This situation. Sang Teh performance in Shanghai only 57 years! After, creation Seoul, then, 1961. (inspiration Ah Ahk heard everyday from Korean Broadcasting) 4 movements from the suite. I call it Situations : Now this title turning into chinees Zhang Tai. And they ar playing all-of-it-----14 movements. With your own wonderful indiginus instruments. , Tho, back-then, we did runthru at the National Music Institute, on the old Korean instruments (after concert our private pleshur organized by kayageum-virtuoso Hwang Byung-ki – old frend!) At concert used western instruments---but we playd like orientals! 2nd CD in this edition listen. Rough recording kept for years. Be heard also 4th movement: manytimes-playd by James Fulkerson’s Amsterdam-based ensembl ‘The Barton Workshop’. I look-forward after China exampl (a hope-for) that my music does get back to its land-of-origen, Korea. It coud sound as-well from Japan. And not-only with instruments ov your far-eastern cultursphere. The modern-western too. As we did. Indeed anything musical from any culture. (This germ-idea becom fulfilled in my recent Omniphony -intercultural co-operation. Invite many kinds to mix. Played for-the-first-time at that same Shanghai concert, recording destind for CD by Italian label ‘Setola di Maiale’.) Sequens-ov-tones In heterofony. Not to imitate the forms of another cultur But to learn-from. What iz apropriate. What iz right , and use-full.
Consider this composition as a realization of ideals setforth in my essay of-the-time (publishd in short-form in ‘Hangook Ilbo’) Of Ancient Times and Modern Sounds (printed-again, thistime in-full as a booklet to acompany the CD Crazy Musik: Ahk for Kwok by ‘What is the Zeitgeist’ a few years-ago. In China. And in chinese.) What is missing in the European model: refined exploration of timbre, textur, pitch-subtlty---evrything but the brikklike solids of precisely defined pitchplaces. Sound like mechanistic materializm? Every attempt at expressivity com-up against that limit. Pride in Harmony. But chords themselvs the limitingfactor, need to put lines together.
But only one line needed; one melody best. Free from the effects of excessiv civilization The tune’s tuning becomes subtil Ornamented nature continually resolving upon itself All-the-moreso when we all do it together. And this is an old-thing: the ethnomusicologysts call it “heterophony” (and for centurys we hyperrational snobs hav cryd !primitiv! as if somthing were missing that was never needed. Certainly i do-not lazily fall-bak on a borrowed pentatonic scale. Any of the 5-note scales. Not the 7s either. Nor any possibily less-than the 12. The note-sequences each different for each movement share the most-modern attainment of the complete twelvtone circle (known in China since befor-Pythagorus tho never used as-such) but not in any dogmatic-formula ov dodecaphony. Room for interval coherences: repeats, sequences, ear-garantees of shaped-perceptables. So does everything New turn-back to some-thing longtime-known. ?Has any innovation ever been anything but re-discovery.
Therfor any-number may play together. For me the first “indeterminacy”. (Yes, for-sur not the first-one:----think of John Cage. (But nowher-els like this one. I thank the Orient for that!)) The note-sequence (a “cantus firmus” if-yu-wil, is not the basis for conter-pointal additions but mor like basic asiatic-struturs (which i would later, much-later, find-out and learn, through playing with gamelan)……called “balungan” in Java and “pokok” in Bali). The note-sequens writ as letternames only. Which made easy re-write into chinese equivalence. This complemnted by short discription of the qualityz in-play. So it also first of the “text”compozitions, another newtecniqu to-be developd. Altho i then took “the oriental thing” further away from such formaltyz there is an aspect of later repetitiv music which also did, later, becom a part of my musical praxis. And this first composition uses indeterminacy in-any-way. So that makes-it a nother forward-step for me. Its derivation of-it curious: First thought-----to simply lissen to them play as they added ornaments, improvised. I woud write--down. Try to write.down. I thought. But no-good. First-ov-all…..: dificult, Too dificult. Much-too-dificult. And anyway, woud inhibit performers trying-to-makesens of comlicated-and-unusual notation. Even more serius,,,,,,arbitrary. Against the nature of ornaments. Which shoudbe improvised. Best when spontaneous . based on direct feeling from context. We ar expanding the bounds of the definit, the definabl. Reasonabl coherens held. Evn when escape from too-rigid rationality. No less, this, than what we-can-see in traditional calligraphy…..I was imediatly “wow”ed when by the neon shop-signs……our troopship dockt in Yokohama. All my time in Korea i was staring at the writings-allaround which tho simple were wonderful. Evryday-utility, nothing-more. Yet infinitly beyutiful. This iz impossible in an alphabetic script-----as i found out later, much-later, trying to do it in english, writ with latinletters. Made to be incised in clay or stone, those scripts dissolv into nonverbal cursivs when pushd too-far. Why i said that “there is no calligraphy in he West, only handwriting. I hav,, all-my-life since then used a pen, hand writing wher the usual si som mechanic means. But----a blessing! since the pure-expresiv “meaningless” designs turn-into-meaning all-the-more as they become music. Dynamic flow to-match shape-of-sounds. The sighns may dissolv in longline patterns, suggestiv of melody. A new way to write a score. Drawing it. As the exact shape ov musicmoving. This i did when i returnd to America - from 1961. Pieces for strings as played for-exampl by Malcolm Goldstein (‘Pieces from the Past’, Pogus Productions) And ensembles (Chirographic played by Apartment House, in London. Setola di Maiale). And the ‘From the Judson Years’ CDs from Alga Marghen.
………………..flying white…………….... …….………..sonic silence……..……. And more. Ink Marks for Performance (much-played by Margaret Leng-Tan in her ‘East meets West’ concerts) ; getting wildly into the nature-of-the-game ,: Or you could just throw ink down on the paper (collaborate with artists: Geoff Hendrick’s class at Rutgers University , the score-designs as stage-decor). None-of-which possibl without the Far-Eastern exposur, calligraphy----just-enuf-study to liberate my hand. (Do-not test-me on traditional letters!) Thanks to my master, Kin Ki-Sung “sun saeng nim” Who gave-me the pen-name “Gwan Pok” - means “Contemplate Waterfall”. Which i like-to, somtimes, add to a characteristic IPh. In these pieces the players just “follow the lines” which-giv all the sonic information needed to dissolve the architectural bounds of civilized-behavior into richnesses of original-nature, now at-last (and as ever-befor) under a free&easy sensual-emotional controlled mindfullnes.

Philip Corner “Gwan Pok” August 2018