ABSTRACT
we have so far concentrated on a certain unity of approach in Hwang’s music that helps define his personal “voice.” Briefly, his music pursues a meditative aesthetic, encouraged by his sustained interest in Buddhist and Taoist culture, and often manifested through a preference for thin textures and irregular rhythms. It draws on both the folk and the court traditions of kugak, and where Western ideas are used they tend to come from twentieth-century music rather than the tonal music of the “common practice” era. Elements from these disparate sources are carefully blended by emphasizing their common or compatible points to produce a musical “syncretism” and by building on their underlying principles rather than imitating their surface sounds. Thus, Hwang’s music does not sound like that of many ch’angjak kugak composers which sets traditional or traditional-style melodies in western classical forms with harmonic accompaniments. we have seen how Hwang’s approach enabled him to “go beyond the bounds of tradition” without becoming “groundless” (interview in Na Hyo-shin 2001: 112) and to achieve a mode of expression that was at once personal, recognizably Korean, and of international appeal.
