ABSTRACT
Many of the issues that have preoccupied writers on music elsewhere in East Asia appear in Korea with some telling variations. Korea has its own store of historical documents pertaining to music, but since many of these cite Chinese sources, the student of Korean music history must consult both literatures. Notation systems are many and various throughout East Asia, but none is more precise than Korean cho˘ngganbo when it comes to indicating rhythm. This suggests that explicit rhythm may have been considered particularly important in Korean traditional music, and indeed the most striking difference between Korean music and that of neighboring countries may well be rhythmic: the preference for rhythms based on units of three beats rather than two. Timbral differences are also significant, however, and the Korean taste for a rich spectrum of overtones and a perceptible “noise” component is reflected in both musical instruments and vocal techniques. Melodic modes and patterns vary between court and folk traditions, and sometimes between regional styles of the latter, but all show the mark of a Korean aesthetic distinct from that of China. At each level of traditional society, Korean musicians developed their own vocabulary of concepts for articulating the aesthetics and philosophy of the music they performed.
