The Persistent Influence of Korean Musician Hwang Byungki and His “Migung”

Hwang Byungki, who was born in 1936 and passed away from pneumonia on January 31st, 2018, was a celebrated Korean artist, composer and professor whose work advanced both traditional and avant-garde musical practices in his home country. A master of the kayageum, a string instrument closely related to the zither, Byungki consistently introduced innovations that have pervaded the form to the point of being taken for granted. He played an important role in championing visionary creators from other fields, including the Fluxus artist Nam June Paik and Hong Sin Cha, the mother of contemporary Korean dance, and the influence of his aesthetic and approach to presenting conceptual works was undeniable in the development of modern approaches to Korean traditional music over the past half-century.

For the first edition of the Contemporary Music Biennale, which took place in his native Seoul in 1975, Byungki was commissioned by the organizers to compose and perform the piece that would open the festival. The result, Migung (“Labyrinth”), performed alongside Hong Sin Cha, not only became the talk of the festival, but went on to have a lasting impact on many different aspects of Korean culture, its influence reverberating in fields ranging from music composition and performance to contemporary dance, literature and video-game soundtracks. It was such a benchmark that “Migung-esque” would become an everyday adjective in describing perceived common characteristics among the works of the Korean traditional music community. From the opening sounds of the cello bow dropping on Byungki’s kayageum to the euphoric shrieking of Hong Sin Cha, the work was profound in its rejection of convention, while retaining a visceral humanity that lent the music uncommon urgency and lasting currency.

In this interview, conducted by Hasan Hujairi in November 2017, Byungki speaks about the creation of Migung, reminisces on a peculiar encounter with John Cage and discusses the importance amateur musicians had on both his personal development and that of Korean traditional music.

How did Migung come to be?

Migung was made by me while also conversing with Hong Sin Cha. This is because I was the manager of Hong Sin Cha’s premiere performance in Korea. I believe she graduated from Sookmyung University, but she never studied dance in Korea. She suddenly began to dance when she moved to the United States. She wanted to make her debut in Korea and she wrote a letter to the Hankook Ilbo newspaper, but they didn’t even give her an answer. She was very discouraged by this. One of my high school classmates who was living in New York City at the time contacted me regarding Hong Sin Cha.

This particular high school classmate, Ahn Dong-Gu, specialized in painting. He passed away a few years ago. He sent me a letter referring to Hong Sin Cha, so I wrote back to him saying that Hankook Ilbo newspaper or any other public institution would not normally respond to artists asking for help in that way. I told my friend that I would be happy to manage Hong Sin Cha’s debut performance on a private level.

What year was this?

Most probably around 1973. I think that’s right. At any rate, I replied to him and told him that I’d like to have more material about Hong Sin Cha’s work in dance. So, she sent me a bundle of almost all her work up until then. I suddenly found myself as her manager. I also found out that she was a very capable singer. Her field was contemporary dance, and I told her that I had a plan to compose a piece that I would like her to be involved in. That piece became what is now known as Migung. While I was working with her on Migung, I indicated to her that I’d like her to vocalize things in such-and-such a way. I gave her some kind of instructions and examples to use as a guideline. She was actually very keen to follow those instructions I had given her. That is how Migung came to be.

Did it take a long time to finalize Migung in time for its first performance?

No, no. It all happened very quickly. At around that time, I was very interested in Western contemporary composition. John Cage, Luigi Nono, Stockhausen and Boulez were all very interesting to me. So, putting Migung together was something we worked on very quickly. We were very excited to be working on something like this.

In putting the work together, were you discussing it as it was being developed? Was there no written score for the piece?

There is no written score for Migung. That’s right.

But I assume you did have some set of spoken rules that would signal to Hong Sin Cha that if you were to do something, she would react in a certain way. Is that right?

Yes. In Korean traditional music, there’s a concept known as “kidung,” which means “pillars.” The kidung were the first things established for the piece. The other aspects of the performance were left for the performance itself. It was all a kind of improvisation. The piece is improvised, but it also has some pillars that need to be accommodated. That is the structural outline of the piece. I did not need to make a written score for it.

Can you tell us more about the context of the first performance?

The audience was very surprised when the piece was performed and reacted in very mixed ways. Ultimately, critics responded very positively to the work. The audience, however, was very, very surprised. Perhaps a little too surprised. [laughs] The concert happened in Seoul’s Myeongdong neighborhood. The National Theater was located in Myeongdong in 1975, but isn’t there anymore today. It moved to its current location afterwards.

What year did you return to Korea from the United States, where you were mainly teaching Korean music at universities?

I’m not quite sure, because around that time I often traveled back and forth between Korea and the United States. During that time in the United States, I met John Cage in New York City.

You had mentioned once that it was during one of his happenings, and that you had walked up on stage with Nam June Paik – another key figure in Fluxus and a childhood friend of yours.

John Cage was kind of performing onstage – playing chess, I think. That was my first impression of Cage. Nam June Paik, in the middle of that performance, asked me if I’d be interested in saying hello to Cage, who was busy onstage at the time. Cage greeted us warmly onstage, and a short while later, Nam June Paik and I got offstage and left the event. It was very funny.

How did you decide on the title of Migung?

Actually, that piece was my attempt to reflect human life. The first section of the piece represents birth, and the last section of the piece represents going to “the other world.” The prose or words used within the piece are actually taken from Buddhist sutras. I think that the life of a human being is actually a “migung,” a labyrinth.

After finishing Migung, did you have any works that shared a similarity in its compositional process? For example, did any of your compositions have the same “kidung” system?

No, not really. However, I do have a composition called Jasi. The English title most commonly used to refer to it is Night Watch. Jasi literally translates to “the hour of the rat” [in connection to the Chinese zodiac animals], and refers to the old Korean timing system. Jasi traditionally happens between around 11 PM and 1 AM. Jasi is for solo “daegeum” [a large, transverse bamboo flute used in Korean traditional music], with some spoken-word accompaniment. It is somewhat similar to Migung, and is what some may call experimental music.

When was this piece composed?

Around 1978, so a few years after Migung.

How does Jasi work as a composition? How did you design it?

The piece is mainly for solo daegeum. Migung, if we were to use an analogy from painting, is perhaps somewhat similar to some of the more well-known pieces by Salvador Dalí. His works really are life-like, yet they are beyond what we naturally know as reality. Jasi also shares this surreal characteristic with Migung.

At the time in which you were composing Migung, did you see yourself as a traditional Korean musician, or as something else? I understand that there weren’t really any other traditional Korean musicians working in an experimental capacity. Is this true, or am I wrong?

At that time, I don’t think there were many Korean composers who were genuinely interested in Western contemporary music of an experimental, or perhaps surreal, nature. I am not only speaking about Korean traditional music players, but composers in general. However, I am not entirely sure how accurate this is. I might be wrong in my assumption. [laughs]

After 1975 you performed Migung several times. Did the piece change over time?

I didn’t change the composition. The concept and approach remained the same. The resulting performances were of course different each time. I’ve performed the piece with several different vocalists over time.

And who were some of those people you performed with? Were they also contemporary dancers?

They were not contemporary dancers. Hong Sin Cha, the original vocalist, is exceptional. All the other performers who came later were singers. Hong Sin Cha is a very special dancer because she also can sing very well.

For many contemporary dancers, I understand, singing is an activity that they are comfortable doing onstage. Contemporary dancers are encouraged to have full control over their body, and as the throat from which one sings is also within that scope of control, many contemporary dancers are able to use their voices well onstage.

That’s right. Hong Sin Cha told me this same thing. The ability of contemporary dancers to sing is not something commonly known, but singing is certainly something many contemporary dancers should be able to do. Hong Sin Cha could also control her voice in a very unique way. This is something that was of great interest to me.

I’m curious if you were having any conversations with Nam June Paik or anyone else at time of composing Migung?

Migung is not influenced by Nam June Paik. It is something that reflected where my thoughts were at the time. Nam June Paik was certainly a good friend, and we had many good times together. He once asked me, quite seriously, who I thought had the biggest impact on 20th-century art music. When I told him that it might be Arnold Schoenberg, which made sense to me, especially since he had studied his works while in university, he told me that it wasn’t Schoenberg, but Louis Armstrong. [laughs]

What about your circle of friends in the 1970s? Who were the kind of artists and intellectuals that were close to you around that period?

Composers Kang Sukhi and Paik Byung-dong were my two closest friends around that time. We had many conversations and discussions over the years. Aside from Kang Sukhi and Paik Byung-dong, Nam June Paik was of course another very close friend. Those were the people I mostly spent my time with, and they were the ones who interested me the most.

Do you see yourself as part of a traditional lineage within Korean traditional music? If so, are you trying to critique or develop anything through your work?

My first composition was called Beside a Chrysanthemum, which I completed in 1962. The piece was just for voice, and was not originally intended for the kayageum.

And who was the first singer of the piece? Was it you?

Someone else sang it. I cannot really sing. I don’t think I have a voice suitable for singing in public. However, I was very interested in Korean traditional singing, especially the genre known as “kagok” [which involves mixed female and male voices]. When I was a college, I learned traditional kagok for about three years. My teacher was actually an optician. At that time, it was very common to see amateurs performing “jeongak” music, which is generally seen as classical Korean music and was mostly historically connected with aristocracy and the upper class. So, yes, I studied kagok under an optician who was also an amateur kagok singer. He also played the “geomungo,” which translates roughly to “black zither,” and is historically one of the most symbolic musical instruments used by Korean scholars of the past.

So your teacher did all those things alongside maintaining a practice as an optician?

That’s right, and by the way, “amateur” just means that he never really received any money for his music. However, he was a very good musician. That being said, one of the things that I used to think about a lot was that among traditional arts in Korea such as traditional painting, calligraphy, and literature, it was common to see practitioners create new material. However, among those playing Korean traditional instruments, it seemed that we were only repeating what was done before. There was no new creation happening. I felt that it was not really fair. This pushed me to try to compose new music for Korean traditional musicians.

For my first composition, Beside a Chrysanthemum, I used a modern poem by Seo Jeong-Ju [who wrote under the name Midang]. I loved the work of that poet very much, and the poem I used for that particular composition sounded traditional, but its content was not traditional at all. In Korean traditional high culture, we had a situation we called “um-pum nong-wol,” which is roughly used to describe how the old “seonbi” class of scholars would demonstrate the spirit of observing the splendors of their immediate environment and enjoy the process of writing their literary works. However, in the case of Seo Jeong-Ju’s poem, there is no sense of “um-pum nong-wol,” and yet his work is absolutely wonderful. It is very traditional in its form, yet it felt very new to me.

The first thing I decided was to follow his poem’s ideas exactly as they were written. As a result, I effectively composed a new piece within the “gagok” genre. At that time, there was only one singer, named Kim Kyeong-Bae, who could technically perform the piece. He is now listed as a living national treasure in the field of kagok. At that time, only he was able to perform such a piece, but he was unable to perform it because he had to go away to join the mandatory army service. My second piece was Cheong San To (“Blue Mountain Way”), and he was still away for his army service. So even though I had two pieces ready to be sung, no one could perform them. So I changed the instrumentation of that piece to kayageum, which is my main instrument. This became my first kayageum piece.

Was it difficult for you to compose that piece? As you had mentioned earlier, not many others were composing new music for traditional instruments.

I think what made the process a little less scary for me while writing the voice pieces was that I could rely on the words to guide me along the way. However, when I turned the work into a purely instrumental piece for kayageum, I had a difficult time trying to conceptualize the work. So Beside a Chrysanthemum was actually my first composition for kayageum. Since my main instrument was actually the kayageum, I gradually started composing more pieces for the instrument.

I’m surprised by the story of how your first composition was actually for voice. Did anyone ever perform the voice version of your first composition in the following years?

Yes, once or twice. In one of my albums, you can find a recording by Kim Kyeong-Bae. He’s still active as a kagok singer today.

How do you see your position in Korean music history? What do you consider as being your lineage or musical genealogy?

I think I am mainly connected to jeongak music. However, jeongak music is technically very simple, while sanjo [a traditional Korean form of virtuosic solo instrumental improvisation, accompanied by the hour-glass drum known as “janggu”) is technically complex. I like the idea of jeongak music played with the technicality of sanjo.

How did you arrive at this idea? Is it mainly because you want to bring the excitement of sanjo to jeongak, or is there more to the idea?

Sanjo really is exciting, yes. When I compose a piece, I often think that my works actually fall under the category of jeongak and not sanjo, even though the technique of playing may resemble sanjo.

Going back to Migung, you said that you never created a written score for it.

That’s right. It has no written score in the traditional sense. The entire composition of the piece is inside of me, in my heart, in my mind.

I’ve actually heard from electronic music producers here in Korea that they are familiar with Migung because it appears within the soundtrack of a video game called White Day: A Labyrinth Named School.

One of the strangest things about Migung is that it is possibly one of my most popular compositions, but is one of the works that sells the least. I suppose younger people who are interested in the work might download it or stream it online, but they don’t actually buy recordings of the work.

Do you think this is because one of the most exciting things about Migung is that it strongly varies from one performance to another? There must also be something profound in experiencing it being performed live.

Perhaps you might be right. The last time I performed the piece was September of 2017 at Elim Art Center in Incheon. The event was called “An Evening of Kagok Music by Hwang Byungki.” It was a concert that focused on my compositions that made use of voice.

How often do you perform each year?

No more than once or twice a year. One of the things I often joke about is that I don’t really mind if no one shows up to my performances. Perhaps this is why I don’t really tell my students whenever I have an upcoming performance.

I did see you perform your piece Chimhyang-moo in Mullae Art Center in Seoul a few years ago. I was there in the audience. You left really quickly afterwards.

[laughs]. Oh, yes. Chimhyang-moo is the piece that I’ve performed the most over the years, it seems to me. I guess it’s popular among listeners, and they seem to enjoy that one the most. It’s also the piece that is most often performed by other musicians. I don’t mind performing it whenever I’m invited to give a recital. It looks like I don’t really need to play any other piece of mine. People seem to enjoy it when I just play that one work. I’ve played that piece so many times, I don’t even need to look at the music score for Chimhyang-moo anymore, even though it’s a relatively long and complex piece.