Traditional music concert
Aug. 19th, 2006 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirBlair Hall Apts., on the Feast of St. John Eudes
On Thursday, my parents and I went to a free concert being held by the New York branch of my father's university alumni association. It featured professors and students of the traditional music department at Seoul National University's music college. Traditional Korean music is known as gugak or 국악 (國樂) and encompasses both ceremonial court music as well as older folk music. It's not very common these days, outside of historical dramas and the occasional concert. I mean, I would recognize traditional Korean music if I heard it, but I don't know much about the various forms or instruments. It's not particularly popular either, since older Koreans tend to prefer a pop song genre known as ppongjjak or 뽕짝 (also called "trot" for its foxtrot beat), which is derived from Japanese enka rather than any indigenous musical tradition. And of course, younger Koreans my age prefer contemporary pop music, which is entirely Western.
The first performance was a suite of three works known as pyojeongmanbangjigok or 표정만방지곡, performed by a court "chamber ensemble" known as a hapjudan or 합주단. I was familiar with the gayageum or 가야금 (12-stringed zither), the daegeum or 대금 (transverse flute) and the janggo or 장고 (hourglass drum), but the rest of the instruments were new to me. The gayageum is a very long instrument partly supported by the lap and is played by plucking the strings with the right hand while holding them down with the left. I think it was developed in Gaya, which was a small state during the Three Kingdoms period at the bottom of the peninsula between Baekje and Silla (it was later swallowed up by one or the other). The daegeum is made out of bamboo and has a wide range of timbres (its sound is the one I first think of when someone says gugak). The ensemble also included a geomungo or 거문고, which is a 6-stringed zither similar to the gayageum except it's plucked with a stick rather than with the fingers and was developed in Goguryeo; ajaeng or 아쟁, which is a bowed zither also similar to the gayageum except that it isn't plucked; haegeum or 해금, which is a two-stringed fiddle held upright on the lap that looks similar to the erhu; piri or 피리, which is a sort of oboe and sounds rather noisy, in my opinion; and of course a gong and a seated drum.
I'm not sure if I necessarily enjoyed listening to the first performance but it was definitely interesting to watch them play. Especially the zithers, which are such large and tactile instruments. I got the feeling that they were almost physically constructing the music with their movements, more so than, say, a violin, which always gave me the impression of just exuding music naturally. The zithers though seemed more stubborn; music had to be plucked or bowed from their strings.
The second performance was a sanjo or 산조 on the gayageum. A sanjo is a solo piece accompanied on the janggo. I have a couple of mp3s of sanjo, and they're all generally long. I found it hard to really, um, comprehend the music. The gayageum is a subtle instrument, and I often thought there had been a pause in the music, only to realize that there were very soft arpeggios being played very quickly. Playing the gayageum requires incredible skill, and you only had to watch the fingers of the perfomer to realize that. It is beautiful to watch; their fingers seem to dance and bounce on the strings like an elaborate tightrope act. Still, it was too complex and unfamiliar for me to really appreciate it.
The next performance was another solo called Cheongseong-jajin-hanip or 청성(淸聲)자진한잎 on the daegeum. The title translates to "the clear sound of one leaf" and indeed the music was wind blowing through leaves on a clear day. I've never heard music sound so visual before. It was as if you could see and hear the wind passing through an open forest, and before you knew it, the wind was also in your own mind, sweeping it empty until there was nothing but the clear sound of the daegeum. It was beautiful music for meditation. Oddly enough, my mother had the exact same reaction: the same image and the same sensation of calmness and emptiness. I think it was the best part of the concert, except perhaps for the pansori, which came next.
Pansori is Korean folk opera, although that definition is a little misleading since pansori is performed by a single vocalist with a fan, accompanied by the janggo. There are five complete extant pansori works today: Chunhyangga or 춘향가 (Song of Chunhyang), Shimcheongga or 심청가 (Song of Shim Cheong), Sugungga or 수궁가 (Song of the Underwater Palace), Heungbuga 흥부가 (Song of Heungbu), and Jeokbyeokga or 적벽가 (Song of Red Cliffs). The first four are all popular and well-known Korean folktales; the last, of course, is from Three Kingdoms. I had only heard excerpts from Chunhyangga previous to the concert, but this time I got to hear the last major song in the Shimcheongga. The story of Shim Cheong is perhaps one of my favorite folktales, and Shim Cheong is considered the epitome of filial piety much as Chunhyang is considered to be the model of marital fidelity. A summary (written for a high school English class):
After that, the hapjudan returned to play Sinawi or 시나위, an improvisational piece. I liked this performance better than the first because it allowed each of the instruments to play a short solo, so I could actually distinguish the individual sounds. I'm always amazed by the improvisation in folk music, and I still have no idea how it works. I could tell though that the drum led the pace in the ensemble, so I imagine there must be some rhythmic cues involved. I also think there may have been more folk music elements involved since the instruments really mirrored the same rhythms and motifs we heard in the pansori, although that may be a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem (i.e. did the court instrumental music influence the folk vocal music or vice versa). I do think that I comprehend the folk music more than the court music because of the recognition factor.
Then there were some modernized folk songs, called minyo or 민요 (民謠), and the concert finished off with a bang by ending with a samulnori or 사물노리 performance. Samulnori being the percussion farmer's dance troupe; it is also mostly improvised and quite possibly the type of gugak that you hear most often. The Korean Association at my university has a samulnori troupe, but of course their performances couldn't measure up to students who actually major in the art. The rhythms were really creative, and the performers were much more adept at maintaining the climax and coordinating with one another. All in all, a nice finish to a good concert.
And now I have to rant: my only problem with the concert was that the venue was a Korean Protestant church (incredibly swanky, around the size of a medium hotel and with brand-new, sparkling facilities), and naturally the hosts were eager for an opportunity to evangelize. The concert started off with a prayer--yes, I kid you not, a prayer--and while I'm religious myself, I refused to fold my hands and go along with the travesty. Even if the prayer had restricted itself to a succinct word of thanks, I wouldn't have minded, but instead it rambled on for paragraphs, going on and on about the hardships of immigrant life and other irrelevant topics. What does immigrant life have to do with traditional music, I ask you? I think it's positively irreverent to use prayer as a flimsy excuse to puff yourself up to the sound of your own voice. Then instead of starting the performances we really came to see, the church had the nerve to feature their own amateur traditional dance troupe. We have one of these at my own church, and I could never understand how those grandmothers could parade on stage in costumes too small for them while completely embarrassing themselves with a shoddy performance. But at least that was a shoddy performance in front of a small community, where they were all well-known. How you could do it on stage in front of hundreds of people who don't know you and are probably laughing at you behind their hands...ugh. They were completely out of sync with one another and out of step with the music. If that wasn't bad enough, they came back for a drum dance...set to the music of an evangelical hymn. I kid you not. Here were these women, in yet more ill-fitting colorful costumes, waving their drumsticks around (they didn't even play the drums properly for the first part of the dance), while the recording in the background sang out "Alleluia!" over and over in ecstatic harmony. How, oh, how does traditional music have anything to do with Christianity? It's even more ridiculous if you consider that the drum dance was originally performed at the very same court that persecuted and executed the first Korean Christians. Honestly. They did do a bit of drumming at the end, but the background music had drums in it as well, and the two different drum lines did not synchronize in any way. What a spectacle! I'm so glad that we didn't pay for our tickets because even if the actual concert was a success, I'd have asked for my money back for being made to sit through that first half-hour of amateur ego-stroking. Not to mention, they projected the concert on two screens because the auditorium was so huge, and the cameramen naturally kept doing these fade-ins to the huge cross on the wall behind the stage. It was particularly silly when the performers were singing rather randy folk songs about sex, and you'd see their image superimposed with the cross on the screen.
Also, I just have to add, I really hope they don't actually hold their services in that auditorium because I think there's something wrong with listening to a church service while reclining in luxurious cushioned seats, as if you were in a movie theater. -_-
Anyway, ranting aside, the concert itself was wonderful, not to mention instructive, and now I really want to find a recording of the daegeum solo we heard as well as the pansori. Actually, I kind of want to hear the Song of the Red Cliffs too. I wonder if I can find a CD of it anywhere.
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schwimmerin tagged me for this meme: Once you've been tagged, you have to write a blog entry with five complete lies about yourself. That is, five things about you that are completely not true. Not even slightly. THEN hide in the entry a 6th line, something that is absolutely TRUE and the first person to guess which one is true wins.
Then tag up to five people you want to turn into compulsive liars too.
1. The first book I ever read on my own was a Disney picture book of "Sleeping Beauty".
2. I once placed second in a rollerskating limbo contest at a local rink.
3. At the moment, there are only two functioning laptops in my house.
4. I was born in Korea but moved to New York when I was only five months old.
5. If forced to choose, my favorite German author would be Thomas Mann.
6. I own all five Gundam Wing OSTs on CD, plus Operation S and Blind Target dramas.
Tagging:ladydaera, aetherangelette, tryogeru, ldmoonflower, phoebs, and whoever else wants to do it. (Note how I oh-so-cleverly tag people that I have the best chance of guessing correctly for. -_-)
Yours &c.
On Thursday, my parents and I went to a free concert being held by the New York branch of my father's university alumni association. It featured professors and students of the traditional music department at Seoul National University's music college. Traditional Korean music is known as gugak or 국악 (國樂) and encompasses both ceremonial court music as well as older folk music. It's not very common these days, outside of historical dramas and the occasional concert. I mean, I would recognize traditional Korean music if I heard it, but I don't know much about the various forms or instruments. It's not particularly popular either, since older Koreans tend to prefer a pop song genre known as ppongjjak or 뽕짝 (also called "trot" for its foxtrot beat), which is derived from Japanese enka rather than any indigenous musical tradition. And of course, younger Koreans my age prefer contemporary pop music, which is entirely Western.
The first performance was a suite of three works known as pyojeongmanbangjigok or 표정만방지곡, performed by a court "chamber ensemble" known as a hapjudan or 합주단. I was familiar with the gayageum or 가야금 (12-stringed zither), the daegeum or 대금 (transverse flute) and the janggo or 장고 (hourglass drum), but the rest of the instruments were new to me. The gayageum is a very long instrument partly supported by the lap and is played by plucking the strings with the right hand while holding them down with the left. I think it was developed in Gaya, which was a small state during the Three Kingdoms period at the bottom of the peninsula between Baekje and Silla (it was later swallowed up by one or the other). The daegeum is made out of bamboo and has a wide range of timbres (its sound is the one I first think of when someone says gugak). The ensemble also included a geomungo or 거문고, which is a 6-stringed zither similar to the gayageum except it's plucked with a stick rather than with the fingers and was developed in Goguryeo; ajaeng or 아쟁, which is a bowed zither also similar to the gayageum except that it isn't plucked; haegeum or 해금, which is a two-stringed fiddle held upright on the lap that looks similar to the erhu; piri or 피리, which is a sort of oboe and sounds rather noisy, in my opinion; and of course a gong and a seated drum.
I'm not sure if I necessarily enjoyed listening to the first performance but it was definitely interesting to watch them play. Especially the zithers, which are such large and tactile instruments. I got the feeling that they were almost physically constructing the music with their movements, more so than, say, a violin, which always gave me the impression of just exuding music naturally. The zithers though seemed more stubborn; music had to be plucked or bowed from their strings.
The second performance was a sanjo or 산조 on the gayageum. A sanjo is a solo piece accompanied on the janggo. I have a couple of mp3s of sanjo, and they're all generally long. I found it hard to really, um, comprehend the music. The gayageum is a subtle instrument, and I often thought there had been a pause in the music, only to realize that there were very soft arpeggios being played very quickly. Playing the gayageum requires incredible skill, and you only had to watch the fingers of the perfomer to realize that. It is beautiful to watch; their fingers seem to dance and bounce on the strings like an elaborate tightrope act. Still, it was too complex and unfamiliar for me to really appreciate it.
The next performance was another solo called Cheongseong-jajin-hanip or 청성(淸聲)자진한잎 on the daegeum. The title translates to "the clear sound of one leaf" and indeed the music was wind blowing through leaves on a clear day. I've never heard music sound so visual before. It was as if you could see and hear the wind passing through an open forest, and before you knew it, the wind was also in your own mind, sweeping it empty until there was nothing but the clear sound of the daegeum. It was beautiful music for meditation. Oddly enough, my mother had the exact same reaction: the same image and the same sensation of calmness and emptiness. I think it was the best part of the concert, except perhaps for the pansori, which came next.
Pansori is Korean folk opera, although that definition is a little misleading since pansori is performed by a single vocalist with a fan, accompanied by the janggo. There are five complete extant pansori works today: Chunhyangga or 춘향가 (Song of Chunhyang), Shimcheongga or 심청가 (Song of Shim Cheong), Sugungga or 수궁가 (Song of the Underwater Palace), Heungbuga 흥부가 (Song of Heungbu), and Jeokbyeokga or 적벽가 (Song of Red Cliffs). The first four are all popular and well-known Korean folktales; the last, of course, is from Three Kingdoms. I had only heard excerpts from Chunhyangga previous to the concert, but this time I got to hear the last major song in the Shimcheongga. The story of Shim Cheong is perhaps one of my favorite folktales, and Shim Cheong is considered the epitome of filial piety much as Chunhyang is considered to be the model of marital fidelity. A summary (written for a high school English class):
Shim Chung was born to a blind father. Her mother died when she was born so she was fed on the milk of the neighboring village women. Her father, being blind, had to search for menial jobs, so that he could eke out a living. Mostly, they depended on the charity of the villagers. One day, her father fell into a stream, when he was on his way home, and was saved by a passing Buddhist monk. This monk told him that he could be cured of his blindness if he made a donation to the local temple. (Donations would have been in bags of rice.) When Shim Chung heard this, she offered to become the virgin sacrifice on a ship that was planning to travel through treacherous waters. It was believed that if an unmarried (and presumably untouched) girl was thrown overboard, the sea god would be appeased and would let the ship pass unharmed. By offering to be the sacrifice, she was able to obtain the rice which could be donated to the temple.The pansori performance was absolutely brilliant. The performer had an excellent voice, not to mention perfect saturi (dialect or accent, think of how the clowns spoke in The King and the Clown, if you've seen that movie), and while I didn't understand every word of the song, I did know the story well enough to follow along. Pansori traditionally requires the audience to call out encouragement ("올시고!" or "잘한다!"), and this audience wasn't too shy to shout out, so it was very energetic and a lot of fun. The slightly bawdy humor helped as well, of course. I think the performer had considerable charisma as well; I felt very moved at the reunion scene between Shim Cheong and her father, and I think some of the people around me even cried a little at that.
When Shim Chung was thrown overboard, instead of drowning, the sea god sent her back up to the surface in a giant floating lotus flower. When the flower was discovered (and a beautiful maiden in rich silk robes was found inside), it was considered a good omen for the kingdom. The maiden, that is Shim Chung, was given in marriage to the Crown Prince and later became Queen. Then, upon her request, the king held a banquet for all the blind men in the kingdom. Her father, still unable to see, came to the feast and was immediately recognized by his daughter. She cried out to him, but he denied her, saying that his daughter had died. Only when she shed tears on his eyes did he open them and recognize the long-lost Shim Chung.
After that, the hapjudan returned to play Sinawi or 시나위, an improvisational piece. I liked this performance better than the first because it allowed each of the instruments to play a short solo, so I could actually distinguish the individual sounds. I'm always amazed by the improvisation in folk music, and I still have no idea how it works. I could tell though that the drum led the pace in the ensemble, so I imagine there must be some rhythmic cues involved. I also think there may have been more folk music elements involved since the instruments really mirrored the same rhythms and motifs we heard in the pansori, although that may be a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem (i.e. did the court instrumental music influence the folk vocal music or vice versa). I do think that I comprehend the folk music more than the court music because of the recognition factor.
Then there were some modernized folk songs, called minyo or 민요 (民謠), and the concert finished off with a bang by ending with a samulnori or 사물노리 performance. Samulnori being the percussion farmer's dance troupe; it is also mostly improvised and quite possibly the type of gugak that you hear most often. The Korean Association at my university has a samulnori troupe, but of course their performances couldn't measure up to students who actually major in the art. The rhythms were really creative, and the performers were much more adept at maintaining the climax and coordinating with one another. All in all, a nice finish to a good concert.
And now I have to rant: my only problem with the concert was that the venue was a Korean Protestant church (incredibly swanky, around the size of a medium hotel and with brand-new, sparkling facilities), and naturally the hosts were eager for an opportunity to evangelize. The concert started off with a prayer--yes, I kid you not, a prayer--and while I'm religious myself, I refused to fold my hands and go along with the travesty. Even if the prayer had restricted itself to a succinct word of thanks, I wouldn't have minded, but instead it rambled on for paragraphs, going on and on about the hardships of immigrant life and other irrelevant topics. What does immigrant life have to do with traditional music, I ask you? I think it's positively irreverent to use prayer as a flimsy excuse to puff yourself up to the sound of your own voice. Then instead of starting the performances we really came to see, the church had the nerve to feature their own amateur traditional dance troupe. We have one of these at my own church, and I could never understand how those grandmothers could parade on stage in costumes too small for them while completely embarrassing themselves with a shoddy performance. But at least that was a shoddy performance in front of a small community, where they were all well-known. How you could do it on stage in front of hundreds of people who don't know you and are probably laughing at you behind their hands...ugh. They were completely out of sync with one another and out of step with the music. If that wasn't bad enough, they came back for a drum dance...set to the music of an evangelical hymn. I kid you not. Here were these women, in yet more ill-fitting colorful costumes, waving their drumsticks around (they didn't even play the drums properly for the first part of the dance), while the recording in the background sang out "Alleluia!" over and over in ecstatic harmony. How, oh, how does traditional music have anything to do with Christianity? It's even more ridiculous if you consider that the drum dance was originally performed at the very same court that persecuted and executed the first Korean Christians. Honestly. They did do a bit of drumming at the end, but the background music had drums in it as well, and the two different drum lines did not synchronize in any way. What a spectacle! I'm so glad that we didn't pay for our tickets because even if the actual concert was a success, I'd have asked for my money back for being made to sit through that first half-hour of amateur ego-stroking. Not to mention, they projected the concert on two screens because the auditorium was so huge, and the cameramen naturally kept doing these fade-ins to the huge cross on the wall behind the stage. It was particularly silly when the performers were singing rather randy folk songs about sex, and you'd see their image superimposed with the cross on the screen.
Also, I just have to add, I really hope they don't actually hold their services in that auditorium because I think there's something wrong with listening to a church service while reclining in luxurious cushioned seats, as if you were in a movie theater. -_-
Anyway, ranting aside, the concert itself was wonderful, not to mention instructive, and now I really want to find a recording of the daegeum solo we heard as well as the pansori. Actually, I kind of want to hear the Song of the Red Cliffs too. I wonder if I can find a CD of it anywhere.
schwimmerin tagged me for this meme: Once you've been tagged, you have to write a blog entry with five complete lies about yourself. That is, five things about you that are completely not true. Not even slightly. THEN hide in the entry a 6th line, something that is absolutely TRUE and the first person to guess which one is true wins.Then tag up to five people you want to turn into compulsive liars too.
1. The first book I ever read on my own was a Disney picture book of "Sleeping Beauty".
2. I once placed second in a rollerskating limbo contest at a local rink.
3. At the moment, there are only two functioning laptops in my house.
4. I was born in Korea but moved to New York when I was only five months old.
5. If forced to choose, my favorite German author would be Thomas Mann.
6. I own all five Gundam Wing OSTs on CD, plus Operation S and Blind Target dramas.
Tagging:
ladydaera, aetherangelette, tryogeru, ldmoonflower, phoebs, and whoever else wants to do it. (Note how I oh-so-cleverly tag people that I have the best chance of guessing correctly for. -_-)Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-19 06:57 pm (UTC)this sounds fun to do... i'll have to think a bit, though!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-19 06:58 pm (UTC)Also, I just have to add, I really hope they don't actually hold their services in that auditorium because I think there's something wrong with listening to a church service while reclining in luxurious cushioned seats, as if you were in a movie theater.
:-D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-19 08:56 pm (UTC)XD
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-19 11:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-20 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-23 04:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-23 06:35 pm (UTC)yyyup. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-23 06:36 pm (UTC):D