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Isang Yun was a remarkable musician and conductor, who was
born in Korea and amerced himself in German. Yun was one of the most
notable composers in the realm of contemporary music. Yun’s works were
appreciated around the world and he is praised to be one of the most
well-known Asian composers of the 20th century. In 1917, Yun was born in
a small town in South Korea. He later became a soldier in Gyeongsangnam-do
(慶尚南道) after the annexiation Korea by Japan. Yun went to study Cello and
musical theory in Osaka, Japan, and studied composition and counterpoint
in Tokyo. After completing his studies in Japan, Yun went back to Korea
and began concentrating on his creation of music as well as teaching.
Besides, he was once arrested in Korea for joining the Anti-Japanese
Movement (反日運動). Yun had received the Seoul City Culture Award (南韓藝術大獎)
at the age of 38, earning himself the opportunity to study in Europe.
Therefore, Yun set out to France and then to cities in Germany for
study; Berlin, Freiburg (福來堡) and Köln (科隆). It was the first time for
Yun to truly admire and experience western music. During the end of
World War II, the development of Arnold Schoenberg’s (荀白克) Twelve-tone
Technique (十二音列) had also encountered its peak. Accordingly, like many
other contemporary musicians, Yun made his pilgrimage to Darmstadt,
seeking to find a new direction for contemporary music. “You should
never forget the great eastern culture which exists in you. Do not
compose directly with something like the Twelve-tone technique, instead,
compose your music with your own language,” His teacher in Germany,
Boris Blacher once said to Yun. Being released in 1959, Yun’s Music for
Seven Instruments (7種樂器的音樂) had received extensive attention, and had
made Yun’s other works known throughout the world.
In 1967, Yun performed in East Berlin, yet somehow, became involved in
the KCIA spy incident and was therefore deported from the country, being
sent back to South Korea, in which he was captured and interrogated with
torture. The world was in an uproar when the court pronounced Yun’s
death sentence. Because of international pressure undertaken the
government of South Korea released Yun. Afterwards, Yun spent the rest
of his life teaching in the composition department of Berlin University
of the Arts (柏林藝術大學). Many of Yun’s students, such as Takehito Shimazu
(嶋津武仁), were from Asian countries. Isang Yun attained German citizenship
in 1971, and he had ever since not returned to his motherland of Korea.
In 1995, Yun died in Berlin of illness.
Central to Yun’s composition theories was the presence of “Haupttöne”
(骨幹音). The so-called “Haupttöne” revolved around developing melodies
from a single center note and emphasized the importance of the center
note by employeeing Tremolo (抖音), Glissando (滑音), Vibrato (顫音),
Microtone (微分音) and variation of dynamics. The “Haupttöne” could be
implemented as a regular long note or it could imply the repetition of a
certain note in a group of chords. The length of a Haupttöne is usually
as long as a human’s breath and prior to the returning of the origin,
the intervals between Haupttönes are from small to big, and from
stepwise to leap motion. When Haupttönes are applied to mutiple-vocal
music or to the symphonies, they will result in the “Hauptklang” (骨幹音響),
an effect which contains more variations, because there can be several
instruments involved in the formation of one single Haupttöne. This
original technique of Yun’s could be used to develop music that is of
great diversity. The sole idea of Haupttöne is to make listeners feel
the emphasis. Therefore, under this premise, the same Haupttöne is
allowed to move aroud different obtaves, and it can as well extend its
length freely.
Moreover, instead of depending on “motive”, Yun put his focus on the
“notes”, endeavoring to find the possibility of their variations. This
method had broken the boundaries of traditional western composition
which believed melodies should be derived from motive. Also, it turned
out that although music without formal melodies seemed to become boring
and monotonous, yet it actually was granted with more space for
imagination that comes from the chemical effect produced between the
performers’ music and the listeners. However, this space for imagination
was not the performers’ but the listeners’ privilege. Yun was good at
reciting scores, for he thought that performers should no doubt keep to
the accuracy of every single note.
Although Yun’s music was rather new, he still laid great stress on the
harmony of music. Not like surrealism (序列音樂), Yun concerned more about
the feelings of listeners, for he considered music as a language
expressing the unsounded words in people’s minds. For example, the
series of symphonies Yun had composed during 1982 to 1987 were to oppose
nuclear wars and to appeal for world peace. Besides, Yun was skilled in
describing the people and materials of daily life; Symphony No.4:
Commemorate Asian Women (for people; 紀念亞洲婦女的第四號交響曲) and Chinese Painting
for the Flute (for things; 給笛子的中國畫) were both great works of this kind.
Yun’s composing method had a close relationship with his personal
philosophical thinking. He admired the ideas of Taoism and as well liked
to delve into the thoughts of I Ching (易經). In Yun’s works, a
twenty-second-long note could be filled with a rich life under the
supporting of Taoism theory, “Moving is motionlessness, and
motionlessness is moving”. Additionally, one could appreciate Yun’s
music by interpreting the Haupttöne as the very beginnig of every melody
he created. This way of thinking happens to agree completely with the
words of I Ching, “Grand Terminus produced the Two Elementary Forms and
those Two Forms produced the Four Emblematic Symbols, which again
produced the Eight Trigrams”.
In Yun’s point of view, people in the western world have a different
definition of “sound” from the people in the eastern world. The “sound”
that western people refer to is “music sound”, yet the concept of
“sound” contains a broader meaning for eastern people, which has
included music sound, noise and even the sound that is inaudible to
human ears. Eastern music is like calligraphy written by the brush;
disorderly as it might seems to be, yet the beauty of variation does
dwell in its strokes. Western music, on the other hand, could be
symbolized as words written by fountain pen, and their emphasizing on
the orders is like their persistence on the employing of counterpoint
and harmony in the composing of music. Haupttöne is the outcome through
the profound thinking process of Yun, and much like his music, Haupttöne
has combined both western and eastern cultures. As a matter of fact, the
accomplishment to combine these different cultures is the exact account
of Yun’s success, for there would be no differnce between him and other
composers of the 20th century if Yun had used noting but the Twelve-tone
Technique during his life.
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