성음 Seongeum (2015)
For solo violin, 6 minutes.

Seongeum is a solo violin piece, written for a collaboration with choreographer Miro Magloire for moving violinist and dancer, entitled Trust. The work was commissioned by Periapsis Music and Dance and was premiered by Lauren Cauley in February 2016 in Brooklyn, NYC.

This work asks the violinist to perform melodies in a vocalizing manner. The melodies and rhythms should be interpreted from a Pansori vocalists point of view, highly dramatic and lyrical. The main inspiration for this work is the Korean traditional Pansori singing style, seongeum, which includes highly ornamented and expressive vocal embellishments, where sounds, register, and dynamics often suddenly change from one moment to the next.

This score uses a mix of Korean instrumental embellishment techniques and Western techniques to help transcribe the korean expressions and style to a western instrument.

Published and available from PSNY.

Commercial recording available from New Focus Recordings.

Program Note:

Seongeum is a Korean Pansori vocal style.

The rich Pansori tradition is performed by a solo singer/storyteller who sings a lengthy Korean Folktale story, accompanied by a Janggu (hourglass drum) performer.  Unlike the subtle movement and simple theatrical elements used, the vocal style is vast in its techniques and expansive in its range, from high sustained laser beam falsetto to deep low vibrato and inventive metric articulation of the text.

I hear the violin as a similarly expressive instrument, where the sonic nuances of bow articulations and finger techniques (glissandi, trill, etc) are the primary sources of its expressivity, with notes a distant second.  Therefore, I was interested in translating Pansori vocalizations to the violin.  

The fourth section of this piece is a transcription of Chun Hyang G-Jajin Sarang ga, a popular Pansori love song.    

This score uses a mix of Korean instrumental embellishment techniques and Western techniques.