‘100 Years of Korean gagok’:

A closer look at the contested living histories of early Korean classical music

The titles of the songs on the program of “Hong Lanpa’s Music Festival: 100 Years of Korean Gagok” on Dec. 27 have a beguiling plainness, recalling natural scenes and sentiments about them that nearly everyone living in Korea is familiar with: “Barley Field,” “Magnolia Flower,” “Rock Pass,” “A Moonlit Night,” “Inside a Flower-Shaped Cloud,” “Snow,” “Southern Village” and “Spring of My Hometown.”

Yet a closer look into the background of these early pieces of Korean classical music — known as “gagok” or Korean art songs — reveals how the specific combination of music and poetry, together with the life stories of their authors, reflect the complicated modern history of the Korean Peninsula and its ongoing legacy.

Gagok’s musical influences derive from an eclectic international mix accumulated over more than a century.

“Gagok was influenced by European music culture from the Romantic era, specifically the German ‘lied,’” according to Hwang Yoon-joo, an assistant professor of bassoon at the University of Central Florida who researches the history and culture of Korean classical music.

“Art songs in Western classical music are exemplified by Franz Schubert’s pieces, such as ‘Der Erlkonig’ (1815). The German lied combined poetry and Western musical tonalities. German lieder were very emotional, from the Romantic era, with piano accompaniment and voice, and the voice tells a story.”

German art songs of the early 19th century sought to cultivate a national identity, and inspired similar nationalist music movements across Europe, Russia, the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea.

New forms of cultural exchange between Koreans and people of foreign nationality from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries — Christian hymns taught and published by Protestant missionaries; Western-style military bands; Western-style songs known as “chang-ga”; and studying in Japan’s new Western-style music conservatories — set the stage for Korea’s musicians to begin composing their own art songs to accompany nascent modern Korean poetry.

“Singing in the Korean language during the Japanese colonial era (1910-45) was very important,” Hwang said. “Korean modern composers were creating their own musical grammar — their own musical style, language, ideas — their own genre of music, which was influenced by European music, but was a new genre of their own.”

In the years after the Japanese Empire annexed the Korean Peninsula, Korean gagok continued to develop but in the paradoxical position of being both restrained by and in resistance to Japanese colonial rule.

As the colonial era progressed, the Japanese government shifted from encouraging the production and distribution of Western-style Korean music as a strategy to replace Korean traditional music, to suppressing Western-style Korean music itself and forcing Koreans to sing Japanese military songs.

Amid these diverse musical antecedents, suppressions and longings, the music for one of Korea’s first gagok pieces, “Bongseonhwa” (“Balsam Flower”), was composed in 1920 by Hong Nan-pa.

Hong lived in Seoul’s Sajik-dong, and attended Chungdong First Methodist Church in nearby Jeong-dong, close to the Western-style missionary Ewha Hakdang girls’ school adjacent to Deoksu Palace. He had studied in the Western music department of the Joseon Court Music Study Institute as well as at the Tokyo Music School, but was expelled from the latter for participating in Korea’s March 1 Independence Movement of 1919.

He composed music titled “Aesu” (“Sorrow”) in April 1920, later asking his neighbor, poet Kim Hyeon-jun, to write lyrics for the piece, which together became “Bongseonhwa.”

“Bongseonhwa” tells of a flower that once bloomed bright red in summer, but is now dying in the autumn wind, waiting with hope for reincarnation. In 1942, at the height of Imperial Japan’s wartime mobilization, the song was performed by soprano Kim Chun-ae at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo in a white Korean “chima” (traditional skirt) and “jeogori” (jacket). The song and performance became well-known among Koreans as a metaphor for their resistance to colonial Japan and hopes of a better future.

At “Hong Lanpa’s Music Festival: 100 Years of Korean Gagok,” the program’s art executive director, professor in the college of culture and art at Baekseok University and soprano Lim Chung-hwa sang “Bongseonhwa” in a mournful, defiant and hopeful tone, wearing a white dress printed with muted red flowers, accompanied by a small orchestra whose playing recalled the back and forth sway of the wind.

“Gagok’s lyrics help navigate the Korean situation and national emotions during that time,” said Hwang, who performed Hong’s piece, “Love,” adapted as a concerto for bassoon for the program.

The efforts of modern Korean poets and composers to articulate national sentiments through art songs continued after the colonial era, though they were caught amid the ideological struggles that geographically divided the peninsula.

A number of pieces performed in the program are based on poems or music by artists whose political leanings defy easy categorization or are still subject to heated debate.

Some seemed to prioritize finding artistic freedom or institutional support in the chaotic post-liberation and Korean War eras.

“Pollack” (lyrics by poet Yang Myeong-mun in 1950 and music composed by Byeon Hun in 1952) is an emotionally raw gagok piece about the stark contradictions and brutality of life.

Performed by tenor Lee Jae-wook over music that evokes a boat rocking back and forth in rough waters, the singer boasts about his glorious life as a big pollack fish in the dark blue sea, dancing with his beloved companions, breathing in the icy water, before he is caught in a fisherman’s net, mummified like an Egyptian pharaoh and ultimately ripped to shreds as a side dish for soju by a lonely and poor poet.

Poet Yang, born in 1913 in Pyongyang, studied law and creative writing in Tokyo until 1944. After liberation, he returned to Pyongyang, where he got swept up in the post-liberation atmosphere of the Soviet-occupied North, publishing his poems in an anthology of North Korean poetry in 1946 called the “Government Office Poetry Collection,” and even writing “Hymn to Kim Il-sung,” according to the Korean-language news publication JoongAng Ilbo.

When South Korean and U.N. forces captured Pyongyang in October 1950, Yang organized the Pyongyang United Arts Association but ended up fleeing to Busan two months later during their retreat. Then, after some time working as a day laborer on the docks there, he was invited to join South Korea’s Army War Writers Group, traveling the frontlines to give lectures on the current situation and write lyrics for military songs.

During this time, Yang was staying in a house in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, with composer Byeon Hun, who had also fled the North. He showed “Pollack” to Byeon, who then decided to compose music for the poem.

The piece premiered in Busan in 1952, only to be met with ridicule and criticism. Byeon then tore up all of his songs and decided to quit music entirely, entering the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and working as a career diplomat for 28 years.

“Any kind of music — but especially Korean music — is related to politics. Korean classical music is related to the colonial era, the Korean War, and the divisions between left and right, north and south,” Hwang said. “I think it’s very natural.”

While gagok provides a window to understand the complexities and contradictions of Korean modern history and the sentiments around it, many younger Koreans today think of it as music of their parents’ or grandparents’ generation.

“On the one hand, gagok of the colonial era is still beloved,” according to Hwang. “Korean soprano Hera Hye-sang Park and other singers also sing modern gagok. On the other hand, the young generation likes pop songs.

“But gagok is a classic that expresses Koreans’ artistry and sensibility,” she continued.

“Introducing a new genre of music, delivering new artistic aspects, exchanging cultures and traditions, bridging cultures — that is what is important, not just popularity,” she said. “Especially during the colonial era, gagok pioneered Korean classical music.”

Local broadcaster KBS is preparing a documentary based on the Dec. 27 performance, the release date of which is to be determined.