In Search of Korean Traditional Opera: Discourses of Changguk

Chapter seven

176 ChaPTeR SeVen Constructing the nation through Sound The Music of Ch’anggŭk While ch’anggŭk may be defined as opera with p’ansori-style singing, the music of ch’anggŭk is by no means limited to that of p’ansori. The production described in Chapter 1, for instance, featured Namdo minyo folk songs, p’ungmul percussion band music, sijo art song, Taech’wit’a royal processional music and its stationary counterpart Ch’wit’a, and court dance music. Over time, ch’anggŭk has gradually expanded its musical resources to the point where anything within the realm of kugak might be used if it is deemed appropriate to the dramatic situation. This chapter examines the reasons for ch’anggŭk’s musical eclecticism and its role in the search for a Korean traditional opera. By describing the main musical resources on which ch’anggŭk draws, their uses in ch’anggŭk, and the discourses around both, I hope to show how the music of ch’anggŭk constitutes a discourse of its own that promotes a certain view of the Korean nation. If, as I argued in the previous chapter, the stories of ch’anggŭk and their physical staging construct the nation in a way that emphasizes national fears—specifically, the fear of penetration by outside forces and hence the implied need for strong, male protectors—the music of ch’anggŭk constructs the nation in a way that emphasizes national hopes: specifically, the hope of standing proud as a unified and independent nation. The music of ch’anggŭk constructs Korea as a unified and independent nation by presenting diverse forms of Korean music within a single theatrical genre. Just as the canon of classic p’ansori stories has been constructed as a unified body of texts from heterogeneous sources, kugak, or Korean “national music” (as discussed in Chapter 4), has been constructed as a unified tradition by a variety of institutions that arose after liberation, including the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts and the Intangible Cultural Properties system. Earlier institutions for the support of Korean music, such as the Chosŏn Sŏngak Yŏn’guhoe and the succession of royal offices responsible for court music, handled only particular kinds of Korean music, performed by and for particular sectors of the Korean population; but the postcolonial music institutions came to handle these diverse genres as a whole, bring- Constructing the Nation through Sound 177 ing them together in concerts and publications and thus implying that they formed a single tradition and might be appreciated by a single audience, the homogeneous Korean nation. Ch’anggŭk has taken this even further by implying that the whole canon of kugak, and thus by extension the Korean nation itself, has sufficient unity to be encompassed within a single genre or even a single performance. Music from outside the realm of kugak is not normally used in ch’anggŭk except for special purposes such as exoticizing non-Korean characters; thus, the music of ch’anggŭk models the independence as well as the unity of the Korean nation. As indicated in the previous chapter, I have chosen to discuss the music of ch’anggŭk separately from the stories because a given story or passage may not have the same musical realization from one production to the next. Thus, it would not be very meaningful to analyze specific pieces of ch’anggŭk music in terms of their functioning within particular scenes, as for instance William Malm has done for Kabuki (1963, 117–219) or Jonathan Stock for Shanghai opera (2003, 178–203). An attempt to present “critical readings” of “individual musical products” (ibid., 179) would only lead to the realization that ch’anggŭk does not consist of “individual musical products” in the way that those genres do. Nor have the processes for creating the music of ch’anggŭk become sufficiently systematized to support a detailed analysis of creative techniques such as Elizabeth Wichmann has provided for Beijing opera (1991) or Bell Yung for Cantonese opera (1989). While I offer specific examples where possible and refer back to the production described in Chapter 1 for “typical” musical treatments, I am mainly concerned here with the “generic” level on which ch’anggŭk has brought musical elements from disparate genres into a single musical theater form. Even on this generic level, the discussion will require some technical music analysis, though readers unfamiliar...