Jihoon Park’s Korean Sentimental Songs

Abstract

Jihoon Park (b. 1973) has a growing reputation as a composer and conductor in South Korea and throughout the world. As a conductor he has held a variety of prestigious positions and is the recipient of numerous international awards and honors. He has composed more than 500 works in a wide variety of genres, including not only vocal and choral music, but also musical theater, contemporary Christian music, and music for film and television. Jihoon Park’s Korean Sentimental Songs, published in 2022, is a collection of eleven choral works that are settings of poetry by nine Korean poets. The poems feature themes of nature, life, Korean culture and Christianity. They are arrangements of his own Korean art songs, scored for chorus and piano (one piece also features cello). These outstanding miniatures can serve as a good introduction to Jihoon Park’s choral music for non-Korean choirs. In order to make these works accessible for study and performance by Western choirs and conductors, I have provided a biography of Jihoon Park; a detailed list of his compositional characteristics with examples; biographical information about the poets; historical and cultural context of the poetic texts, idiomatic and word-for-word translations in English, and also a musical overview and examples of text-painting devices employed in each work. This study adds to the scholarship on Jihoon Park’s choral music, and provides a foundation not only for those wishing to perform his music, but also for those who desire to pursue scholarship on other choral works of this outstanding composer.