Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This interview of Isang Yun was conducted by Japanese composer Akira Nishimura for Japanese periodical Musical Arts.Their conversation explores the social, cultural, and philosophical contexts for Yun's compositional decisions.As a Korean native composer exiled in Germany, Yun was directly impacted by the Cold War politics while also living through the early days of globalization.Yun's Hauptton technique could be understood as his response to the high-modernist trend of the 1950s and 60s Germany, in particular, dodecaphony and avant-garde experimentalism.The realization that new compositional trends that gained popularity in Europe at the time are still fundamentally rooted in Western musical concepts might have steered Yun toward a path to an authentically Korean musical expression.As Yun discusses in the interview, a tone in the East Asian context is not created by the composer.Instead, Yun remarks that "the universe's tone flows without end," which reflects his Daoist influence.The conversation paints a picture of Yun as a composer who envisioned a fundamentally different method of composing not only as a composer in search of original music but also as a Korean composer living in the West.
Source: Music Theory Online
DOI: 10.30535/mto.30.4.12
Author: Joon Park
Institution: University of Illinois Chicago
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409016856