Isang Yun.

Thanks to The News from Wabu-eup, the blog previously responsible for my discovery of Ksitigarbha, I just made my first acquaintance with the music of Isang Yun, a South Korean composer of the last century who led a very interesting life:

Yun Isang (尹伊桑), more often known as Isang Yun, is South Korea’s most internationally celebrated composer. Born in 1917 in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, Yun initially studied composition in Japan. While there, he got into trouble with the Japanese authorities over his pro-Korean Independence activities and was imprisoned. He resumed his musical career and later moved to Germany where he resumed his studies.

He quickly made a name for himself among the European avant-garde. His works were performed at some of the most prestigious festivals. In the early 1960s, Yun made a trip to North Korea. This was definitely illegal for South Korean citizens. Eventually, the KCIA (now known as the National Intelligence Service) caught up with him and kidnapped him in Berlin. He was taken back to Seoul, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to death. His death sentence was eventually commuted. Thanks to a great deal of outrage on the part of Germany and many prominent musicians, including the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, he was returned to Germany but permanently barred from visiting South Korea. He would never see South Korea again. His works were banned here. Yun Isang was not the only composer to run into trouble with the South Korean government. One of Korea’s greatest masters of traditional music, Hwang Byungki, found one of his works banned by the authorities, as they deemed it “too shocking”. Hwang writes both traditional-style music and very avant-garde compositions.

Meanwhile in North Korea, Yun became celebrated and well known. He was granted German citizenship and travelled between Germany and North Korea several times. A research institute into his life and work was subsequently set up by the North Korean government. His works have been performed there, something which is puzzling, as Communist countries really don’t care for avant garde music. . . .

Yun died in 1995 in Berlin, where the Internationale Isang Yun Gesellschaft was subsequently established in his memory. Yun has enjoyed a posthumous rehabilitation in his home country, where an annual performance competition and a musical composition prize bear his name. Even so, as The News from Wabu-eup notes, Yun's ties to Pyongyang still make him a controversial figure in South Korea.



The above video presents one of Yun's late works, Tapis pour cordes (1987), performed here by a group of Korean musicians. For some words on Yun's compositional style, here is an earlier report from The News from Wabu-eup:

Yun’s music uses the avant-garde technique he learned in the 1950s and 1960s in addition to those of traditional Korean music. If you listen to any traditional Korean music, you will notice that vibrato features heavily in the work. A given note begins with a grace note and once it is established, it is given vibrato and intensified finally ending with an ornament. Yun would adopt this technique in his own work calling this technique Hauptton. In Yun’s work, there is a main note in a given phrase surrounded by other grace notes and ornamental notes. As with traditional Korean music, microtones feature in his work as well. The main note gains intensity, is affected by vibrato or differing rhythms, or is affected by changes in dynamics.

All of this makes me eager to learn more about Isang Yun's life, with its odd political twists and turns and Cold War resonances, as well as about the apparent blend of European and Korean elements in his music. Once again, I find myself grateful to The News from Wabu-eup for a wonderfully unexpected broadening of my horizons. AMDG.