Preferred Name
Ji Hee Kim
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
5-11-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA)
Department
School of Music
Advisor(s)
Carrie Stevens
William Dabback
Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy
Michael Seth
Abstract
Modern Korean art song, Gagok, is the Western-style vocal music genre that developed in the twentieth century in Korea, predominantly through the influence of western music curricula in missionary schools and the presence of Korean military bands. These influences led to the first generation of Western music leaders who contributed to the birth of Gagok. As a result, this new genre rapidly became popular and continued to be developed despite the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945) and up to the present day. Since the birth of Gagok, two divergent compositional styles have emerged.
This DMA document aims to introduce professional classical singers and educators to Gagok and contemporary treatments of this critical global art song genre and explores through detailed examinations five selected Gagok representative of these two divergent compositional styles by two composers, Guisook Lee, and Jiyoun Chung. Guisook Lee, a prolific composer and composition professor at Korea National University of Arts in Seoul, South Korea, composed her Gagok with traditional Korean musical elements but using Western notation. In contrast, Jiyoun Chung, a prolific composer and composition professor at Central Washington University in the USA, predominantly embraced western sources from various genres of music in her compositions. This paper provides brief biographies of these two female-identifying composers and overviews of their compositional processes and musical philosophies. In addition, musical and poetic analyses are undertaken for each of the five selected Gagok, including word-for-word and literary translations. To assist non-Korean singers seeking to perform contemporary Gagok, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) resources are provided.
Recommended Citation
Kim, Ji Hee, "An introduction to five selected modern Korean art songs, Gagok, by composers Guisook Lee and Jiyoun Chung" (2023). Dissertations, 2020-current. 95.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss202029/95
