The Music of “Our Times”: An Overview

How might the recent contemporary music of East Asia be described?
The 21st century is marked by an age of global culture in which East Asian countries are becoming increasingly interconnected. Recognizing the need for an integrative analysis of the state of East Asian contemporary music, music scholars from Korea, China, Japan, the United States, and Germany came together to write this book.
Korea, China, and Japan find common ground in their acceptance of Western music, which became integrated with the distinct historical and cultural characteristics of each country and consequently produced unique signatures in the music culture of each region. This book investigates how contemporaneous music that share similar histories combined with the musical, socio-cultural, and ethnic particularities of each country to form diverse music worlds. In addition, the book analyzes not only how such music worlds appear but their predicted trajectories as well. In the discussions, the works of representative contemporary music composers of Korea, Japan, and China, such as Byungki Hwang, Unsuk Chin, Toshio Hosokawa and Tan Dun, are examined. Such analyses are expected to shed light on the general trends in East Asian contemporary music and place them within a historical context.

Preface • v

I. Introduction
Neo-Nationalism and Anti-Essentialism in East Asian Art Music since
the 1960s and the Role of Musicology
- Christian Utz (University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz, Austria) •3

II. Contemporary Music in Korea
Avant-Garde Music for Traditional Instruments:
Extended Techniques in the Music of Hwang Byungki
- Andrew Killick (University of Sheffield, UK) •31

‘Intercultural’ Problems of Bi-Cultural Instrumentation:
A Focus on Contemporary Korean Composition
- Hee Sook Oh (Seoul National University, Korea) • 65

Unsuk Chin’s Musical Language, Abstraction and Recontextualization:
With an Example of Šu für Sheng und Orchester (2009, rev. 2010)
- Jeong Eun Seo (Seoul National University, Korea) • 89

Together This Moment:
Gugak Teams and the Process of Composition
- Hilary Vanessa Finchum-Sung (Seoul National University, Korea) •121

III. Contemporary Music in Japan
Imaginary Songs of the East:
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Masahiro Miwa and the Music of Postmodern Japan
-Akeo Okada (Kyoto University, Japan) •153

A Close Relationship between Music and Nature:
Concepts of Cultural Identity in the Music of Toshio Hosokawa
- Jörn Peter Hiekel (University of Music “Carl Maria von Weber” Dresden, Germany)
• 167
Re-situating Japan’s Post-War Musical Avant-Garde through Re-situating Cage:
The Sōgetsu Art Center and the Aesthetics of Spontaneity
- Fuyuko Fukunaka (Tokyo Uiversity of the Arts, Japan) • 181

IV. Contemporary Music in China
Cultural Boundary and National Border:
Recent Works of Tan Dun, Chen Yi and Bright Sheng
- Nancy Yunhwa Rao (Rutgers University, USA) • 211

Musical Phantasmagoria in the Globalized Age:
Tan Dun’s The Map and the Environmental Politics of Musical Materials
- Chien-Chang Yang (National Taiwan University, Taiwan) • 241

Index • 309



저자소개

Hee Sook Oh (Seoul National University, Korea)
Christian Utz (University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz, Austria)
Andrew Killick (University of Sheffield, UK)
Jeong Eun Seo (Seoul National University, Korea)
Hilary Vanessa Finchum-Sung (Seoul National University, Korea)
Akeo Okada (Kyoto University, Japan)
Jn Peter Hiekel (University of Music “Carl Maria von Weber” Dresden, Germany)
Fuyuko Fukunaka (Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan)
Nancy Yunhwa Rao (Rutgers University, US)
Chien-Chang Yang (Taiwan National University, Taiwan)
Samson Young (City University of Hong Kong, China)