Korean Tertiary Music Institutions and the Current New Music Situation in Korea
Classical music is currently taught – in the form of courses conducted by faculties and departments of music, music pedagogy, and church music – at more than sixty universities in South Korea. Approximately thirty state and private universities in Seoul and the provinces will be considered in this article for the purposes of gaining an overview of the current state of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music his-tory teaching in Korea’s tertiary institutions.
Before delving directly into the theme at hand, it is worth noting that twentieth- century music has developed completely differently to how it has in Europe. At the beginning of the twentieth century Korea experienced its first introduction to West-ern music, via US missionaries, and it was WestWest-ern music of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries that took root as the dominant music, especially between 1910 and 1945, during the Japanese occupation. In other words, what was understood as new music in Korea during the first half of the twentieth century was Western music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. New music, in the European sense, first came to Korea after the Korean War (1950–1953). Ironically, the crucial turning-point involved the composer Isang Yun (1917–1995) and his abduction in Germany by the South Korean secret police of the then military dictatorship under suspicion of espionage in 1967. During his subsequent incarceration in Seoul, the compos-er Sukhi Kang (1934–) contacted Isang Yun and began learning composition with him. After twenty months of imprisonment Isang Yun was granted amnesty and was permitted to return to Germany. Prior to his departure he suggested introducing a contemporary music festival in Korea, following the example of Poland’s “Warsaw Autumn” festival, and it was from this suggestion that the first Korean festival of new music, the “Pan Music Festival”, came into being. Sukhi Kang and Byung-Dong Paik, who both studied in Germany at Yun’s invitation in the 1970s, played crucial roles in ensuring that new music became mainstream amongst Korean composers.
This does not mean, however, that new music assumed a significant place in the Ko-rean music scene as a whole.
It was first at the beginning of the new millennium that Korean new music expe-rienced a surge. 2002 saw the first “Tongyeong International Music Festival” (TIMF) in Yun’s home city, a year after the specialist new music ensemble, Ensemble TIMF,
was founded. In 2006, under the direction of Unsuk Chin, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra introduced “Ars Nova” – a concert series of new music. In the last ten years the new music scene in Korea has continued to grow, with an increasing num-ber of festivals and ensembles devoted to new music. However, this development is essentially only to be observed in the capital, Seoul, and Tongyeong; the rather conservative educational systems at Korean universities, moreover, do not allow this development to be actively adopted.
In Which Courses, and to What Extent, Is the History of Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Music Taught in Korea?
Most programmes of study in the various music faculties at Korean universities include
“History of Western music” as a compulsory course over either two or four semesters.
In those cases in which the complete history of Western music is to be covered in the space of only two semesters, it is difficult to include music of the twentieth century, resulting in Mahler and Richard Strauss often being the most recent composers ad-dressed. The four-semester plan covers ancient times to the Renaissance in the first se-mester, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the second sese-mester, the nineteenth century in the third semester, and the twentieth century in the fourth semester.
To cover the whole music history of the twentieth century within a semester also presents difficulties in terms of the ability to intensively address selected composers and works. This semester of the course more often takes the form of a superficial overview of historically significant stylistic movements, such as atonality, twelve-tone technique, neoclassicism, avant-garde music after 1945, such as serialism, alea-toric music, sound mass composition, experimental music and minimalism in the US, postmodernism in the 1970s, etc. The principal temporal foci of lectures are the beginning and middle of the twentieth century, with Germany, France, and the US as geographical foci; composers frequently mentioned are Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartók, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Cage, Boulez, Stock-hausen, Nono, Ligeti, Penderecki, Yun, and Reich. Rather than particular composers and works receiving detailed elucidation, composers are merely briefly introduced alongside their most important works.
Although jazz and pop music are seldom taught in the context of Western music history, if Korean translations of US-published teaching materials are being used, these topics will also be briefly covered. Twentieth-century Korean music history is rather an exception in programmes of study, and in recent times, the need for its inclusion in study plans has been repeatedly voiced.
Contrastingly, composition departments offer music history of the twentieth cen-tury in separate courses, such as “Music styles of the twentieth cencen-tury”, “New music
analysis”, “Electronic music” and “Computer music”, in which selected composers and styles are intensively explored. The details of course content vary according to the individual interests of the lecturers. In most cases different stylistic movements of the twentieth century – up to and including the 1970s – are covered; depending on the lecturers, Ligeti, French spectralism, or recent currents in twenty-first-century music are also sometimes introduced. The general interest in contemporary music in Korea has increased in recent times, resulting in twentieth-century music also being taught in instrumental- and vocal-performance departments. The goal of such cours-es is to familiarise students with different repertoircours-es. In a programme of study with a piano performance major, for example, piano works from US and Latin American composers, such as Ives, Cowell, Gershwin, Villa-Lobos, and Ginastera are presented.
At some universities, for example, the Seoul National University and the Korea National University, music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is not only taught as compulsory courses but also as elective courses for non-musicians under such titles as “Introduction to new music”, or “Music-based cultural history of the twentieth century”.
The most important textbooks in use in the last decade are: A History of West-ern Music by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald J. Grout, and Claude V. Palisca, seventh edition, Korean version (2007); and Western Music History for Listening and Learning (1994/1997/2009), which was edited by Korean musicologists. The latter is a compi-lation of translated excerpts from American and German textbooks, such as Grout’s A History of Western Music, or the series Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft. There are several textbooks on the history of Western music from Korean authors, for exam-ple, Western Music History from Pythagoras to Jazz (2013), and Two Paths of Western Music History (2006), however, the content of these books scarcely differ from one another.
Musicology in Korea that is concerned with Western music is only a short tradition of some forty years, and the market for musicological publications is accordingly small, resulting in limited place for monographs on music, aside from those publications that serve general music education. Relevant literature which would facilitate extensive understanding of music history is, therefore, not sufficiently available. In recent years, the situation has, however, improved somewhat, with the Korean translation and pub-lication of a series of books containing composers’ biographies and their works, that is relevant to twentieth-century music history. Among these books are, for exam-ple, Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante (1927) by Claude Debussy, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (1942/1970) by Igor Stravinsky, Silence: 50th Anniversary Edition (1961/2001) by John Cage, Mademoiselle, Entretiens avec Nadia Boulanger (1980) from Bruno Monsaingeon, and The Rest Is Noise. Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007) by Alex Ross, etc. Books from Korean authors, on the other hand, are rare. György Ligeti: Music of the Transversal (Heekyung Lee, 2004) as a biography of the composer,
and Sounds of the Metropoles: New Music Scenes in the Twentieth Century (Heekyung Lee, 2015),1 which presents a socio-culturally contextualised music history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, offer different perspectives on music history.
It is questionable to what extent lectures on twentieth-century music history actually benefit the students. Musical education in Korea focusses, from childhood onwards, on the improvement of technical accomplishments. Even in university tui-tion – for example, in courses such as music history – the planned and allocated time is insufficient for the attainment of a comprehensive understanding of music.
Particularly inadequate is the correlation between courses and concert attendance.
The principal reason is most likely that those musicologists responsible for teaching Western music history in Korea have little interest in contemporary music. Although they recommend that the students attend contemporary music concerts, they them-selves are not passionate concertgoers when contemporary music is programmed.
The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra’s new music concert series “Ars Nova”, for ex-ample, which offers a variety of repertoire from classics of the twentieth century to the most recent currents of the twenty-first century, certainly has the potential to contribute to a lively course on twentieth- and twenty-first-century music history.
In reality, however, music history lecturers attach little importance to linking their lectures with concert attendance in order to convey a vivid picture of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music to their students.
Interesting Ventures
Noteworthy examples in courses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century music his-tory are to be found less in the compulsory courses for music students and more in the elective courses for non-musicians. An example is the course “Music-based cultural history of the twentieth century” offered by the Faculty of Arts and Liberal Studies at the Korea National University of Arts since 2012. In this course, the music history of the twentieth century is considered in its historical and socio-cultural con-texts, focussing on the following ten themes in order to deliver an intriguing presen-tation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music history: 1) Fin-de-siècle Vienna:
atonal music in the city of the waltz, 2) Belle Époque Paris and the Ballet Russes, 3) Berlin’s musical landscape in the Weimar Republic, 4) American music between jazz and avant-garde, 5) Scars of holocaust and war engraved in music, 6) Darmstadt, the place for avant-garde music, 7) The ’68 revolution und new music, 8) World music,
1 English translation of the original Korean titles.
encounters with different cultures, 9) Musical challenges in the age of technology, 10) New millennium, simultaneity of the non-simultaneous.
In addition, themes such as “The art of noise”, “Recording technique changes mu-sic creation”, “World expositions and new mumu-sic”, “New mumu-sic in film”, and “New music in Korea and East Asia” are covered, and the abovementioned textbook by Heekyung Lee, Sounds of the Metropoles, is used. The participants of this course select a piece of contemporary music – of which the genre is of no consequence – and are tasked with writing a brief essay in which they discuss the socio-cultural context and significance of the selected music from their own point of view. The objective of this task is to stimulate interest in the music of our time, and to regard today’s music not only as an object of consumption, but also as an object of reflection.
Another example of an interesting venture is the course “The orchestra today”, which has been offered since the second semester of 2016 by Humanitas College at the Kyung Hee University. Led by pianist Eun-Ah Cho, the course pursues a con-nection between tuition and concert attendance. In June 2016, the Humanitas Col-lege at the Kyung Hee University and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra signed a memorandum of understanding on general education, thereby creating a new design possibility for music courses. It is an interesting venture, since on the one hand, the university can offer students vital musical experiences, and on the other hand, the orchestra can expand its circle of classical music lovers by investing in the education of young people.
The course is comprised of two sections: in the first section, themes such as “The world of orchestras”, “Orchestras worldwide”, and “Pre-listening to concert reper-toire”, etc. are addressed; in the second section, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra ac-tively participates, with members of the orchestra playing for the students (“Concert in the classroom”), and concert organisers speaking about their activities (“Special lecture on staging concerts”). The students attend dress rehearsals, subscription con-certs, and the concert series “Ars Nova”. Before attending the concon-certs, the students explore the concert programme intensively in order to afterwards – divided into groups – discuss their impressions and exchange opinions. Through this process, the students experience the living music of today in the concert hall, and develop the necessary awareness to be involved in the shaping of contemporary music.
Problems in Current Course Offerings and Needs for the Future The curriculum of the Korean universities, which, since its inception half a cen-tury ago, has remained without significant changes or adaptations, is now facing the challenge of fundamental change. There is, however, no official debate on the theme.
Aside from the whole problem of the Korean education system in universities,
even within the music universities, the imparting of music history and theories of music are not afforded adequate importance because, over a period of several dec-ades, musical education has focussed on the training of practical skills. In contrast to Europe, where classical music is receding, Korea has expanded its classical music basis enormously in the last twenty years. With the increasing number of young, qualified musicians, the level of classical music in Korea has risen considerably. The majority of professors at the music universities, however, still have an obsolete, antiquated at-titude to music teaching. Musicologists who teach Western music history also have no great interest in music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Additionally, the number of musicologists in Korea is relatively low, and there is a maximum of a dozen who have specialised in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music. Musi-cologists in Korea ought to seriously consider why Korean musicians and composers regard them as unimportant.
It is problematic that in today’s age of digital media, most of the higher education institutions – apart from the cases mentioned above – convey the content of the text-books only as knowledge, without offering the students musical points of contact.
Even more problematic is the approach in which the history of the last century and the music of today are passed on merely as information. There is no attempt to newly interpret the meaning of the history of music from our current perspective. In other words, music history teachers have failed to convince students of the need to study music history, and to ignite their interest. It is also necessary to engage intensively with the music history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Korea, which is currently only addressed in exceptional cases. This is important because the students must recognise how Korean and East Asian music has evolved and is evolving in the context of globalisation. To recognise oneself is the real principle of education.
Carmen Chelaru, Florinela Popa, and Elena Maria Șorban