East -West encounters in the music of Isang Yun: analysing musical hybridity

Hong, Ju Lee (2023) East -West encounters in the music of Isang Yun: analysing musical hybridity. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Due to his bi-cultural life, the Korean-German composer Isang Yun (1917-1995) developed musical insights from the East and West. This thesis aims to discover how he expanded his control of Western avant-garde techniques, which created a unique combination with an explicitly Korean tradition. In particular, the focus will be on how his compositional contexts relate to musical hybridity in East and West encounters. Moreover, specific attention will also be paid to whether Yun's musical insights reflect political symbolisation. The research questions cover an understanding of Yun's compositional procedure Hauptton as a product of musical hybridity between East-West encounters and the significance of PCS 3-3 within the technique.

The thesis consists of six chapters, together with a conclusion. Chapter 1 is an extended introduction and contains a review of previous literature on Yun, indicating relevant sources about his life and works. The chapter also evaluates the terminology related to East-West encounters, including musical hybridity, and introduces the analytical methods employed. Chapter 2 considers elements from the two poles that influenced his musical insights, the East and West. These influences are handled separately and discussed in the two sections of the chapter. Chapters 3-6 are integrated with an analysis of the specific compositional procedures in Yun's works. The first Hauptton of a piece is set as the basis of pitch-class set analysis. Yun's Eastern elements are suitable for paradigmatic analysis. Each chapter contains specific research questions within the overall enquiry. Chapter 3 focuses on why Yun's expression of Confucian court music in the Western avant-garde language fits into the musical hybridity of Réak (1966). Chapter 4 reveals how his instrumentation and the integral serialism of Images (1968) could be understood as musical hybridity. Chapter 5 investigates such hybridity through the stylistic aspects of Western influence in the Opera Sim Tjong (1971/2), whose libretto was written based on a tale from a Korean legend. Chapter 6 considers the political symbolisation of the two cello pieces, the concerto (1975/6) and Nore (1964) and whether political symbolisation reflects a type of musical hybridity. The conclusion returns to the title of the thesis concerning how Yun's compositional contexts could be implied as musical hybridity.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: M Music and Books on Music > M Music
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Music
• Supervisor's Name: Heile, Professor Bjorn and Moreda Rodriguez, Dr. Eva
• Date of Award: 2023
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2023-83663
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 20 Jun 2023 11:15
• Last Modified: 20 Jun 2023 15:06
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.83663
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/83663