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Hwang Byungki: Traditional Music and the Contemporary Composer in the Republic of Korea

This is the first book in a Western language about an Asian composer who writes primarily for traditional Asian instruments. Such a study seems overdue in that there have been numerous studies of composers (both Western and Asian) who write music for Western instruments with Asian influences, and some general studies on new music for Asian instruments, but what has been lacking is a book-length single-composer study to provide an in-depth analysis of an individual artist's approach to the challenges of "updating" Asian musical traditions so that they can participate in the global contemporary music world while remaining distinctly Asian.

Hwang Byungki provides an ideal subject for such a study in that he is undoubtedly one of the most respected exponents of new music for Asian instruments both in his own country and internationally. Renowned as a performer of traditional Korean music, he also has a thorough knowledge of Western contemporary music. In his own compositions he never "imitates" Western compositional techniques directly, but rather seeks points of contact between the underlying aesthetic principles of Western contemporary and Korean traditional music, and thus strives for a musical syncretism producing works that are both highly traditional and contemporary. In surface sound, these works range from near-pastiche of traditional Korean genres to extremes of avant-garde innovation, yet critics and listeners tend to agree that all of them remain both distinctly Korean and personal to Hwang.

This book explores in detail how Hwang is able to achieve such reconciliations of apparent opposites in creating a musical oeuvre of wide appeal. Drawing on 25 years of personal contact and study with the composer, including learning to play some of his works on the kayagum zither, it presents new analyses of his most important works supported by extensive music examples and an accompaying audio CD.

This 90,000-word book shows "extended scale and scope" in its consideration of the entire musical output of an important Korean composer over the past 50 years, set within the context of Korean and global music history during the same period. Its use of primary sources has been especially extensive, complex and difficult of access, requiring a lengthy period of data collection, since the book presents insights drawn from 25 years of personal contact and study with the composer, including learning to play his main instrument, the kayagum zither. It could not have been written without extended study in Korea.