Lily Park for Symphony Orchestra

Abstract

Composers have long been interested in authentic materials from their own national heritage. Many composers favored folk-based melodies and rhythms. Bela Bartok, for example, collected volumes of Hungarian folk and gypsy melodies throughout his life. Igor Stravinsky's three ballets ( Firebird, Petrushka , and The Rite of Spring ) are also famous for their employment of folk melodies and primitive rhythms. American composers such as Charles Ives and Aaron Copland represented 'Americana' through the use of American pop music, jazz, and folk songs in their compositions. Much of the music of composers who emigrated to foreign countries represents strong implications of nationalism. These composers' efforts to remember their origins, as well as nostalgia for their native culture, were expressed in their music. These qualities appear most interestingly in Asian composers such as Toru Takemitsu and Isang Yun. Despite the drastic difference between Asian and Western music, the two contrasting idioms are handled similarly by these two composers. They not only use non-Western musical materials such as folk melodies and rhythms, but also employ Asian titles, concepts, and traditional instruments to represent Asian inspiration in their music. The composition Lily Park consists of three movements, entitled Wind Bell, Goblin Lights , and Rock of Ages . The three movements are based on my personal impressions of the cemetery Lily Park, located near Deagu, Korea, where all my grandparents are buried. In this composition, Western musical idioms are integrated with the composer's Asian musical heritage. The concept of Lily Park , which is purely non-Western in origination, is realized by utilizing compositional techniques and concepts that have been developed by Western composers, such as tone color, tonality, pitch-class set theory, and serialism, with an ensemble that consists of Western instruments. These ideas are combined with Asian materials such as exotic scales, extended performance techniques associated with Asian music, and ideas that are associated with Asian philosophical and religious thought (the sacredness of the number three, use of space, and isolation).