In western music, musicians learn to play by following the notes that composers wrote. But traditional Korean musicians hone their skills in a vastly different way called “gusimjeonsu (구심전수),” which literally means to pass on with the mouth and receive with the heart. This learning method is characterized by a teacher singing a song and a student mimicking their technique. In essence, the teacher demonstrates how a song should be performed and the student learns by imitation. But even when learning the same song, students don’t end up performing it the same way, because the students’ state of mind or emotions cannot all be identical and they tend to interpret the piece in varying ways. So, the resulting performances can differ even if the students studied under the same teacher. Also, a student who adapts a song to suit their own musical taste is regarded more highly than a student who just copies the teacher’s style. That’s how a gugak artist becomes a composer in Korea, by reinterpreting their master’s style and technique and transforming a piece of music into their own creation. Among the most revered gugak composers in Korea is Kim Ki-soo (김기수), known as Korea’s first gugak artist who specialized in music composition. He wrote such pieces as “Sewuyeong (세우영)” and “Gohyangso (고향소)” in the 1940s, when the new era of gugak creations began. It was the period when gugak musicians were eager to write a new type of music that kept pace with the changing times. Kim Hee-jo (김희조) was another gugak composer who was instrumental in establishing the genre of creative traditional Korean music.
Music 1: Sanjo-themed Ensemble/ Composed by Kim Hee-jo, performed by KBS Traditional Music Orchestra
That was “Sanjo-themed Ensemble” written by Kim Hee-jo and performed by the KBS Traditional Music Orchestra. Composer Kim Hee-jo was born in Seoul in 1920. He didn’t start studying music until he graduated from high school and started working as a bank employee. The first instruments he took up were not Korean, but western ones like the piano, violin, and viola. Even his first musical composition was in the western style. It was only in the 1950s, during the Korean War, when Kim got interested in gugak. When he was supervising the army band, he adapted a folk song for a band and a brass ensemble. After he was discharged, he organized a small orchestra at KBS and began performing adaptions of traditional Korean folk songs. Since then he went on to teach at a gugak art school and conduct the Seoul Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra, pioneering a whole new world of traditional music. Kim is noted for his compositions based on folk music, like sanjo, folk songs or pansori. The next piece you are going to enjoy is “Sulbisori (술비소리),” a boatmen’s song from Geomundo (거문도) Island in southwestern Korea. The song was usually sung when sailors weaved fishing ropes. Here’s a modernized version of “Sulbisori” sung by Lee Jeong-gyu accompanied by the KBS Traditional Music Orchestra.
Music 2: Sulbisori/ Sung by Lee Jeong-gyu, performed by KBS Traditional Music Orchestra
After the liberation of Korea, Kim Hee-jo had played viola and double bass in Goryeo Orchestra, Korea’s first western music orchestra following the country’s independence. There were hardly any double bass players in Korea at the time, so he had to teach himself how to play the instrument and overcome the disadvantage of having to play such a big instrument with short fingers. His evolution from a bank employee to a musician in an orchestra, and finally to a gugak composer, has left us with a number of beautiful music pieces. The musical philosophy of this artist, who lowered the boundaries between Korean and western music, was that a music composition should be pleasing to the ear. So the last piece for this episode of Sounds of Korea is “Dance Fantasia”, which features Oh Sin-jeong playing the flute with an accompaniment by the KBS Traditional Music Orchestra.
Music 3: Dance Fantasia/ Flute by Oh Sin-jeong, accompanied by the KBS Traditional Music Orchestra