterful compositions, written mainly for piano and small ensemble. His style was influential on the composers of the 1950s, when his was the only Indonesian music included in the classical repertory.
In the 1950s Pasaribu was known as an authoritative critic and a teacher devoted to the development of formal music schools in Indonesia. It may be said that he is largely responsible for the emergence in the 1950s and 60s of a generation of Indonesian musicians with a classical background. Appointed by the newly independent Indonesian government to develop the infrastructure of modern musical life, he established the League of Composers (a copyright organization), headed the music department of Radio Republik Indonesia and developed the music high school in Yogyakarta and the music teachers' school in Jakarta. In the country's uncertain economic situation in 1968, Pasaribu went to Suriname to work for the Dutch-Indonesian Institute for Cultural Cooperation as a cellist; after Suriname's independence in 1975 he became the conductor of the Paramaribo SO. In 1995 he returned to Indonesia and settled in Medan.
FRANKI RADEN