Introduction

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Be ready to:

- Differentiate between orally transmitted folk music, called minsok kugak, and recent cultural globalization, fushion kugak (“fusion Korean music”) and ch’angjak kugak (“newly made Korean music”), which have come to dominate the contemporary traditional Korean music scene.
- Examine Korean music as acoustic reflections of Korea's historical, geographical, and ethnic identity, addressing such attributes as tone quality, tempo, vibrato, continuity, syncopation, modal and rhythmic shifts.
- Analyze the philosophical foundations of Korean court music, which is rooted in the teachings from the ancient Book of Ceremony, one of the most important sources of Confucian scholarship.
- Distinguish between Korean musical instruments, such as the 21-string kayagûm, a zither from Kaya, and the 6-string kômun´go with their other East Asian counterparts such as the Japanese koto, the Chinese guzheng, and Vietnamese dan tranh
- Analyze Korean music's transition from workplace to stage as a metaphor of human evolution from tribe to a complex, industrial society.
- Examine the context of the hierarchy of court music, folk music as classified by regions, as well as differentiate these music(s) in terms of functionality, such as ceremonial, celebratory, processional, leisure, labor, healing, purging, or praying.

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Philosophical Foundations of Korean Music (Continued)

In comparison with Western-style music, which generally employs the heptatonic scale, Korean music typically uses the continental pentatonic scale of kung, sang, kak, chi, and U, comparable to the Western do, re, mi, sol, la. The philosophical foundation, particularly of Korean court music, is rooted in teachings from the ancient Book of Ceremony, one of the most important sources of Confucian scholarship. What sort of energy is music?

BOOK OF CEREMONY CHAPTER "RECORD OF MUSIC"

Musical performance is the acoustic output of the mind onto the voice, body, or instruments crafted from eight of nature's materials such as wood, bamboo, silk, clay, metal, leather, stone, or gourd. Reflection of the movements of the mind, music may be so overwhelming that it needs moderation with proper ceremonies, as benevolence with righteousness, heaven with earth, expansion with retraction, motion and repose.

The tone, pitch, and quality of the five basic notes represents the social hierarchy, along with material, directional, and seasonal symbolisms reintroduced here.

Symbolisms Table2 R1

Symbolisms Table2 R2

Symbolisms Table2 R3

The Confucian ruling class seems to have reasoned that the power of music could either enforce or corrupt the social order. Therefore, "correct music" had to be administered, and it is not coincidental Korean court music has come to be called chôngak, "correct music," an exemplary embodiment of the five elements.

Chuk

The ceremonial court orchestral performance typically utilizes two instruments for opening and closing: the chuk is a wooden percussive instrument that looks like a milling mortar painted green and placed to the east where the sun rises and all things begin, and played only in the beginning by tapping three times to announce the start with a pestle-like object. The eo is also wooden, shaped like a crouching haet´ae (a mythical tiger-like animal), painted white and placed to the west where all things end, and played only to end the music by scraping its toothed back three times with a kyônch´ae, a bamboo stick split into nine strips.

“We think energy is very important. The beginner student of music actually cannot make energy; they just pluck strings. But as they practice more and more, they make their own energy and become great musicians,”

-TeRra Han

"P'ungmul's real purpose is to bind people together as a collective power."

-Cho Myong-ja

Korean traditional music can be divided into Korean folk music, aristocratic chamber music, Korean court music, and religious music.

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