Admiral Yi - Theme Music

Tristan Murphy This is amazingly Cool!! :)

September 18, 2015 22:27:41 · Reply

Clearwood So cool

September 19, 2015 12:56:51 · Reply

John Jihoon Chang I liked the piece, but if this is about a Korean admiral, wouldn't it make sense to have chosen to have the erhu played more like a Korean haegeum, or even better, taken the composition and arrangement more to traditional Korean courtly sounds than Chinese ones? I mean, I understand the practical choices to go with this version, considering that the research into the more obscure Korean court sound (especially if you wanted to focus specifically on the era that Admiral Yi was alive) would have been time intensive and not terribly accessible to non-Koreans, plus I imagine tracking down a particularly talented Korean traditional multi-instrumentalist (haegeum, geomungo, danseo, etc.) for the composers might have been challenging too, unless they are based in LA where there are a few studios and the Cultural Center as resources. But with few mainstream cultural reference points (there really is no fiction in mainstream Western consciousness set in pre-Korean War Korea), I could see how it might have seemed like a daunting task and to pick its bigger neighbor (that exerted some degree of political and cultural influence on Korea), which has a much greater international presence, makes practical sense. I suppose I just feel like I have to comment so that people clearly understand that traditional Chinese music and traditional Korean music are actually distinct, including the instruments used and the way that they are performed, even if there are some shared elements. And that this particular piece sounds much more influenced by Chinese music than Korean (especially the style of play of the erhu and its timbre). I guess for non-musicologists this is nitpicking--but if we're talking about history and want to be historically accurate, I'd think we'd want to at least consider putting the same kind of critical historical reflection into how we receive the music as we would the narratives and images presented.

September 19, 2015 17:41:12 · Reply