Paper by Lawrence McCrobie
Creating a musical composition
that is unique, accessible and full of emotion
is the goal of all composers when they begin the composition process. The path that the overall form,
and style, of
the specific piece takes;
will ultimately lead
the composition into the
desire direction. Grawemeyer winning
composer Unsuk Chin uses her Violin
Concerto to introduce unique, and delicate, styles of
composition in order to deliver what many consider
a stellar example of what Contemporary music should entail. Chin uses her diverse musical
training to create a work that is accessible by many, and one
that is easily understood by the majority. Though her writing
style is not original, or sophisticated, she was able to
take and create a melting pot
of the composition styles
learned from the tutelage
of her various musical influences, and produce a
musical work that is full of energy, newness, and uniqueness.
It is important to understand for what
purpose the Grawemeyer Award was created, and for what it
stands, in order to discuss the winners of this prestigious award in Music
Composition. In 1983, a
local businessman named Charles Grawemeyer met with then Dean
of the University of Louisville School of Music, Dr. Jerry Ball, to discuss
establishing a prize within the field of music.[1]
With that in mind, 1985 was the
first year that the Grawemeyer Award
was presented with the honor going to a Polish composer
Witold Lutoslawski for his Symphony No.3.[3]
This started a tradition of selecting the best possible composers,
through their personal compositions, that displayed unique and ground breaking
compositions that would paved the way for new music to continue to be written
and grow in popularity.
On January 14, 2003 the process of
submitting Unsuk Chin’s Violin Concerto began, with a letter from Boosey &
Hawkes Editorial Committee to the Grawemeyer Music Award Committee (Figure 1)
and followed up on January 15, 2003 with a detailed letter from the Chairman of
the Boosey & Hawkes Editorial Committee, Mr. David Allenby (Figure 2).
Unsuk Chin, the Grawemeyer nominee,
born in Seoul, South Korea in 1961 was from a very poor family. Her father, a Presbyterian minister, taught
Unsuk to read music and encouraged his daughter to explore and develop her
musical talents. At the young age
of two, Unsuk began her piano studies where she would frequently accompany
singers at her church on the spiritual hymns. In a biographic interview, Unsuk says that she discovered
music during her early childhood and was immensely fascinated by it.[4] She further discusses her career
aspirations, at an early age, to go on to become a concert pianist, but her
family was not financially able to support and foster those dreams. She went on
in the interview to say that around the age of 13 she began to let go of her
dream to be a famous concert pianist, in favor of composing music. Thus reflecting back to the significance
of the statement as to the purpose of the Grawemeyer
award by Dr. Jerry Ball, of trying to find the next Mozart, Unsuk Chin was well
on her way to becoming just that.
Learning the styles and methods of composition was something that Unsuk
self-taught; she learned the techniques of
composing from borrowing scores of others and copying them out by hand. Her most remembered score copying was when
she copied the entire score of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony.[5]
Entering Seoul National University
on her third attempt in admission, Chin went on to study with Sukhi Kang[6]
who was a student of another influence
of Chin, Isang Yun[7], an composer
that eventually gain International standing. Through her studies with Kang (and inspiration from
the teachings of Yun to Kang) Chin was exposed to the techniques and trends of
avant-garde music that was being seen in the Post-war Western style of
music. After her studies at the
Seoul National University from 1981-1984 (Music Composition major), earning her
bachelor of music degree, she was poised to write many pieces of music, and
eventually went on to win many international prizes in her early 20’s. Her
1984 work - Gestaltne (Figures) – was what
many agree set her into the path to eventually become internationally
acclaimed and a runner for the eventual winning of the Grawemeyer Award.
The work from 1984 was recognized by many musical organizations including
the International Society for Contemporary Music. But it was the honor of
the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD)[8]
award to study music in Germany that was the pivotal point in her advancement
in the field of music composition.
In Germany she studied with Gyorgy Ligeti, whose musical style and
philosophy had a huge impact on Chin’s music.[9] It was in fact Ligeti who put Chin on
her path to write the Grawemeyer piece, Violin
Concerto, because he had stated to Chin that she needed to find and develop
her own compositional language.[10]
In 1988 Chin moved to Berlin to
begin her work at the electronic music studio at the Technical University. It
was her work at the Technical University where Chin finally found the calling
of her own personal music composition style, stating: “The experience at the
Technical University was a very helpful step toward being able to compose music
that can be felt with the heart, casting away the music that is thought out in
the brain with logic.”[11]
This work allowed Chin to explore the various ways in which she could use the
standard acoustical instruments and create new sonorities that lead to the
ability to create highly rich colors of sounds in a formally structured
sense. This new style lead Boosey
& Hawkes to offer her an exclusive publishing contract, of which has been
in place since 1995.
Many of Chin’s notable
composition include: Gestalten (Figures)-1984, Die
Troerinnen (Trojan Women) 1986, Akrostichon-Wortspiel
(1991-93), Santika Ekatala (1993), Fantasie mecanique (1994), Xi (1998), Double Concerto (2002) ParaMetaString
(1997), Miroirs des temps (1999), Piano Etudes 2,3,4 (1995), Piano Concerto (1996), Piano Etude No. 1 In C (1999) Piano Etude No. 6 “grains” (2000), Spectres Speculaires (2000), and her
2001 Violin Concerto, which won the 2004
Grawemeyer Award and attracted a great deal of International acclaim. Her work
was described as “a synthesis of glittering orchestration, refined sonorities,
volatility of expression, musical puzzles, and unexpected turns.”[12]
Chin’s fascination with the
Indonesian Gamelan musical style coupled with the new sense of avant-garde
music and the electronic sounding element really lead Chin to create, not only
a unique piece in the Violin Concerto,
but one that really defined New Music as a way to emotionally capture its
listeners and challenge them to listen for the musical techniques utilized to
create the rich sounds, and to do so in a highly structured fashion.
The Violin Concerto is considered to be Chin’s most famous works,
and has won her numerous awards.[13] The work begins with an introductory
section that starts simply, with the marimbas, gong drum, and double bass
sustaining a mysterious cloud of sonority. Out of this cloud emerges the solo
violin, playing only octaves and fifths, the basic elements of sound, and the
basic structure of which the notes of the violin are based on. The texture
builds slowly in complexity until it cuts off abruptly. The beginning of the
piece is what one may consider being a driving force, or machine- like
motion, with the rhythmic feel of the marimba as a shimmering texture serving
as a background motor of this piece.
It is then given a further gamelan feel to it through the introduction
of the gongs that are resonating through the opening statement and the presence
of the solo violin which is actively painting the listener with attractive
washes of color to listen for.[14]
(Score Example 1) The violin
beings the piece in a calm and soothing pattern consisting of intervallic leaps
of octaves (D to D) and 5ths. As the solo violin continues into the opening theme, the
calming nature is soon diminished, and a wild frenzy begins to spin into
existence through the introduction the Bassoon.[15]
(Score Example 2) This
opening statement is also playing on the sonority of what one might hear as
tuning of the instrument for eventual performance. This opening statement and overall feel returns as the
entire work comes to a close in the fourth movement. Though seen in a different
scoring format, this link to the opening gesture is used to create the sense of
a full circle of completion, beginning with the tuning up of the violin, to the
simple introduction of octaves and fifths heard in the opening statement.
It is important to note that
throughout the opening section of the Violin
Concerto, Chin employesemploys a
method of using the soloist and the orchestra as two separate entities, and
really utilizing them for specific purposes. Even though the Orchestra is in itself a separate group, it
is used without ever really creating itself a persona of its own, more
specifically it is used strictly as a supporting feature to the soloist. It provides harmonic support and very
little in the melodic sense through the work, and never takes the dominant
lead, where one might have seen concertos of the past do so. The violin soloist also takes a
non-traditional approach in the work, remaining the center of the work
throughout the entire piece, with very little absence from the musical line.
One important feature of the Orchestra comes in the form of being present and
providing the soloist with a broad spectrum of balance through rich and warm
supporting sounds, and also accomplishes this through the creation of warm and
uncommon timbres of sound from the unusual pairings of instruments together,
and the vast use of the percussion section to provide the underlying role of
harmonic support. One can see this
odd pairing of instruments at approximately measure 38, where one will notice
the percussive elements of the marimba take to doubling the solo violin, and
allowing the harps to provide the rhythmic element, and the horns to provide
counter harmony as the section statement continues.[16]
(Score Example 3)
Overall this work provides, in
itself, a great example of the continued push towards creating musical elements
that are unique and fascinating for audiences to experience. To take in these new and intriguing
sounds from instruments, that have for centuries been at the core of Classical
Orchestral music, allows the listener to embark on a journey that creates a sense
of self expression as well as a journey that enables the music to tell a
different story each time it is heard. In an interview,
when asked what she would like the listening audience to experience,
Unsuk Chin stated she would like
everybody to “hear in it what they can and want”.[17] I think that Unsuk created something
that was reflective of many styles and various techniques, from the vague
gamelan nature of the music to the electronic variants that appear through the
various performance techniques on the instruments, to the incorporation of
Western Music culture styles as it relates to Jazz. Chin
creates more than a work;
she creates a journey
that can be classified as something extremely delicate and light that
transcends into extra terrestrial stratospheres. Though her methods of creating the music, and the ultimate
styles of the music may not be fully original in form, nor sophisticated in the
compositional structure, she has effectively created a
musical work that is full of energy, newness and uniqueness. With all of those components combined,
Chin’s Violin Concerto is not only worthy of the Grawemeyer Award
in Music Composition, but is also worthy of being a stellar example of what
Contemporary music should entail and encompass.
[1]
University
of Louisville, "The Grawemeyer Awards, H. Charles Grawemeyer
Biography." Accessed March 20, 2014.
http://grawemeyer.org/about/h-charles-grawemeyer-biography.html.
[4] Interview,.
http://usasians-articles.tripod.com/unsuk-chin.html
[5] Kim, Sung
Hyun Kim, ,
“Unsuk Chin: Dreaming Alice in Contemporary Music,” chap. In Today’s Classic: A
Series of Biographies of 40 Modern Composers from Stravinsky to Unsuk Chin (Paju:
Art Books, 2010) 463.
[6] Korean-born Kang (b. 1934)
studied in Korea and Germany. A
former student of Isang Yun, Kang is known for his work with experimental and
electronic music.
[7] Isang Yu (1917-1995) a
Korean-born composer. Studies in Germany lead him to create a fusion between Korean
traditional music and the music considered to be avant-garde.
[8] DAAD is a private, federally
funded and state-funded, self-governing national agency of the institutions of
higher education in Germany, representing 365 German higher education
institutions.
[9] Program note from
www.bso.org/Images/program_notes/Chin_celloConcerto.pdf
[10] Interview. Hhttp://usasians-articles.tripod.com/unsuk-chin.html
[11] Hae Young Yoo, “Western Music
in Modern Korea: A Study of Two Women Composers,” (DMA
diss, Rice University, 2005.),
59
[12] Program note from
http://www.foresthill-sf.com/musicaldays-2006/P-Chin.html
[13] Anne Ozorio, Anne. "Unsuk
Chin Total Immersion, Barbican." Bachtrack. Accessed
March 20, 2014. http://bachtrack.com/review-unsuk-chin-barbican.
[14] Unsuk
Chin, Violin Concerto, (London, England: Boosey & Hawkes, 2001). Chin,
Unsuk. Violin Concerto. London, England: Boosey & Hawkes, 2001.
[16] Unsuk
Chin, Unsuk. Violin Concerto.
London, England: Boosey & Hawkes, 2001.
[17] Interview.
Hhtp://usasians-articles.tripod.com/unsuk-chin.html
No comments:
Post a Comment