"‹Nore› is like Pansori in its essence. Even though there are many Western music titles to denote the act of singing or a song, Isang Yun deliberately named this piece “Nore (literally meaning a song).” This was probably because Yun wanted the cello to sing according to the vocal techniques not of western music, but of Korean traditional music. The way the piano fills the space in the middle is similar to Chuimsae (exclamations with percussive effects) of a Pansori Drummer." (Bong Ihn Koh, Cellist)
In Western music, individual tones are fixed and thus musical meanings are created by establishing relationships with other tones. However, in East Asian music, an individual tone alone lives in itself and forms a microcosmos. Isang Yun compared this to the difference between calligraphy and penmanship. And he also said, from a Taoist perspective, as follows: "In East Asia, a person does not make music alone. In fact, the sound exists there before one plays or sings music. […] Therefore, people there will say that music is not what one composes, but what he or she gives birth to. That is, a small part of cosmos is born."
In order to translate East Asian ideas, which Yun wanted to convey, into Western music, it requires a great number of ornaments, trills, glissandi, and vibratos with changing speed, as well as subtle and complex variations in pitch. In Yun’s late works, the 'style' in which the individual notes live inside his music changed into a way of embracing a more Korean sound. Unlike his other works of the similar period, ‹Nore› is unique because it already prefigures his later style.
In 1964, Park Chung-Hee, then president of South Korea, was about to visit West Germany, and Korean musicians there prepared a welcome concert for him. Yun composed ‹Nore› at the request of a cello student. However, the performance of this piece had to be cancelled because the performer could not cope with the difficult technique required by the piece within a short period of time. Ironically, Yun was kidnapped three years later by Park’s regime on suspicion of espionage and was imprisoned in Korea. During that time, the score was found at Yun's house in Berlin, and was published and premiered in 1968.
WonCheol Kim
translated by Moohyun Cho
