Musical Notations of Korea is the fourth in a series of edited volumes on Korean music published by National Gugak Center (Kungnip kugakwon). Together with the preceding volumes covering, respectively, general information on Korean traditional music, p’ansori (epic sung narrative), and sanjo (solo folk instrumental performance), the present volume serves as an invaluable contribution to the English-language literature on Korean music. The volume is, at present, the only comprehensive source on traditional Korean musical notation in the English language. Previously, Walter Kaufman’s sino-centric Musical Notations of the Orient (1972) existed as the only extensive English-language source on Korean notation. Works including sections on historical notation by Song Bang-Song (1973), Lee Hye-ku (1981), and Robert Provine (1988) as well as contemporary transcriptions of folk drumming performance included in publications by Keith Howard (1989), Nathan Hesselink (2006), and Simon Mills (2007) have offered a glimpse of Korean notation styles, but provide no comprehensive analysis of the notation. Therefore, the book serves as a promising resource for those beginning the study of Korean traditional music.
The introduction by Lee Yong-Shik lays the groundwork for the volume. Detailing the emphasis on Korea’s mensural notation, Lee contends, results from Korean music’s employment of “asymmetrical” rhythms. Although the proper term is “additive rhythm,” Lee and many other contributors to the volume point to the complexity of Korea’s rhythmic structures as the impetus behind Korea’s mensural notation, jeongganbo. Contributors follow with chapters detailing the history of Korean notation, rhythmic interpretation and analysis, oral mnemonics used in notation, tablature, and comparisons with notations of China, Japan, and the Western European classical tradition.
In the preface, the director general of the National Gugak Center states that the purpose of the volume and the series of which it is a part is to “introduce Korean music abroad.” The volume, as well, represents Korean music globalization efforts for which the National Gugak Center is at the helm. Kim Young-woon’s chapter on “Korean Notation Systems” and So Inhwa’s “Historical Change and Meaning of Korean Tablature” contribute wonderfully to this overall goal of introducing an aspect of Korean music to those who might not be familiar with it. Both Kim and So provide clear, informative details in the form of a survey of notation systems and tablature commonly employed. In addition, Lee Jin-weon, Lee-Ji-sun, and Kim Jin-Ah’s chapters comparing Korean notations with, respectively, those of China, Japan, and Europe would be useful to scholars of those musical traditions interested in familiarizing themselves with Korean notation systems. Kwon Oh-sung’s “History of Korean Notation,” while short on historical contextualization, offers a broad overview of notation systems.
While Hwang Jun-yon’s work “Critical Assessment: The Rhythmic Interpretation of Jeongganbo” makes a sound argument regarding a need for clearly-defined, specific analysis of mensural notation’s time value, the article appears to be a translation of one written for Korean music specialists. The author offers little in terms of solid conclusions regarding interpretation of time value in particular pieces of music, and, instead, calls for more research. An article of this kind seems an odd addition to an edited volume meant to introduce topics on Korean traditional notation. Likewise, Lee Sang-kyu’s “The Gueum (Oral Mnemonics) for Wind Instruments” would be difficult to follow if the reader were not a scholar of traditional music theory. The author discusses “fixed” and “variable” oral syllables employed in notation, but does not explain the terminology in such a way as to ease a reader’s potential difficulties in understanding the article. In addition, Lee does not explain clearly why he chooses to analyze the gueum of the jeok, a limited instrument by today’s standards. Would it not make more sense, in an introductory volume, to explore the general notion of gueum for multiple instruments instead of analyzing gueum employed in scores? More valuable would be clear examples and simple details—of multiple instruments—such as the chart on page 121 of the fingering coinciding with gueum. Both of these articles, while valuable to the burgeoning scholar of Korean music who may not have a solid grasp of the Korean language, seem too specific for a more general, introductory volume.
The volume suffers a familiar set of ills befalling many translated and edited works on Korean music. Kwon Oh Sung’s article, for example, includes no sources to back up claims such as jeongganbo is the “oldest notation in the East” (12) and “Korea created the first full ensemble score, while such a score had not yet been produced in the West.” In addition, Kwon’s equating numerical values in jeongganbo with the Fibonacci number series appears suddenly and with little contextualization and explanation. Throughout the volume, terms are not glossed and many appear with little more than a word-for-word translation (such as hyangak, dang-ak, and aak). Lee Yong-shik explains in the introduction that the editors chose to use Korean terms without translation “in order to introduce them to the world” (2), yet a beginner-level reader, with little knowledge of Korean language and/or Korean music would easily become overwhelmed with the incredible amount of romanized Korean terms included in each chapter. The volume is in great need of a glossary and index. Unnecessary overlaps (such as the definition of musical notation included at the beginning of most chapters) and slack editing, as well, plague the volume. Phrases such as, “Therefore, it was able to among different tunes that had different beat and rhythm” (78), could have been easily avoided with professional English copy-editing. Finally, the appendix reproduces a list of terminology as well as titles of scores and pieces published in the National Gugak’s series Source Materials for Korean Musicology. The appendix lists a term or a title in Korean, its romanized counterpart, and then Chinese characters and numbers that, according to the brief English outline at the beginning of the appendix, coincide with page numbers of musical scores. The purpose of this appendix is unclear and it will be of little use to those just beginning to explore the world of Korean music, unless they are scholars of Chinese music.
Despite the problems outlined above, the work is of value because it offers a fairly comprehensive glance at contemporary concerns within Korean musicology, contributes to the ever-growing yet still-limited inventory of source materials on Korean music in the English language, and offers several viewpoints on the world of Korean musical notation. The final setback, perhaps, would be its availability: the book is not for sale. If one cannot purchase the volume, how may one attain a copy? This is a typical conundrum for materials produced by the Korean government, and one would hope that a solution to this problem will surface in the near future.
Works Cited
Hesselink, Nathan. 2006. P’ungmul: South Korean Drumming and Dance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Howard, Keith. 1989. Bands, Songs, and Shamanistic Rituals : Folk Music in Korean Society. Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch.
Kaufman, Walter. 1972. Musical Notations of the Orient. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lee, Hye-ku. 1981. Essays on Korean Traditional Music, translated and edited by Robert C. Provine. Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch.
Provine, Robert. 1988. Essays on Sino-Korean Musicology: Early Sources for Korean Ritual Music (Traditional Korean Music Series). Seoul: Il Ji Sa.
Simon Mills. 2007. Healing Rhythms: The World of South Korea’s East Coast Hereditary Shamans. London: Ashgate.
Song, Bang-Song. 1973. “The Korean Pip’a and Its Notation,” Ethnomusicology 17: 460-493.
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[Review length: 1226 words • Review posted on January 23, 2012]