earticle

영어

It has been passed more than 70 years since Changjak Gugak (newly composed works based on traditional music) started to emerge in Korean traditional music. Now Changjak Gugak is firmly established as one of the musical genres. However its critical comments have still lingered on the people who are engaged in the music domain. Their main criticism lie in that it is difficult for them to perceive any sense of Korean traditional elements in the Changjak music produced. From an ethnomusicological perspective, tradition paradoxically changes slowly, with changes from one generation to the next not being seen as significant. Even if a tradition undergoes major changes over many generations, it will still be seen as unchanged. Changjak music is a music that was born in response to the stimuli from Western art music introduced to Korea in the early 20th century. It is, thus, inevitable as a mode of the times that Changjak music is vulnerable to be influenced by the idioms of Western music. This phenomenon is not unique and confined to Korea, but it is also in common in Asian countries such as North Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, and so forth. This article is to examine such criticism on Changjak Gugak and as a reaction to this it is to look into it as the view of the music in a Korean culture. I have looked at first a national music (Korean music) and then Changjak Gugak. I have also investigated the perspectives on Changjak Gugak. Having selected the criticized points of these, I have looked at these issues as an ethnomusicological perspective. In examining a number of criticisms on Changjak Gugak, most critics are the people who largely studied Western classical music. Among them most have been taking a great interest in Korean traditional music, and this is also much a concerned matter to the Korean traditional music filed. Korean music has, however, been kept throughout changes. For instance, Sanjo (highly artistic instrumental piece) has a history of a hundred-year, but its music and performance styles have been more than thirty yupas (schools). This was the result in that teachers who instructed and inherited Sanjo encouraged their students to create from its tradition. If they had tried to emphasise on following merely its tradition without its creation, today Sanjo would have remained in only ‘the Kim Changjo Gayago Sanjo’. Everybody would be against it, if they insisted to preserve the ‘tradition’. Changjak Gugak is continuing to transmit such creative processes. The criticisms on Changjak Gugak can be highlighted by these phrases: “To use the staff notation in the Korean music field would be a matter of grave concern”, or “It destructs its purity when the equal temperament is applied to Korean folk music”, or “It is difficult to understand the affect of Korean traditional music due to its excessive commercialization”, and so on. ‘The music in culture’ in ethnomusicology embraces all the music in the world except for Western classical music. From its definition, Korean music contains all the genres such as musics of art, folk, popular that a certain group of people practises. Thus to see the Changjak Gugak domain with the sight of seeing Western classical music is as the same as seeing popular music with the sight of western classical art one. There are different kinds of musics in Changjak music in Korea, and they include art, popular and in-between the two. Before criticizing Changjak music, one should look at first to which such particular music belongs and then make critical comments according to the appropriate criteria. There must be different critical standards according to a case, such as the problem of adapting a functional harmony and the equal temperament, and so on in the Changjak music world. I think such issues can naturally be understood with the change of an appreciative eye. Taking account of Changjak music from the ethnomusicological perspective, it would be necessary to study ethnomusicology in the hope of better understanding the nature of particularity and universality of Changjak Gugak.