Imaginary Folk Music: Investigating Unsuk Chin’s Gougalōn (2009/2012) through Cumulative Intercultural Analysis

Introduction

[0.1] In her program notes for Gougalōn (2009/2012), Korean composer Unsuk Chin (b. 1961) shares a story about her international and psychological journeys. She recounts how her visits to historic Chinese cities in 2008–09 magically evoked her childhood memories of 1960s Korea, giving inspiration to the piece. The composer’s goal, however, was separate from exoticist standards such as reenactment (of the things in her memories). Rather, in the last sentence of her notes, she specifies that “Gougalōn is an ‘imaginary folk music’ that is stylized, broken within itself, and only apparently primitive” (Chin 2009). Indeed, even the title references the imagined—not representative—nature of the work, using a word from Old High German (“Gougalōn”) meaning “to hoodwink; to make ridiculous movements; to fool someone by means of feigned magic; to practice fortune-telling” (Chin 2009).

[0.2] Chin’s avoidance of exoticist reenactment aligns with Yayoi Uno Everett’s analytical survey of works by Chou Wen-chung, Chen Yi, and other contemporary composers who “leveled the playing field by doing away with lingering stereotypes associated with Orientalism” (2021a, 332). To assess their compositional achievements, Everett draws upon Christian Utz (2002) and develops the concept of intercultural analysis, which not only draws upon plural perspectives—including those rooted in Western music theory—but requires negotiation of multiple perspectives to develop a culture- and context-specific reading of the composition (Everett 2021a, 336).⁽¹⁾ To realize such an integrative reading, Everett stresses that analysts should be able to: 1) interchange dominant methods that dissect music into familiar elements with counter-framing methods that prioritize elements important in East Asian traditional cultures and aesthetics; and 2) incorporate perspectives from indigenous communities and cultural practitioners, the ideologies of the composers, and subject positions including those of performers, listeners, and analysts (2021a, 332–33).

1. Methodology

[1.1] I find Everett’s concept of intercultural analysis both relevant and illuminating for understanding Chin’s Gougalōn. Furthermore, I believe that my examination of the piece responds to the call put out by two short case studies in Everett 2021a (Chou Wen-chung’s String Quartet no. 2 [2003] and Chen Yi’s Symphony no. 2 [1993]). Both invite additional studies to develop a practical methodology for intercultural analysis, as each case study demonstrates only one round of switching frameworks for analysis. In other words, Everett’s case studies invite future research to develop a process whereby an analyst would apply first the conventional framework (e.g., dissecting a score in Western notation with harmony, meter, and other basic elements), then a counter-framework against it, and pursue further rounds of switching frameworks to incorporate plural perspectives, ideologies, and subject positions.

[1.2] In my analysis of Gougalōn, I propose the concept of cumulative intercultural analysis to draw upon Everett’s method and benefit from the accumulation of conventional and counter-conventional frameworks. Visualizing this concept is made possible through the top-down Ghost Leg, in which vertical lines represent individual frameworks for analysis and horizontal lines represent switching. Example 1 shows an example of the Ghost Leg, traditionally known in Japan as Amida kuji (Frédéric 2002, 28). The top of each column represents a possible starting point; each horizontal line traces a shift or permutation between any two adjacent columns. Both the columns and horizontal lines prioritize shifts and permutations rather than hierarchies and logics. Therefore, the top-down, two-dimensional journey may lead to the end of any column. In Example 1, for instance, starting from A diverges to B but ends with A’, while starting from B leads to C’.

[1.3] The Ghost Leg can be designed with great flexibility so long as every column remains in parallel and no horizontal line between adjacent columns stays in the same position. These columns and lines can be assigned any identities. In Example 2, four columns represent four lunch menus in question (? on top) and in confirmation (! at bottom); menus A–D are chosen arbitrarily. Horizontal lines indicate unrestrained switches and their motivations, visualizing their cumulation. For instance, switching between menus C and D occurs due to the variety of vegetables AND the unfavorable condition of the same ingredients. As the diagonal line X indicates, the long-term switch from menus C to B likewise occurs due to multiple reasons in cumulation (e.g., better taste with the same price, and the long but quickly cleared wait line).

[1.4] Using Ghost Leg as a visualization tool, the latter part of my discussion subjects movements V, III, and I of Gougalōn to a cumulative intercultural analysis. I first explain the meaning of imaginary folk music in Gougalōn. Next, my examination follows a reversed order and starts from movement V, “Circulus vitiosos–Dance around the Shacks”—the finale of the 2009 original; this decision to reverse the chronological order of the movements in analysis was based on my intention to show that imaginary folk music runs throughout the piece and continues evolving in later movements. I incorporate the concept of search-and-graft—a concept which stands for the search for fresh sounds and simultaneous graft of preexisting ideas into an original composition—to illustrate what grants the fifth movement an imaginary folk quality, and then reframe and adapt that concept to movement III, “The Grinning Fortune Teller with the False Teeth,” which holds its own particular imaginary folk quality. Then, reframing the former analytical concept once more, I discuss movement I, “Prologue–Dramatic Opening of the Curtain,” and how it initiates Chin’s exploration of imaginary folk music and foreshadows movements III and V.

[1.5] This overview of my discussion can also be understood as presenting a series of interdisciplinary methodologies and their reframing, drawing on the work of diverse scholars (Everett 2021a; Rusch 2013; Ghosh 2004a and 2004b; Leong 2011). The Ghost Leg in Example 3 visualizes this accumulation with the following keywords in succession. Cumulative process is the initial framework for analyzing Gougalōn V: the term “cumulative process” refers to a concept discussed by Burkholder (2002), Campbell (2000), and Spicer (2004);⁽²⁾ this procedure often features gradual and consistent additions and subtractions to the musical features such as pitch collection, rhythmic gesture, and instrumentation. However, as the term does not provide any convincing answer for how movement V acquires an imaginary folk quality, it invites us to use an alternative methodology, namely Derridean graft (Derrida [1972] 1982 and [1974] 1986), and reinterpret the movement in terms of search-and-graft. Derridean graft subsequently meets postcolonial critique as a lens for understanding the recreation of Korean shamanism in Gougalōn III. Lastly, postcolonial critique suggests bricolage as the next framework for Gougalōn I; capturing how Chin invokes both European common-practice pastiches and modernist styles exploiting folk culture, the same framework will also show how the movement manipulates them to initiate Chin’s exploration of imaginary folk music.

2. Unsuk Chin’s Career and Imaginary Folk Music

[2.1] During the early 1980s, Chin studied composition in South Korea with Sukhi Kang (1934–2020).⁽³⁾ She also sought out exposure to music from Western culture, such as Brahms’s chamber music, Chopin’s piano music, Stravinsky’s ballets, the “newest avant-garde scores and recordings from Europe,” and British pop music (Chin 2017, 54–55). In the late 1980s, Chin moved to Hamburg and studied with György Ligeti, whose fierce criticism shook her belief in an understanding of modernist music.⁽⁴⁾ She searched for alternative paths, including postmodernist and nationalist approaches, but was convinced by none of these and found herself at an artistic impasse by the end of the 1980s.⁽⁵⁾ It was only in the 1990s that Chin gradually overcame this crisis, finding inspiration in electronic music at Technische Universität Berlin, non-Western musical traditions (Javanese gamelan music in particular), and collaborations with Kent Nagano (Chin 2017, 56; see also Drees and Lee [2011] 2012, 59).

[2.2] Evident from her training and influences, Chin has an unambiguous and life-long familiarity with the Western classical and contemporary music canon—a familiarity that cannot simply be equated with admiration.⁽⁶⁾ Her career progress also underscores two consistencies in her creative tendency: she neither confirms nor denies her affiliation with Western avant-garde music and she prefers unlimited eclecticism to East-West synthesis.⁽⁷⁾ This eclecticism is evident especially in Chin’s works exploring experimental vocal ensembles (Cantatrix sopranica, 2004–5), opera in collage (Alice in Wonderland, 2007, a pinnacle of Chin’s output during the 2000s), imaginary folk music (Gougalōn, 2009/2012), gesture-oriented music (cosmigimmicks, 2011–12), contemporary soundscape (Graffiti, 2012–13), and surrealism (Mannequin, 2014–15).⁽⁸⁾

[2.3] Beyond their kaleidoscopic variety, these compositions are notable for two points: first, Chin refers to them as “gestural” and “less-abstract” music (2017, 57); second, except for Alice in Wonderland, they have received little scholarly examination.⁽⁹⁾ If the former suggests her interests in making music accessible for a broad range of listeners, the latter seems to indicate the challenges posed by her eclecticism for academic researchers. Take Gougalōn as a representative case of this ambivalence: it is only seemingly accessible as evident in the early part of her program notes, in which she offers tremendously vivid recollections of her childhood memories of local street theaters and outdoor spectacles. The impressive scenic details of the program notes also make their way into the score as the colorful movement titles (Example 4), tempting readers to listen to the compositional properties in association with the pictorial words.

[2.4] However, the readers of Chin’s notes soon learn of factors complicating a simplistic audio-visual Korean fantasy. First, the title from Old High German, Gougalōn, may sound obscure even to German speakers, who would be more familiar with the likewise archaic but still-used word “Gaukler,” a practitioner of illusions and magic tricks (e.g., actions and gestures a Gaukler shows before spectators would be considered to be Gougalōn).⁽¹⁰⁾ The second point is speculative: the historical split between Gaukler (still used) and Gougalōn (obsolete) can be associated with the relationship between Chin (a contemporary Korean) and the local street spectacles she witnessed (forgotten in contemporary Korea). Making this connection offers a hypothetical but useful premise: Chin was not interested in replicating the past but mockingly recreating it, maintaining an ironic distance—the past is still used as a source of inspiration but deviated from an exact replication.⁽¹¹⁾ This possibility appears later in her program notes: “Gougalōn does not refer directly to the dilettante and shabby music of that street theater. It would also be an error to believe that this piece is ‘about’ Korea or ‘about’ a certain era . . . The memories described above merely provide a framework, just as the movement headings are not intended to be illustrative” (Chin 2009). This statement, indirectly acknowledging the undeniable gap between the composer as an immature spectator in the 1960s and the spectacles performed by no-longer-active traveling troupes, allows Chin to both invoke the images of the forgotten performances (recalling the archaic Gougalōn) and distance herself from the role of the authentic performers (suggesting the current Gaukler). Because Chin can nostalgically recall the lost spectacle (Gougalōn) but remains self-conscious of the rupture between herself and the original performers (Gaukler), her goal in this work can be understood as a musical (re)solution that neither excludes nor appropriates folk culture: this solution enables the composer to turn herself into a new Gaukler and create her own Gougalōn inspired by the original spectacle.

[2.5] Imaginary folk music, construed to be the result of Chin’s solution, offers a logical and fruitful starting point for my analysis. Furthermore, as her program notes cited earlier imply, Chin’s imaginary folk music guides my investigation of the gestures countering various cultural expectations held by European listeners. Against the expectation that Chin’s piece will candidly mirror the authentic local culture and its spectacles, her mock recreation seems to shuffle (if covertly) its sounds based on both the composer’s memories and her eclectic imaginings. In the cumulative intercultural analysis that follows, I unravel how Gougalōn realizes such sounds through detailed examinations of movements V, III, and I.

3. Gougalōn: Movement V

Gougalōn V and Cumulative Process

[3.1] Gougalōn was revised by Chin in 2012. In both versions, movements I–III have the same content and order of appearance. The 2009 version ends with movement IV (“Circulus vitiosos–Dance around the Shacks”); the 2012 version adds a movement both before and after it. The final structure is therefore movements I–III of the 2009 version plus movement IV (new), movement V (formerly movement IV), and movement VI (new).⁽¹²⁾

[3.2] Because every score excerpt in this article derives from the 2012 version, I label “Dance around the Shacks” movement V. Nonetheless, I deem this movement equal to the literal final movement of the 2012 version (movement VII, “The Hunt for the Quack’s Plait”)—not merely because it was the conclusion of the 2009 version, but because movement V is the result of a cumulative process, i.e., the technique Chin often uses in the last sections or movements of her mature compositions including Fantaisie mécanique (1994/1997); no. 6, “Grains,” from Six Piano Études (2003); and the last movement of cosmigimmicks (2011–12).

[3.3] Example 5 (mm. 1–11 of Gougalōn V) demonstrates the outset of a cumulative procedure. First, a single pitch, B, appears; in mm. 7–11 this pitch is augmented with additional pitches D (m. 7, Vn II) and C♯ (m. 10, Va); this augmentation continues to a certain extent, creating a multi-phase structure in the measures that follow.

[3.4] As Example 6 details, Gougalōn V creates a cumulative structure in three phases. In the first phase (mm. 1–36), the string ensemble initiates pitch collection augmentation while centered on B. This phase also establishes the characteristic texture maintained throughout the movement, in which each instrument (as an individual line) strictly avoids both simultaneous attacks and timbral blending with other instruments; the only exception occurs in mm. 32–36, where the strings hold B3 in unison.

[3.5] The second phase (mm. 37–72) continues the pitch collection augmentation and completes the fundamental hexachord [B, D, C♯, A, F, F♯] in mm. 40–43; this collection is then sustained while maintaining B centricity. Another augmentation procedure, this time in instrumentation, is also initiated at the beginning of the second phase. Example 7 (mm. 70–72) shows the end of the phase, with the fundamental hexachord remaining intact in stably recurring melodies—such as F♯-A-D-C♯-B and F-F♯-D-C♯-B—and their variations.⁽¹³⁾ The third and last phase (mm. 73–98) reduces the instrumentation in reverse order of their appearance: e.g., the bamboo chime and prepared piano are the last instruments added (mm. 65–72) and the first ones to be removed (mm. 73–74). The entire movement is calmly concluded in mm. 95–98, leaving only two pitches, A and B, played by alto flute, English horn, and strings.

Gougalōn V and Derridean Graft

[3.6] As the previous discussion illustrates, cumulative process offers an intuitive framework for understanding Gougalōn V. The same concept, however, cannot explain the relationship between the movement and Chin’s imaginary folk music, which shuffles her childhood memories and skills learned from her European predecessors. To tackle these topics, I will reconsider the concept of cumulative process with an interdisciplinary inspiration from Derridean graft.

[3.7] Culler (1982, 134) defines Derridean graft as “a model for thinking about the logic of texts—a logic that combines graphic operations with processes of insertion and strategies for proliferation.”⁽¹⁴⁾ This concept suggests that a history, narrative, or theory could be enriched through iterated insertions—similar to the horticultural meaning of graft, which the Cambridge Dictionary describes as “a piece cut from one living plant and attached to another plant so that it grows there.” Furthermore, Derridean graft is concerned with deconstruction as much as with proliferation, calling attention to “where one . . . line of argument has been spliced with another” (Culler 1982, 134). This concern, as Culler points out, encourages an examination-in-progress that “moves back and forth . . . between nonsynthesizable moments”—i.e., the scions originated from the things once separate and then spliced together (Culler 1982, 140). For this reason, practicing graft means engaging with both a playful process of proliferation and an understanding that history, narrative, and theory are far from seamless and monolithic.

[3.8] Notably, this dual engagement can be realized by both creators and analysts. For a creator, composing a piece may equal either proliferation (e.g., splicing heterogeneous things together) or deconstruction (e.g., acknowledging scions that undermine the seamlessness from inside). For an analyst, examining a composition may result in either proliferation, which incorporates new perspectives into existing ones, or deconstruction, which uncovers things implanted into the seemingly absolute work.⁽¹⁵⁾

[3.9] Using Derridean graft, I expand my discussion of Gougalōn V by recontextualizing Chin’s cumulative process and how it connects with Ligeti’s music. In interviews, essays, and program notes, Chin has expressed directly or indirectly that she is not a ‘follower’ of Ligeti but takes on challenges similar to those of her teacher (see Drees and Lee [2011] 2012, 48). An example where Chin implies this overlap is found in Chin’s notes on the third and last movement of cosmigimmicks, titled “Thall”:

The last movement, titled Thall, is an homage to György Ligeti. The title is Korean and means “mask.” The guitar is at the center of this movement, playing a quasi-melody consisting of a few microtones, which is repeated time and again. In accordance with the changing harmonies of the other instruments, this “melody” changes, similar to a transformation of a mime’s facial expression (a little bit like Marcel Marceau’s Le Fabricant de Masques). The overall character of Thall is both slightly sentimental and macabre, describing the psyche of a torn person, the change of mental states being illustrated by means of alteration of the harmonic language. (Chin 2012)

Chin’s dedication of “Thall” to Ligeti and her mention of “the psyche of a torn person” offer the possibility that she acknowledges her teacher’s struggles as both characteristic of him and sometimes overlapping with her own challenges. The first aspect is discussed by Bauer (2011). Ligeti sought compositional motives from local (i.e., Eastern European) sources and merged them into his own cosmopolitanism, even though he found such endeavors emotionally demanding: “cosmopolitanism and rootedness compete as values throughout the reception history of Ligeti’s music, and took an emotional toll on the composer himself” (Bauer 2011, 5).

[3.10] The other side of Ligeti’s struggles, with which Chin might acknowledge occasional resonance, is his search for freshness while grafting eclectic imaginings into his compositions—in a sense recalling the graft as creative proliferation. Consider Musica ricercata (1951–53) as a relevant example from Ligeti’s early compositions. As Bauer (2011, 64) points out, in this piece Ligeti desired to “develop a ‘new kind of music’ from the ground up, beginning with the smallest unit and—through a single process of augmentation—constructing an 11-movement cycle.” In several movements, at the same time, he grafts diverse styles into his search for freshness. Particularly in movement VII, “Cantabile, molto legato,” the experimental pitch augmentation from the previous movements continues while an unspecific folkloric quality is attached to the main melody transcribed in Example 8.⁽¹⁶⁾ Chin’s “Thall,” similarly, presents both the search for freshness and graft of eclectic imaginings. Example 9 shows how Chin uses a B5–C5 dyad with microtonal bending and explores its unrestrained harmonic developments in and around the guitar part. Meanwhile, Chin’s notes cited earlier encompass diverse imaginings such as the Korean masked dance called Talchum, the legendary French mime artist Marcel Marceau (1923–2007), and unstable mental symptoms, all ultimately folded into “Thall.”

[3.11] Circling back to Gougalōn V, I argue that this movement is another example of Chin embarking on a venture similar to Ligeti’s Musica ricercata—and this also accounts for how Chin’s music acquires an imaginary folk quality. Reminiscent of the pitch augmentation process of Musica ricercata, Gougalōn V begins with pitch centricity on B and develops its continuous search for fresh sounds, that is, the cumulative process toward the non-blended texture based on the fundamental hexachord. Indeed, just as in Musica ricercata VII, Chin’s movement grafts both a B-minor pentatonic scale and an unspecific folkloric quality into its implied melodies. The entire Gougalōn V, admittedly, does not pursue the exact same path as Ligeti’s Musica ricercata. Its compositional details including the cumulative process and implied melodies, nonetheless, hint at the overlap that Chin might acknowledge as resonating with Ligeti’s music. By inviting an alternative analytical framework such as Derridean graft and search-and-graft, this overlap also reveals how Gougalōn’s imaginary folk music is developed in ways that are far from seamless and monolithic.

4. Gougalōn: Movement III

[4.1] The previous discussion of movement V, which takes search-and-graft and Ligeti into account, opens the floor to examining other movements of Gougalōn. If movement V represents just one version of the imaginary folk music, earlier movements present equally experimental and individualized versions that warrant new frameworks for analysis.

[4.2] In movement III, “The Grinning Fortune Teller with the False Teeth,” I draw on a different usage of Derridean graft offered by Bishnupriya Ghosh (2004a and 2004b). In her examinations of contemporary Indian literature, she uses the concept of graft to account for Amitav Ghosh’s Calcutta Chromosome (1996) and its criticism of colonialist historiography.⁽¹⁷⁾ Inspired by Ghosh’s argument that local and subaltern beings find their way into (and internally disturb) Western history, literature, and art, I interpret Gougalōn III as the graft of a stylized form with the subaltern corporeality of Korean shamanism—or what Rao (2023) would call the “materiality” of a Korean shaman’s body. The movement, in my interpretation, also appears to be a critical take on Westernized Korean music and its postcolonial reality.

Gougalōn III and Korean Shamanism

[4.3] The stylized form in Gougalōn III is the ternary design outlined by the percussion-led ensemble, which characterizes the entire movement as well. As shown in Example 10 (mm. 1–3 of Gougalōn III), this ensemble enters at the beginning of the movement and gives way at m. 51 to the slower trombone ensemble; this new ensemble dominates the contrasting middle section and maintains its leading position in mm. 51–71, though it is momentarily interrupted by the percussion ensemble. As the percussion ensemble returns with the honking harmonica at m. 72, it takes over the leading position and continues until m. 84 (the end of the movement), completing a fast–slow–fast or rhythmic–lyrical–rhythmic ternary design.

[4.4] I find the subaltern corporeality, meanwhile, to be embedded within the percussion-led ensemble. This quality is specified as gestural features relatable to both Korean shamans’ fortune-telling rituals and Chin’s compositional techniques. My investigation of these gestural features, as a case study where “non-Western musical works” communicate with “matters central to their expression” (Rao 2023, 5), is based on the fact that Korean shamanic rituals rely on shamans’ bodies and their physical engagement. To put this in a different way, instead of establishing formulaic rituals (e.g., Christian services), Korean shamans and their collaborators develop rituals through virtuosic, un-notated performances—as demonstrated in Mills 2020 and other transcription-based analyses of shamanic rituals in South Korea. Even though shamans use tools in their fortune-telling rituals, both Example 11 and Video Example 1 suggest that such tools may be closer to prostheses than musical instruments. Example 11, which compiles several quotes from ethnographic accounts of fortune-telling tools and rituals in Korea, indicates that the tools are inclined to highlight the shaman’s gestures. In Video Example 1, where I test san’tong, yeopjeon (or yŏpchŏn), and a shaman’s handbell, the tools can be observed to equip the shaman’s gestures with rattling, jingling, or tinkling noises.⁽¹⁸⁾

[4.5] In this light, I examine Chin’s techniques for the percussion ensemble according to three terms: dance, trance, and glance. While in their colloquial meanings, these roughly represent certain types of gestures in the shaman’s rituals, the same terms also characterize Chin’s compositional tactics. Dance refers to melodic writing, where regularity is constantly countered by irregularity.⁽¹⁹⁾ To use expressions by Ji Yeon Lee, I would assign regularity to the “carefully calculated and stage-managed” quality of pitch or meter and irregularity to the “unpredictable and whimsical” quality in the same elements; even though both qualities are eventually “encompassed within a governing logic,” Chin disguises this logic to make listeners believe that her melody is manipulated by the capricious “force” existing outside of the composition (Lee 2022, 224–25).

[4.6] A similar notion is discussed by Soomin Lee (2012) in her analysis of David Burge’s Go-Hyang (“Ancestral Home”) from 1994. An Illinois-born pianist-composer who authored Twentieth-Century Piano Music (Burge 1990), Burge was also a military veteran who served in the Korean War in 1953–54 (Fox 2013). Drawing upon his memories and knowledge, he composed Go-Hyang as a set of six piano pieces inspired by Korean folk culture (Lee 2012, 2–3). Example 12 shows mm. 1–8 of movement 5, “Mudang” (a Korean word for female shaman). Regarding this extremely unusual composition, written by an American composer and intended to invoke Korean shamanism, Soomin Lee offers the following description:

The performance of mudang during the ritual kut [one of the common rituals by Korean shamans] involves exaggerated acrobatic actions as part of the dance which invokes and impersonates a spirit and then sends the spirit off. Evoking this, the fifth movement [of Burge’s Go-Hyang] employs far more different pitches and covers a wider range of the keyboard than the other movements of the work. All the pitches are irregularly placed, and unpredictable ascending and descending passages are frequently interrupted by accents. (Lee 2012, 24)

[While playing the fifth movement], the pianist can conceive of becoming a shaman him/herself, alternating between dancing with extensive movements and shaking pangul [another Korean name for a shaman’s handbell]. (2012, 26)

In this account, the “exaggerated acrobatic actions” and “extensive movements” imply that the shaman’s performance is closer to capricious gestures than the colloquial meaning of dance (Lee 2012, 24, 26). Where Lee identifies relevant compositional properties such as “a wider range of the keyboards,” “pitches . . . irregularly placed,” and “unpredictable ascending and descending passages . . . interrupted by accents” (2012, 24), I find that Burge also transforms the shaman’s gestures into the regularity, irregularity, and their countering relationship as reflected in pitch and meter. In Example 12, the regularity is maintained by the recurring F–B♭–E motion (Example 12a) and compound grouping (i.e., three sixteenths forming one beat, Example 12b). The same regularity, however, is constantly countered by the irregularity in pitch organization (e.g., the pseudo melodic sequence in mm. 4–6 and the modified B♭–E motion in mm. 7–8, Example 12a) and meter (e.g., the constant interruptions of the simple grouping or four sixteenths forming one beat, Example 12b).

[4.7] Recalling Burge in part, Chin has her own approach to capturing the relationship between regularity and irregularity. Consider Example 13, the opening xylophone solo in mm. 1–9 of Gougalōn III. The hexachord [B♭, B, C, C♯, E, F♯] is formed as early as in mm. 1–3, and maintains its dominance despite occasional external pitches such as F, A, and D (notated with squares in Example 13). The regularity established through this hexachord, however, is countered as the B♭ is singled out and irregularly mapped onto the beats, offbeats, and subdivisions.⁽²⁰⁾ This mapping is highly flexible, as the symbols *, +, and their derivatives indicate. In m. 4 the B♭5 is tied to the hammering stress on the odd-numbered subdivisions as well as the downbeat, and in mm. 5–6 it is tied to the coupled offbeats and downbeats. This irregular mapping continues in mm. 7–9, presenting three more patterns: the two offbeats coupled in the first and second beats of m. 7; the hammering stress on the even-numbered subdivisions in the fourth beat of m. 7; and the highlighted offbeat in the second beat of m. 8, which is followed by a smooth, sweeping passage in mm. 8–9.

[4.8] The singled-out B♭ and its irregular mapping characterize the dancing melody introduced by the xylophone solo, and the solo in turn initiates trance as another effect of the shaman’s gestures. While the term “trance” invites more than one understanding, my usage is inspired by ethnomusicological observations of trance in Javanese music. Consider ethnomusicologist Margaret Kartomi’s discussion of the village music in central Java:

The primary prerequisite for trance experience is abandon. In Java, this means the abandon of the participant to the compelling drive of the music; abandon to the atmosphere of excitement among the spectators and to the mystical meaning of the folk trance experience; abandon (in some cases) to the will of the trance leader. Once in a susceptible state of dream-like abandon, the participant becomes obsessed and reenacts a culturally conditioned role. (Kartomi 1973, 206)

Kartomi also points out the “conflict . . . between the relatively unpredictable and independent elements of the music on the one hand and its regularly pulsating, mesmerically repetitive continuity on the other,” ascribing it to the musical symptoms of trance (1973, 206). Chin was openly influenced by Javanese gamelan, a music close to Kartomi’s research topic (Chin 2017, 56), and this account of village music in central Java provides one useful model to understand trance in Gougalōn III: that is, if the opening xylophone solo embodies the initial gestures of trance leader, the subsequent parts developing the percussion ensemble represent the gestures constantly in conflict between repetitiveness and independence.

[4.9] Example 14 (mm. 1–21 of Gougalōn III) shows the dancing melody by the xylophone (top staff) and its repetitive continuation by the cencerros (middle) and other instruments (bottom).⁽²¹⁾ At the same time, the example indicates the increasing independence of the instruments after the xylophone by clarifying which compositional traits are transmitted and which are not. When the cencerros solo succeeds the xylophone solo at m. 10, it retains the hexachord [B♭ B, C, C♯, E, F♯] and the steady sixteenth notes, but mutates the previous emphasis on B♭5; due to the limited pitch accuracy, the cencerros is unable to single the B♭ out as sharply as in the xylophone solo.

[4.10] Another instance of mutation is the division of the dancing melody into the unpitched percussion and prepared piano at m. 17. While the unpitched layer focuses on rhythmic drive, the piano focuses on the permutation of interval classes, in which the left-hand part oscillates between (05) and (06) and the right-hand part mixes (02), (03), (05), and (06).

[4.11] Finally, “glance” is another reflection of the shaman’s peculiar gestures in Chin’s percussion-led ensemble. Defined as a set of techniques that realizes the spontaneous collapse of the ensemble, the term “glance” was inspired by two typical behaviors of Korean shamans. One is the shaman’s elusive tricks to fulfill their secular duties, i.e., sharing useful messages or solutions with clients. To give practical answers to mundane and unambiguous questions from clients—e.g., “when will I be able to buy profitable real estate in Seoul?”—Korean shamans are expected to be fluent in both divine communication and mind reading of their clients.⁽²²⁾ The other typical behavior of a shaman, which I consider more relevant to musical expression, is getting herself ready for winding down her ritual: even if a ritual seems to go on as endless dancing and/or trance, it needs to be controlled before it becomes disconnected from the clients and/or reality.

[4.12] In the context of Gougalōn III, Korean shamans’ self-conscious controls seem to be imitated through two techniques, both of which drive the percussion ensemble to its inevitable termination: rhythmic flattening and quasi-looping. Example 15 shows mm. 46–50 of Gougalōn III, the last five measures of the opening percussion ensemble. Rhythmic flattening is evident in the strings’ torrential fingerboard tapping, in which all the rhythmic details are flattened into quasi-texturalist expressions (these expressions are preceded by col legno battuto in mm. 41–44, not shown in Example 15). Looping is realized by Pianos I and II. The pulsating sixteenth-note figures gradually remove individual differences between each measure. Increasing instead the homogeneity in every measure, the pianos move into quasi-loops that prepare the four hammer blows in mm. 48–50.

Gougalōn III, Korean Shamanism, and Imaginary Folk Music

[4.13] In my examination above, the percussion ensemble of Gougalōn III both outlines the movement’s three-part structure and recreates the Korean shaman’s corporeality using dance, trance, and glance. Grafting the shaman’s bodily gestures onto Western chamber ensemble in ternary design, however, is not the only achievement in Gougalōn III. Through graft, the movement disturbs the established musical approach to Korean shamanism—which I call “extraction-and-abstraction”—and thereby completes one individual version of imaginary folk music. While it is not my intention to summarize the history and convention of Westernized Korean music vis-à-vis Korean shamanism, extraction-and-abstraction specifically helps us understand the trombone ensemble/contrasting middle section of Gougalōn III.

[4.14] I define extraction-and-abstraction as the overarching tendency to efface the corporeality of Korean shamanism. Extraction refers to separating rituals from the traditional shamanism, and abstraction to replacing the corporeal agency of shamans with abstract ideals. In art music, this takes the form of trying to convert shamanic rituals into autonomous concert music and obscuring the tie between rituals and their practitioners’ bodies. The reason I deem these two operations destructive to the domestic status of the shaman lies in the peculiar social context of South Korea. In premodern and modern Korean society, practitioners of traditional shamanism have suffered consistent marginalization. The body and physical presence of female shamans/mudang, in particular, have been subjected to social exclusion, the strictness of which has drawn scholarly attention from international researchers.⁽²³⁾ In this context, extraction-and-abstraction in Korean contemporary art music seems inclined—if indirectly and unconsciously—to reinforce the existing stigma on female shamans.

[4.15] An example of extraction-and-abstraction in Korean contemporary music is Sukhi Kang’s Buru for Voice, Flute, Clarinet, Piano, and Two Percussions (1976). In Kang’s (2020) program notes, written in multiple languages, the composer states that Buru is a ritual guided by a “shamanistic being” (in the Korean program notes) or a “shamanistic-Buddhistic atmosphere”(translated by the author from German-language notes). By defining his piece as an autonomous simulation of the ancient Korea—an idealized past where shamanism, Taoism, and Buddhism were harmonized for nature-human connectedness—Kang evinces no concern over replacing the corporeal agency of the Korean shaman. How, then, does he realize the shamanistic being (or atmosphere) that serves his abstract goal? Consider Video Example 2 (mm. 43–56 of Buru; the vocal and handbell parts are marked with the red squares in the score excerpt). In this clip, accompanied by the elegantly articulated handbell, the soprano’s voice presents limited pitch sets and fragmented syllables. Given that these syllables originate in a powerful mantra from the Heart Sūtra—a mantra heavily fractured throughout Buru (Kang 2020)—it may not be an overstatement to claim that Kang intentionally keeps the voice in a passive role and does not allow the part to make a complete statement of the otherwise powerful mantra.⁽²⁴⁾

[4.16] Gougalōn III may be interpreted as a countering gesture against such problematic extraction-and-abstraction, specifically in reference to the trombone ensemble in the contrasting middle section. This section associates multiple compositional techniques with the ensemble, techniques which may be more than a musical caricature of a narrating shaman. In my interpretation, these techniques defy the uncritical expectation that the trombone ensemble preserves the authentic shaman-at-ritual in abstract musical expressions: highlighting instead the deviating cultural tags attached to them, such techniques imply an underlying skepticism about extraction-and-abstraction or other similar tendencies in contemporary Korean music.

[4.17] Consider the three compositional techniques seen in mm. 51–54 of Gougalōn III, shown in Example 16. The first, whose preexisting cultural tag notably deviates from the Korean shamanism, is the Harmon mute and its impact on the trombone solo; even to listeners less familiar with it, the mute’s iconic nasal tone may intrinsically recall the historical and cultural identity of the device and its use. The second is the sticky glissandi, indicated by the annotations on top of the trombone part. These glissandi shape the solo melody in a pastiche jazz style, turning the solo into an improvisatory revisitation of the opening xylophone solo (in mm. 51–54, the underlined E, F♯, and B♭ can be viewed as a subset of the hexachord [B♭, B, C, C♯, E, F♯] observed previously in the xylophone solo). Third, the accompanying instruments enhance the would-be improvisatory flavor of the trombone solo, with rhythmic permutations of two-quarter and three-quarter groupings (e.g., 2-2-3-2-2 in mm. 51–52 and 3-2-2-3-2-2-2 in mm. 53–54).

[4.18] These techniques, causing the trombone ensemble to defy the expected authenticity of Korean shamanism, foreground an imaginary quality that reminds listeners of the chasm between real-world local shamanism and contemporary art music in South Korea. If we consider Gougalōn III in comparison with Kang’s and other examples of extraction-and-abstraction, the self-consciously marked gap in the trombone ensemble may be interpreted as a refutation of its domestic predecessors—to be specific, skepticism of Korean composers’ confidence in being able to mediate between traditional shamanism and contemporary art music. Buru, for instance, reflects Kang’s belief that he can settle the ancient shamanic ritual within his musical creation; Gougalōn III, by contrast, seems unsympathetic to such a belief. While the movement sincerely explores the taboo corporeality of shamans/mudang, it never forgoes a tongue-and-cheek skepticism about what Kang and his contemporaries would propose through their compositions—i.e., mediation between the local religious practice and Western art music.

[4.19] Indeed, Chin (2017, 57) has said that “one should be wary of mixing things that have completely different heritage lines.” In this light, Gougalōn III may be an acknowledgement that the heritage of Korean shamanism is isolated from Western music and thus cannot conveniently be contained in a European chamber ensemble—at least, unless extraction-abstraction is replaced by more culturally sensitive alternatives. Gougalōn III, with its graft of the shaman’s bodily gestures onto the percussion ensemble and with the notable trombone ensemble, eventually reminds listeners of the unresolved gap between the marginalized (traditional religious practitioners) and the privileged (learned composers).

5. Gougalōn: Movement I

From Graft to Bricolage

[5.1] In my discussion of Gougalōn V, cumulative process was reconsidered in the context of search-and-graft; this concept in turn was refreshed to account for Gougalōn III and its recreation of Korean shamanism. This methodological cumulation, summarized in the Ghost Leg in Example 3 (the simplified version) and Example 17 (the detailed version), highlights on the one hand how Chin’s eclecticism constitutes her imaginary folk music; the same cumulation, on the other hand, affords another round of intercultural analysis for Gougalōn I (“Prologue–Dramatic Opening of the Curtain”).

[5.2] In the subsequent analysis, a new analytical approach centers of the questions of how Gougalōn I introduces Chin’s (2009) imaginary folk music for the first time and establishes its nature—“stylized, broken within itself, and only apparently primitive” (Chin 2009). To tackle this inquiry, I make a methodological shift from Ghosh (2004a and 2004b) to bricolage, as discussed by Claude Lévi-Strauss ([1962] 2021) and Michel Serres ([1980] 1982). Reframing Derridean graft as bricolage may seem odd to readers familiar with poststructuralist literature. As Bessa (2008, xvi) notes, where Derridean graft represents a continuous process of enriching knowledge, argument, or theory, bricolage “seems to be constituted of episodic, short-lived, and discontinuous propositions.” In other words, bricolage “does not compound wisdom from previous eras but rather responds to an immediate present with the tools available at the moment;” as such, it may be incompatible with graft (Bessa 2008, xvi).

[5.3] Nonetheless, I believe that Derridean graft can be productively replaced by the concept of bricolage for the following three reasons. First, as Ghosh (2004a, 205) mentions (if only briefly), mobilizing otherwise forgotten and dormant resources can be the first step to graft and to challenging against colonialist historiography. Note that bricolage can also start from a mobilization of resources, since its practitioners need to teach themselves about what resources are at hand or buried beneath their feet. Second, bricolage has already transcended the original discussion (Lévi-Strauss [1962] 2021) and served as the source of plural yet mutually related understandings; these understandings not only lift the older constraint on the word (e.g., its negative characterization as “episodic, short-lived, and discontinuous” [Bessa 2008, xvi]) but elevate it into a reliable and promising creation. Consider, for instance, Jean-François Lyotard—a colleague of Derrida’s—who defines bricolage rather neutrally as the “multiple quotation of elements taken from earlier styles or periods, classical and modern; disregard for the environment; and so on” (Lyotard 1984, 76). Lyotard (1984)’s description finds a positive usage in Ed Whitley’s (2000) discussion of the Beatles’ White Album (1968), wherein Whitley argues that bricolage captures the Beatles’ use of preexisting music across genres and indeed “shifts the center of meaning from the text itself and onto the readers, who are then give a share of the responsibility for creating meaning” (108).

[5.4] Third and last, while bricolage in music may look confusingly like postmodern collage, I offer a practical, three-stage approach to identifying it. The initial stage is exploring the composer’s own statements. Chin never uses the term bricolage or relevant words in her notes or in the score of Gougalōn; nonetheless, she implies ready-made resources as her creative starting point. The percussion instruments in Gougalōn are an example, as their vast assortment—xylophone, vibraphone, bass marimbaphone, tuned cowbells (i.e., cencerros), small sound bowls, suspended cymbals, Japanese temple bells (i.e., dobaci), cans, pop bottles, flexatones, finger cymbals, small Chinese gongs, tambourine, bongos, congas, timbales, rototom, tom-toms, snare drums, tenor drum, bass drum, maracas, twig brush, bamboo chime, vibraslap, bell tree, metal rasp, guiro, thunder sheet, leather whip, leather belt, and timpani—allows Chin to employ timbres readily associated with preexisting musical traditions.

[5.5] The second stage in examining bricolage is scrutinizing any compositional properties that can be dissected from the notated score. Contingent upon the intuitions, knowledge, and cultural backgrounds of individual analysts, this stage remains inclusive of any detail as far as it carries the possibilities of signifying styles, topics, or tropes. In Gougalōn, I focus on details that can potentially be associated with style hongrois before/around the 1900s and early twentieth-century modernist music exploiting folk cultures (e.g., Bartók’s chamber music).⁽²⁵⁾

[5.6] Finally, the third stage is considering the dissected properties in terms of what Serres ([1980] 1982) proposes as the provocative potential of bricolage: dummy-making (160). As Brown (2002) points out in his commentary on Serres, bricolage’s idiomatic meaning in French refers to what its practitioners (“bricoleurs”) typically attempt: combining readily available items to create something new. If bricoleurs intend to deceive any observer/oppressors who try to fix them in certain positions or identities, they could make an effective dummy that initially seems to meet the observer/oppressors’ expectations but gradually turns out to be something else (as, for example, in the movie cliché wherein a jailbreaker creates a dummy of himself to make the jailers temporarily believe that he is still in his cell).⁽²⁶⁾ Likewise in the first movement of Gougalōn, notable compositional properties emerge for the first time with the potential to signify style hongrois and modernist folkloric styles, suggesting at first that Chin is reworking European musical styles for her recreation of Korean folk spectacles. However, those compositional properties gradually reveal their dummy-like nature as their potentials to signify folk-associated techniques/styles are constantly undermined. These properties eventually merge into Chin’s imaginary folk music, which is about neither the European canon nor the Korea of the past. Given that Chin often criticizes European fantasies directed towards East Asian women composers (Drees and Lee [2011] 2012, 58), this outcome can be understood as an example of Chin’s bricolage, which plays with European listeners’ Orientalist (and oppressive) expectation that her music must reflect both her learnedness about the European canon and her affinity with South Korean folk culture.

Reminiscence of Style hongrois and Early Modernist Music in Gougalōn I

[5.7] In Example 18, the opening (mm. 1–8) of Gougalōn I, several properties stand out for their similarity with the common-practice pastiches music historians call style hongrois.⁽²⁷⁾ These include the slurred pitch inflection and portamento (m. 3), the metric shift between the 6/8 and 3/4 meters, and heavily syncopated rhythms (m. 2, m. 5, and m. 7).⁽²⁸⁾

[5.8] Meanwhile, the properties reminiscent of Bartók and other early twentieth-century explorers of folk cultures include 1) open-string sonorities; 2) pc-set class (016); 3) scordatura tuning; and 4) what Leong (2011, 111) calls a “contradiction of the dominant meter and its relation to syncopation.” Example 19 (mm. 1–8) shows two methods of pitch organization for the opening measures, namely the cascading open-string contours and the continuous use of pc-set class (016). The (016) recalls Bartók’s chamber music, which often employs this trichord as a “perfect fifth obscured by a minor second” (Suchoff 1993, 413), as well as Stravinsky’s early ballets (e.g., the opening of Firebird [1910]) and other relevant examples from modernist composers. As indicated by the annotations between the two systems, the cascading contours start from the open-string E5 and descend toward other open strings or E4. In a call-and-response texture, the cascading contour cooperates with the set-class indicated by the annotations above each violin part. Even though the (016) trichords are often interrupted by other notes, that set-class consistently organizes the pitch structure of the opening measures. In addition to (016), another notable compositional property is the scordatura tuning for strings. Violin II uses standard tuning, but Violin I tunes its E string to the F5 harmonic on the cello’s G string (in standard tuning), and then tunes its other strings in reference to this pitch. This cello harmonic is 31 cents lower than the equal-tempered F5. As a result, the four strings of Violin I sound about a quarter-tone higher than those of Violin II. Chin also instructs the viola to tune its strings to Violin I. Her use of scordatura indirectly connects Gougalōn I with Bartók’s Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano (1938), in which the violin with a scordatura tuning (such as G♯3-D4-A4-E♭5) foregrounds pc-set class (016) in the opening; Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (2010), in which the first violin switches between the normal and scordatura tunings; and Kodály’s Sonata for Cello Solo op. 8 (1915), in which the cello is tuned in B2-F♯3-D4-A4, among other examples from early twentieth-century modernists.⁽²⁹⁾

[5.9] The final compositional property reminiscent of early twentieth-century folklorists is less concrete and more abstract than the previous three. Drawing upon Leong (2011)’s approach, I interpret Gougalōn as beginning with a compelling potential for delicate rhythmic manipulation, not unlike the mature chamber works by early twentieth-century modernists who explored folk rhythms. Example 20 (mm. 1–8 of Gougalōn I) illustrates this potential based on Leong (2011)’s concept of metric contour and systematic distinction of syncope and offbeat from the phenomena considered as syncopation: the metric contour refers to the numeric series where 0s mean downbeats and larger numbers mean weaker metric accents, e.g., 6/8=023/123 (Example 20), in which 0 and 1 stand for the two most accented divisions and 2 and 3 stand for the less accented divisions. The distinction refers to the labeling system wherein the syncopations are represented by syncopes (indicated with “s,” i.e., the very rhythmic figures from which syncopations occur) and offbeats (indicated with “t,” i.e., the rhythmic figures that come after and never coincide with the preceding or subsequent syncopes or downbeats). As demonstrated in Example 20, both “s”s and “t”s are aligned on the integer numbers oriented from the metric contour: in m. 2, “2s” means the syncope on the second division of the first beat and “2t” means the offbeat on the second division of the second beat. Using these analytical tools, Leong demonstrates how to chart a syncopation, its contradiction of the dominant meter, and whether or not this contradiction disrupts the normative metric contour.

[5.10] In case of Example 20, the contradictions constantly result from recurring syncopations, though the notated meter (6/8 with 3/4 as the co-meter) itself contains such contradictions. To be specific, 6/8 is stable as the dominant metric contour in m. 1 and mm. 3–4. However, in m. 2 and m. 5, the same contour is disrupted by the 3/4 contour as imposed by various syncopations constituted by both the syncopes and offbeats. These are represented in Example 19 as “2s” (the syncope occurring on the position 2 within the dominant metric contour 023/123), “2t” (the offbeat on the position 2), “3s” (the syncope on the position 3), and “3t” (the offbeat on the position 3). Also note that the slurs beneath the score indicate the recurring contradiction of 6/8 with 3/4, which is carefully manipulated to create a predictable metric pattern (i.e., constant oscillation between the regular 6/8 rhythms and the contradictory 3/4 rhythms) and a rhythmic call-and-response.

Bricolage in Gougalōn I

[5.11] If the findings above suggest the possible antecedents of bricolage’s properties, how does Gougalōn I gradually undermine those properties and merge them into a dummy-like music identified as neither a Korean tradition nor an emulation of the European historical legacies? Two passages following the opening measures seem to manifest the early stage of this gradual process. Example 21 (mm. 17–27 of Gougalōn I) shows that the recurring contradiction of the dominant 6/8 with the 3/4—plus the call-and-response texture—is constantly decaying. Specifically, as various syncopes and offbeats occur less predictably than they did in mm. 1–8, both the 6/8 and 3/4 meters are gradually reduced to the fragments rather than part of oscillation or call-and-response. In mm. 16–22, each of the two meters are supported simultaneously, marked with grey and white boxes respectively. As shown in in mm. 23–27, the 6/8 and 3/4 rhythms become disproportionate, the 3/4 rhythmic figures in mm. 25–26 being outnumbered by the 6/8 ones.

[5.12] In Example 22 (mm. 28–37 of Gougalōn I), the pc-set class (016)—discussed earlier as a property recalling the tritonic motives characteristic of Bartók and other folkloric composers—is frequently overshadowed by other kinds of pitch organization, for instance segments of whole-tone collections (Violin I, Violin II, and Viola) and octatonic collections (Violin II, m. 36).

[5.13] Both Examples 21 and 22 do more than signal the beginning of the continuous undermining or erosion of the properties previously associated with the common-practice pastiche (style hongrois) and early twentieth-century folkloric composers. The same examples also precede the later process propelled by the following two techniques: cyclicity, i.e., interventions by compositional ideas which come to the fore in the later movements of Gougalōn; and the stretti of pc-set (016) and other kinds of trichords. Here I use the term “stretto” to refer to an extreme overlap between a pc set and its transformation. Unlike its iconic usage in fugue recapitulation, the stretti in Gougalōn I become passive objects of smaller, less recognizable, and denser repetitions. These techniques, in a figurative sense, may be compared to the bits and pieces freely grabbed by the composer and used to stuff her unspecific, imaginary folk ensemble.

[5.14] Throughout Gougalōn I, the cyclicity is observed episodically, emerging as moments interrupting and foreshadowing the compositional ideas of the later movements. Consider the following three examples. In Example 23 (mm. 42–50 of Gougalōn I), the B pedal in Piano II and the nonblended string texture prefigure the compositional ideas explored in Gougalōn V. Another instance is Example 26 (mm. 84–89 of Gougalōn I): beginning the larger second half of Gougalōn I, this passage anticipates the dancing melody of Gougalōn III through its idiophonic timbres (Bass Marimba in Percussion II) and steady rhythmic figures (Piano I). The third instance is Example 27 (mm. 148–56), which likewise foreshadows Gougalōn III with quasi-looping movements (the strings and pianos in mm. 148–53) and flattened rhythms (the strings from m. 156). All these examples not only demonstrate the cyclical treatment of larger compositional ideas and their bloc-like usage, but also evidence the stylistic migration that questions reducing Gougalōn I to a narrow set of compositional techniques.

[5.15] The examples of idiosyncratic stretti are well represented by the passages saturated with (016) and other kinds of trichord, such as Example 24 and Example 25. Although found throughout mm. 51–59 in Example 24, the (016) hardly qualifies as the dominant pitch organization principle, as it did in mm. 1–8 earlier; instead, the trichord is molded into various tetrachords or larger pc sets, which incorporate many other trichordal subsets (identified or not) within the example (e.g., Violin I in m. 55). As these larger pc sets are followed in turn by the abrupt emergences of the near-chromatic saturation (the strings in mm. 52–53, featuring every pitch class but G) and the symmetrical hexachord (mm. 56–57, featuring [F♯, A, Bb, C, C♯, E] (03467t)), it may not be an overstatement to note that pc-set class (016) functions as a filler for the capricious harmonic series—just like other trichords in the example.

[5.16] Although its florid and contrapuntal manner contrasts with Example 24, Example 25 (mm. 60–71 of Gougalōn I) presents a similar case. In this example, one can still speculate that the (016) trichords are molded into the larger pc sets marked with the closed boxes, while remaining far from the center of attention. As my graphic annotations imply, the (016)—along with (026) and other segments of whole-tone collections, (014) and other segments of octatonic collections, and so on—rather belongs to the bits and pieces grabbed freely and put together to fill in an unspecific, imaginary folk ensemble. These harmonic ideas are all subjected to abrupt interruptions by non-pitch ideas. This is demonstrated in mm. 65–71 of Example 25, where glissando, palm tapping, and other timbral ideas curtail the preceding contrapuntal conversation within the strings (note that the preceding Example 24 is not so different, as it likewise presents sharp interruptions by tone clusters and palm tapping).

[5.17] I believe that the examples of idiosyncratic stretti, as with the earlier examples of cyclicity, helps us to grasp bricolage and its dummy-like nature in Gougalōn I. Recalling American architect Charles Jencks’s characterization of bricolage as a “technique to . . . jam the past and the present together” (1984, 111), these examples illustrate how historical styles are jammed together in a manner that manifests the priority of eclectic imaginings over the preexisting resources, models, and predecessors themselves. Such imaginings, foreshadowed through the cyclicity within Gougalōn I, envision the subsequent movements and proclaim that these movements will move from European legacies (e.g., style hongrois pastiches and early twentieth-century folkloric styles) to local-specific and experimental topics (e.g., Korean shamanism and search-and-graft), and consequently to the larger picture of imaginary folk music. This picture, a creative culmination of Chin’s eclectic imaginings, may not necessarily deny its ties with her background or nostalgia as a native Korean woman. However, the picture unambiguously separates itself from “lingering stereotypes associated with Orientalism” (Everett 2021a, 332) and other oppressive expectations of Western hegemony.

Conclusion

[6.1] Chin’s Gougalōn explicitly works with Korean folk culture but intentionally concentrates on mock recreations, or what Chin calls imaginary folk music. Indebted to Everett (2021a) and the Ghost Leg, my cumulative intercultural analysis demonstrated a beneficial accumulation of both conventional and counter-conventional analytical frameworks; my examination, in particular, illustrated how the creativity behind Gougalōn and its movements can be unraveled through the methodological accumulation visualized by the Ghost Leg.⁽³⁰⁾ I hope that the cumulative intercultural analysis demonstrated here provides a promising avenue for future explorations beyond Gougalōn and Chin’s oeuvre. Such explorations could open awareness to the inspiring but too often obscured repertoire of contemporary East Asian music.

Gui Hwan Lee
The School of Music at James Madison University
MSC 7301, 880 South Main Street
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
lee3gh@jmu.edu

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Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1962) 2021. Wild Thought. Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman and John Harold Leavitt. University of Chicago Press. Reprint, Plon. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226413112.001.0001.

Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/1772278.

Mayer, Johann B. 1837. Synonymisches Handwörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. Nauck.

Mills, Simon. 2020. “‘Release Hitting’: An Analytical Study Commemorating the Artistry of the South Korean Shaman Musician Kim Yongt’aek.” Analytical Approaches to World Music 8 (1). https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1276305.

Mirka, Danuta. 2009. Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–1791. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384925.001.0001.

Rao, Nancy Yunhwa. 2023. “Materiality of Sonic Imagery: On Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Compositions.” Music Theory Spectrum 45 (1): 151–5. https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtac025.

Raz, Carmel. 2014. “‘The Expressive Organ within Us’: Ether, Ethereality, and Early Romantic Ideas about Music and the Nerves.” 19th-Century Music 38 (2): 115–44. ttps://doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2014.38.2.115.

Reichardt, Sarah Jane. 2008. Composing the Modern Subject: Four String Quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich. Ashgate.

Rusch, René. 2013. “Beyond Homage and Critique? Schubert’s Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, and Beethoven’s Thirty-Two Variations in C Minor, WoO 80.” Music Theory Online 19 (1). https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.19.1.5.

Rutz, Hanns Holger. 2016. “Agency and Algorithms.” Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts 8 (1): 73–83. ttps://doi.org/10.7559/citarj.v8i1.223.

Sarfati, Liora. 2016. “Shifting Agencies through New Media: New Social Statuses for Female South Korean Shamans.” Journal of Korean Studies 21 (1): 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1353/jks.2016.0009.

Seo, Maria K. (2002) 2020. Hanyang Kut: Korean Shaman Ritual Music from Seoul. Reprint. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429286902.

Serres, Michel. (1980) 1982. The Parasite. Translated by Lawrence R. Schehr. University of Minnesota Press. Reprint, B. Grasset.

Spicer, Mark S. 2004. “(Ac)Cumulative Form in Pop-Rock Music.” Twentieth-Century Music 1 (1): 29–64. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572204000052.

Suchoff, Benjamin, trans., ed. 1993. Béla Bartók: Essays. By Béla Bartók. University of Nebraska Press.

Talgam, Imri. 2021. “A Perception-Informed Approach to Performance of Metric Structure in Unsuk Chin’s Etudes.” Paper presented at Society for Music Theory 2021, virtual, November 7, 2021.

Trower, Shelley. 2009. “Nerves, Vibration and the Aeolian Harp.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 54. https://doi.org/10.7202/038761ar.

Utz, Christian. 2002. Neue Musik und Interkulturalität: von John Cage bis Tan Dun. Steiner.

—————. 2021. Musical Composition in the Context of Globalization: New Perspectives on Music History in the 20th and 21st Century. Transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839450956.

Whitley, Ed. 2000. “The Postmodern White Album.” In The Beatles, Popular Music and Society: A Thousand Voices, ed. Ian Inglis, 105–25. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62210-8_6.

Whittall, Arnold. 2000. “Unsuk Chin in Focus: Meditations & Mechanics.” The Musical Times 141 (1870): 21–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/1004366.

Williams, Frank Douglas. 1995. “Rap Music in Society.” PhD diss., University of Florida.

Winters, Ben. 2007. Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood: A Film Score Guide. Scarecrow Press. https://doi.org/10.5771/9781461658436.

Yoo, Hae Young. 2005. “Western Music in Modern Korea: A Study of Two Women Composers (Unsuk Chin, Jiesun Lim).” DMA thesis, Rice University.

Scores and Program Notes

Burge, David. 2002. Go-Hyang for Piano Solo. C. F. Peters Corporation.

Chin, Unsuk. 2009. Gougalōn: Scenes from a Street Theater for Ensemble. Boosey & Hawkes.

—————. 2012. “Chin, Un​suk: cosmigimmicks (2011–12).” Boosey & Hawkes. https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Unsuk-Chin-cosmigimmicks/49293.

—————. 2013. cosmigimmicks: A Musical Pantomime for Seven Instrumentalists. Boosey & Hawkes.

Kang, Sukhi. 1978. Buru: für Stimme, Flöte, Klarinette, Klavier und 2 Schlagzeuger. Edition Modern.

—————. 2020. “Inseonggwa daseon jujareul wihan ‘buru.’” DA-Arts. https://www.daarts.or.kr/creation-music/view/54848.

Recordings and Video

Lee, Koeun Grace, pianist. 2023. Variations on a Theme by Stefan Wolpe & Other Selected Piano Works. Navona, MP3.

New York Philharmonic, with Alan Gilbert (conductor). 2013. Contact! 2012–2013. The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York Inc., MP3.

SNU Ensemble Academy. “[TripleX] Sukhi Kang | Buru | SibA students.” YouTube video, 18:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plExt4g2qU0.

Footnotes

1. Christian Utz defines interculturality as an exchange between two distinct cultural entities and adopts the term to his discussion of twentieth-century art music (Utz 2002, 18). In a later publication, he specifies the same term as “an interaction of two or more cultural discourses—a form of interaction that must question the lines separating ‘cultural entities’” (2021, 38).
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2. In his discussion of Charles Ives’s experience as an organist and its influence on the composer’s mature works, Burkholder defines cumulative process as a construction in which “the principal theme is not introduced in full at the outset . . . but appears complete only near the end, preceded by its development” (2002, 302). In his dissertation on Pierre Boulez’s late compositions, Campbell (2000 investigates what Boulez described as “accumulative development,” noting in particular that Boulez originally applied the term to Stravinsky’s music but adopted it in his own compositions. In examples including Rituel (1974–75) and …explosante-fixe… (1972–93), recurring and alternating sections realize cumulative developments of certain compositional ideas (Campbell 2000, 138–39). Finally, Spicer (2004, 30) makes a distinction between “cumulative” and “accumulative” processes. Even though both “include all of the myriad styles and genres that have arisen since the 1960s within both ‘pop’ and ‘rock’ traditions,” cumulative and accumulative processes are different in their application to buildup techniques and ranges. If the term cumulative process is reserved for the “strategy of complete tracks,” the accumulative process is designated to “smaller formal units” within the track (33).
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3. In the late twentieth century, Kang was more than just a domestic pedagogue who taught Chin and other younger composers; he represented a school of contemporary Korean composers who equally prioritized the cultural synthesis of Korean traditional and Western music and the assimilation of Western aesthetics. It may not be an overstatement to say that Kang is a mirror image of his former teacher Isang Yun (1917–95), who also sought such a synthesis, albeit differently from Kang. The composers came to diverge from each other due to political context and personal choices. Yun was threatened by the Korean military dictatorship during the late 1960s and permanently emigrated to Germany; by contrast, after studying in Germany, Kang developed his Korea-based career relatively smoothly and held a professorship at Seoul National University from 1982 on. Kang openly embraced the Western aesthetics he learned in his German years and would proudly identify himself as an encultured composer; Yun had a more complex relationship with Western music as he struggled to find his own voice. Chin’s studies with Kang in the early 1980s suggest that she was exposed to the school led by Kang and his predilection for cultural assimilation.
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4. Given statements she made in the 2000s, one can imagine that this shock has been profound and enduring. For instance, Chin said “the music of some famous European composers in the 1950s is not performed anymore. They had an illusion that their musical language soon would be universal. But it was found after 50 years that it was meant only for Germans. Now I do not have any interest in German avant-garde music. My music doesn’t belong to any school. I want to write music that speaks to all kinds of people” (qtd. in Yoo 2005, 146).
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5. Chin shares her experience with postmodernist music: “I had experienced much conflict while I was writing post avant-garde [sic] music” (qtd. in Yoo 2005, 143). Meanwhile, her distance from Korean nationalist styles is indicated in her polite but unambiguous distancing from Isang Yun, who experimented with Korean traditions within contemporary German music (Drees and Lee [2011] 2012, 43–44).
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6. In addition to her years as a composition student, Chin’s familiarity with Western classical music is evinced in her explanation of the contextual difference between Isang Yun and herself. Noting that Yun grew up in a time when traditional music was still common in Korean rural areas, Chin points out that she did not have the same experiences since Korean society in the 1960s was becoming dominated by Western music (Drees and Lee [2011] 2012, 43).
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7. East-West synthesis in twentieth-century music may be represented by the works of Tan Dun. Hung (2012) gives an example from Tan’s score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), where Yo-Yo Ma’s cello solo meets elements of Chinese traditional music (Hung 2012, 662; Also see Hung 2011).
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8. A special session at Society for Music Theory 2021, titled “Celebrating Unsuk Chin” and chaired by Ji Yeon Lee, included discussions of Chin’s treatments of traditional rituals (Everett 2021b), textural music (Lee 2021), and metric structures (Talgam 2021).
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9. For a recent contribution to research on Alice, see Lee 2022.
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10. Mayer 1837 introduces the word Gougalōn in this manner (961).
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11. The same distance also notably recalls avant-garde composers before Chin. For instance, Satie, ‘Les Six,’ and their contemporaries during the interwar period were fond of mock recreations of the Baroque and Galant styles. (Here I express my thanks to Dr. Zachary Bernstein for his thoughtful comment and suggestion regarding this note.)
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12. Chin has not explained why she added two movements to the 2012 version. Nonetheless, one can presume a possible motivation in the composer’s predilection for classical aesthetics. Surveying Chin’s compositions written in the 1990s—including Xi (1998), Fantasie mecanique (1994/1997), Miroirs des temps (1999/2001), and Piano Concerto (1996/1997)—Whittall (2000) points out Chin’s inclination for universal balance and organic unity. The six movements of the 2012 version offer the possibility of a symmetrical arch structure: movements I and VI can be characterized respectively as the dramatic opening and ending; movements II and V likewise mirror each other as lyrical interludes; and both movements III and IV are led by percussion ensembles.
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13. In Example 7, the melodic series F♯-A-D-C♯-B suggests the possibility of an illusory B-minor pentatonic scale, where C♯ serves as the added supertonic (i.e., B-C♯-D-E-F♯-A). Likewise, in the series F-F♯-D-C♯-B, the same pentatonic scale is implied, F being the incomplete lower neighbor note of F♯.
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14. For Derrida’s original discussion of graft, see Derrida [1972] 1982 and [1974] 1986.
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15. For literature in music theory and other relevant disciplines which draws upon Derridean graft or similar concepts, see Rusch 2013, Reichardt 2008, Rutz 2016, and Winters 2007.
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16. Note that Example 8 is intended as an approximate transcription, and is not identical to Musica ricercata, movement VII. By transposing it and making B the center pitch, I facilitated the side-by-side comparison of Example 7 with Example 8. As is known to Ligeti scholars (e.g., see Bauer 2011, 190), the “Cantabile, molto legato” theme underwent constant reworking in Ligeti’s late compositions (e.g., Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, 1989–93). My transcription stays faithful to this amorphous nature rather than confirming the authentic original.
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17. Ghosh’s (2004a and 2004b) use of graft also consults Dipesh Chakrabarty, an Indian historian who has sought local narratives otherwise buried under colonialist historiography (Ghosh 2004a, 205). Ghosh (2004a and 2004b) thereby argues that Calcutta Chromosome transforms the medical thriller genre into the subject of Derridean graft, in which diverse literary ideas (e.g., fictional scientific information, genre fluidity, and vernacular ghost stories of India) proliferate but remain unresolved within the story. Readers, as they proceed, may recognize that this state later becomes a fictional reminder of the real-world disjuncture between buried local narratives and colonialist historiography.
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18. I would like to thank Mr. Haksong Lee for helping me acquire the tools shown in Example 11 and Video Example 1.
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19. Notably, the Korean word for dance (“chumchuda”) denotes more than the meaning found in its English counterpart. It also refers to gestures in extreme bursts of energy, orgies, and excitement. This untranslatable difference is reflected in my use of the English word dance: even though I keep using the word, the images I am drawing are closer to what Koreans would associate with chumchuda, i.e., energetic and less predictable movements (for instance, Koreans would describe a flag in stormy wind as a “dancing flag”).
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20. Besides its irregular mapping onto offbeats and subdivisions, the B♭5 also compensates for the general absence of dynamic changes, as its recurrence enables performers to add gradations within the overall volume of forte. I would like to express my thanks to percussionist Casey R. Cangelosi for his thoughtful comments on this point.
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21. Note that the continuation of the dancing melody is sustained until mm. 48–50, the last three measures of the first large section of Gougalōn III. Thus, the repetitiveness of the dancing melody can be understood as a major contributor to both the trance and ternary design.
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22. In Example 11, as shown earlier, one ethnographic observation captures this kind of behavior: “the information [of her client] given, Mrs. A [a shaman under the pseudonym] closed her eyes and began to summon her spirits, asking them to descend and help her. She held a bell in her right hand, shaking it intermittently whenever she seemed to need to take a breath. She announced her client to the spirits, mentioning the client’s name, residence, and the saju (the four columns of life—the time, date, month, and year of birth)” (Seo [2002] 2020, 14). In this observation, one can see that Mrs. A never disconnects her consciousness from her clients’ situations and needs—even if she has to simultaneously connect her mind with the mighty spirits. For another, similar ethnographic account, see Jung Young Lee [1981] 2018, 87.
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23. Liora Sarfati locates the major factor in this stigma as the traditional profile of Korean female shamans—that is, as “illiterate low-ranking women within the neo-Confucian hierarchy” (2016, 179).
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24. In an archived, transcribed interview in 2015, Kang shares his memories about the compositional process for Buru. He describes how he was inspired by diverse experiences (e.g., watching Korean shamans’ dances) and thus motivated to compose the piece. Nonetheless, in the same recollection, he constantly stresses the importance of logical forms, which could subdue such influences and prioritize an abstract composition. For this reason, the strict compositional principle underlying the vocal part of Buru may indicate not only Kang’s artistic preference, but also his uncompromised faith in autonomous and abstract music. See Kang 2015, 87–88.
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25. Given the tritone motives (e.g., pc-set class (016)), free atonal pitch organizations (e.g., overabundance of particular pc-set classes in transformation), and virtuosic string ensemble using expanded timbral techniques exemplified by Bartók’s string quartets, it may not be an overstatement to claim that Gougalōn I is partially reminiscent of the early modernist style—especially inspired by Eastern European folk cultures. This association is also supported by the following two observations. First, European modernist composers dedicated to nationalist and/or folk cultures, a group often represented by Bartók, were deeply admired by and studied among Chin’s Korean predecessors (for a detailed discussion of Bartók’s posthumous influence on Korean composers during the late twentieth century, see Jung-Min Mina Lee’s research (e.g., 2017, 221–30; 2023)). Second, Chin has (briefly) recalled that she taught herself how to emulate the music of Ravel, Bartók, and other early modernists during her student years (Drees and Lee [2011] 2012, 41).
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26. Racial essentialism may also be relevant to the bricolage and its resistance against political oppressions. Consider, for instance, Joshua Lumpkin Green’s discussion of survival culture in Black communities: “survival culture refers to the notion that black people in America must in some form or another assimilate into the white patriarchal system in order to fulfill the basic necessities of life” (2006, 29). Citing Dyson 2003, another critique concerned with contemporary Black American life, Green (2006) refers to bricolage as a central approach in survival culture; here bricolage means more than a passive assimilation (that gives in the dominant racial essentialism) and indicates a clever subversion using the resources at hand (29). Note that, predating Green (2006), Williams (1995, 17–18) voices a similar opinion as he defines sampling in hip hop as a creative bricolage: “the lack of live instrumentation was not an aesthetic choice; rather it was one of survival, a step in mastering bricolage—recorded sound packages, cassettes, albums were available and usable.”
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27. Note that every score excerpt from Example 18 to Example 27 (excepting Example 19 and Example 20, both being modified reproductions of Example 18) follows the order of appearance found in Gougalōn I. These examples thus show how the entire first movement unfolds from the opening measures to the climax.
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28. For eighteenth-century instances of similar pastiches, as observed in Mozart’s and Haydn’s chamber music, see Mirka 2009, 88–92, 156, and 275–94.
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29. The listed compositions are discussed in Boyden et al. (2001). Here I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Cecilia Oinas, who informed me about a noticeable similarity between the openings of Gougalōn I and Contrasts, movement III.
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30. For readers who wish to examine the second, fourth, and sixth movements of Gougalōn in relation to my analyses, I provide the following notes on mirroring relationships. The fourth movement (“Episode between Bottles and Cans”) partially mirrors the third movement by foregrounding the percussions as the leading instruments. Even though the resulting ensemble is clearly differentiated from the juggernaut counterpart of the third movement, it seems to succeed the trance as well: the bottle-and-can duet acts as a trance leader, while other percussion instruments follow the duet in a pointillistic manner. Interestingly enough, by using the richly reverberating tone clusters in the prepared pianos, wah-wah expressions in the brass with Harmon mute, and high-pitched trills in the muted and soft strings, the composer also suggests (to my ears) the Aeolian Harp—known as a timbral idea historically associated with trance (see Trower 2009 and Raz 2014 for in-depth discussions of the topic).
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