Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Bower: Keobeu Nolae, the latter part meaning "curving song" in Korean, is inspired by Kate Fagan's poem "Bower" about the curving sonic beauty of bowerbirds in nature as a type of natural retreat within East Coast Australian bush touching eternity, away from the negative in life.
In this sense the structure is a type of parabola curve moving symmetrically from stillness accruing to frantic bluesy movement of multiple motifs, before falling back to stillness. Formally, the structure is viewed as: A B A' B' C [a' b' c] B'' A''.
It's content uses various nonghyeon bending techniques of the gayageum with string pressing techniques on chords and appoggiatura notes, arpeggios, and alternating patterns at the climax, with more distilled sounds flanking this through bellbird like harmonics woven amidst Korean Buddhist Temple bowl resonances and Judeo-Christian glossolalia-prayerful chanting-to suggest the eternal, whilst fragments of the bowerbird poem are whispered as a type of nesting thread throughout the music.
The music becomes a sonic nest with symbols of spirit amidst glistening nonghyeon colour changes to suggest the curving song of nature.

Work Details

Year: 2022

Instrumentation: Sanjo gayageum in F (12-strings), Korean temple bowl (wooden striker), voice (chant)

Duration: 11 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Advanced — Complex rhythmic detail and changing colour nuances

Dedication note: Dedicated to Lee Eonhwa

Commission note: Written for Lee Eonhwa (solo sanjo gayageum) for her doctoral recital at the Korean Music Department, College of Music, Seoul National University

The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc:
Free jazz, Matthew Shipp Trio; Korean gayageum sanjo performance by Yi Jiyoung and Lee Eonhwa; Judeo-Christian glossolalia and Kate Fagan’s poetic ideas on ecology; Japanese Gagaku and Honkyoku.