Isang Yun wrote a song ‹Nakdong River› while in Korea, and it is quite well-known through Isang Yun Children’s Song Festival. However, there is another ‹Nakdong River› by Yun himself that elderly persons in Gyeongnam Province still remember. Euy-Jang Jin, the former mayor of Tongyeong City, mentioned that the latter was also called “The song of Gyeognam citizens.” Seung-gi Lee, a film expert who served as the head of the Masan Culture Bureau, remarked that it was sung at every morning gathering in Gyeongnam area schools. He also added that it was inserted into the movie ‹Nakdong River›, released in 1952 but lost, probably during the Korean War.
There seems to be an indirect relationship between the two songs of ‹Nakdong River› along with the movie of the same title, and Yun’s symphonic poem titled ‹Poems of the Nakdong River›. In a letter dated November 30, 1956, to his wife Sooja Lee, Yun stated that he had begun composing that symphonic poem in Korea, then concluded the first two movements in Paris, where he also completed the final third movement in the evening of November 29. In April that same year, Yun received the Seoul City Culture Award with his first string quartet. In June, he left Korea to study abroad, and learned composition at the Paris Conservatory, where he also encountered European modern music.
In other letters to his wife during his days in Paris, Yun occasionally reveals anxiety over the progress of his learning. In regards to ‹Poems of the Nakdong River›, he did not seem to feel confident, saying “I cannot expect much because I have put in too many conventional elements.” In this regard (and in some other as well), and in view of the fact that the work was based on traditional functional harmonies, we can guess why ‹Poems of the Nakdong River› has not come into light until now. However, when we treat this piece from the perspective of modern Korean people, we can understand that Yun had already been shining as a composer since the time it was written.
Yun originally appears to have designed it as a six-movement scheme before modifying it to three movements in the process. In the manuscript, the first movement was to be a prologue, followed by five movements, respectively titled Twilight, Hangawi (Korean Thanksgiving), Field of Reeds, Song of Bumper Years, and Epilogue. However, the completed composition consists of three movements: Prologue, An Evening of the Nakdong River, and Dances.
In the early 1950s, the Korean Peninsula was swallowed up in a civil war, which, at least partially, was a proxy war in behalf of the United States, China, and Russia. The Nakdong River was the battlefield where South Korea turned the tide and defeated North Korea. During this period, Yun was a music teacher in Busan, one of the major cities in the Nakdong River Basin. After the war, he went to Seoul with his family, where he spent about three years as a composer and a part-time lecturer at Seoul National University and Duksung Women's University. As can be seen from the historical background, and unlike what the initial conception based on 6 movements might suggest, the first two movements of this work are full of dark sentiment.
It is the “dramaturgy” that leads this piece; the second movement is in an arch form, but the outer movements do not follow the traditional formal structure. The first movement commences with a grand fanfare, and the ascending figure in the interval of fourths becomes the seed of the entire movement. That sustains the formal coherence and consistency of the entire composition. The sudden texture contrast between this fanfare and the subsequent melody reminds us of a movie scene transition from the signal (that indicates an opening of a movie) to the actual movie. That's why we need to reconsider its relation to the film ‹Nakdong River›.
In the first movement, sorrow flows like a river, and sobs turn into wailing. When that wailing has trailed away, an anxious beat appears, which sounds like the last beating of the heart. The movement ends with two sharp squeaks. The second movement is mainly led by the oboe melody, which sounds like a melancholic barcarolle, or in some sense, Korean pallbearers' dirge. In the third movement, an exciting rhythm appears like a manifesto, driving out the tragedy.
In the middle of the third movement, a melody, distinctly in the Korean folk song style, makes appearance. Its interval structure is identical to that of a melodic fragment in the Korean folk song ‹Miryang Arirang›. In contrast to ‹Miryang Arirang›, which consists of Semachi Rhythms, or Semachi Jangdan in Korean traditional terminology, the melody here resembles the Gutgeori Jandan of ‹Taepyunga›. As a result of combining ‹Miryang Arirang› and Gutgeori Jangdan, the melody sounds similar to the ‹Korean Barcarolle›.
WonCheol Kim
translated by Moohyun Cho
World Premiere:
Scheduled on April 5, 2018
Tongyeong Concert Hall
Kammerorchester Hannover
Hans-Christian Euler, conductor
