Amusing the strings
at
Poquatuck Hall
Saturday, May 25, 2024, at 5:00pm
Yezu Elizabeth Woo, violin
DoYeon Kim, gayageum
Description
Nonghyun is a Korean term to say vibrato or bending of pitch and executed by pressing and releasing the strings vertically making inflections from microtones to almost thirds. Various types of nong are applied to the notes to emphasize important notes and to signify emotions.
Since Western music’s introduction to Korea, Western-style Korean composers have been strongly influenced by European techniques and music. Most composers studied in Germany and the United States. In the 1960s a new generation of Western-style Korean composers were inspired to explore Korean traditional musical elements and instruments. Today, many composers have written for traditional instruments, and some have composed works for Western instruments that contain traditional musical materials. They have attempted to synthesize these two different musical traditions from Western Europe and Korea.
Korean traditional music is generally divided into two categories based on the purpose of the performance and the audience by whom the music is enjoyed: aak (elegant music), played at the court and enjoyed by the aristocracy; and minsogak (folk and secular music), usually appreciated among the common people and traditionally referred to as folk music.
