User:Ahsoka Dillard/Hyo-Shin Na

Hyo-shin Na, born 1959, in Seoul, Korea, is a Korean-American contemporary classical music composer.

Early life and education
Hyo-shin Na (b. 1959, Seoul, Korea) received her undergraduate degree from Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, her MM from Manhattan School of Music and DMA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Career and compositions
Na lectures frequently on her music; most recently at Seoul National University and Ewha Woman’s University in Korea, the Universität der Künste in Berlin and, in the U. S., at Texas A & M University, Stanford University, Haverford College, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and in a series of lectures at various branches of the San Francisco Public Library. In 2017 she gave the keynote lecture at “Keeping Music Alive: Women Composers in Digital Music Archives,” the International Conference of the Ewha Music Research Institute.

Educated during her years in Korea primarily in the traditions of Western music, Na wrote her early works at a time when she was moving away from these traditions. These works include Variations (1990) for solo piano, Transcription and Dirge, both chamber works from 1997 that have their origin in Korean vocal music. Transcription was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard and premiered by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

In 1999, Na spent two months living in Seoul, attending rehearsals and concerts at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts; she also studied kayageum at this time with the eminent composer and kayageum player Byung-ki Hwang (she’d previously studied kayageum in 1988 and 1994). In the autumn of 2000 she initiated a series of seven wide-ranging conversations with Professor Hwang at his Ewha University office and Seoul home; these sessions became the basis for her book “Conversations with Kayageum Master Byung-ki Hwang” (published in Korea in 2001 by Pulbit Press). Such studies and experiences led to a series of works for traditional Korean instruments, both solo and in ensemble, sometimes combining with western instruments. Her writing for traditional Korean instruments continues to the present, and even extends to non-Korean (Japanese and Chinese) Asian instruments. Na is particularly recognized for her refusal to compromise the integrity of individual instruments, sounds and ideas; she prefers to let them interact, coexist and conflict in the music.

Piano
She has been particularly prolific when it comes to writing music for pianists. As of 2020, she has written 15 solo piano and 31 chamber works that include piano. The solo works, in particular, have attracted the attention of younger pianists such as Kevin Lee Sun, Tysen Dauer, Eric Tran, Soyeon Kang and Jihye Chang. Pianists of an earlier generation that have given performances of Na’s music include Susan Svrcek and Thomas Schultz.

Between 1997 and 2016 Na wrote a series of Studies; etudes for the pianist but also for the composer. Rain Study from 1999 concerns the layering of melodies and the superimposition of the pianist’s hands, continuing an exploration of these elements that began with Piano Study 1 (1997). The particular focus of Piano Study 1 is on the sustained notes that result when two melodies overlap.

Even in an early piano piece like Variations, Na’s use of grace notes plays a crucial role in the music’s character. In the central slower section of the piece, almost every “main” note has a grace note preceding it. In Rain Study (seven years after Variations), the presence, again, of numerous grace notes, now both preceding and following the main notes, has a similar effect as in the earlier work but, here, both grace notes and spatial notation appear in the first half of the piece, greatly compounding the complexity and unpredictability of rhythms and musical flow. A similar presence and importance of grace notes in Piano Study 1, Piano Study 2, Piano Study 3, and Near and Dear reflects a shift away from the “ornamental” grace note present in the music of, for instance, Bach, Mozart and Schubert, to the grace note as an integral element in Na’s music.

Kayageum
Na has also written many works for solo kayageum, a traditional Korean instrument. Between 1997 and 2020 she wrote eleven pieces for either sanjo kayageum or 25-string kayageum. She wrote Kayageum Song (2009) in the tradition of kayageum byungchang, where the musician both plays the kayageum and sings. In this tradition, the instrumental part is relatively simple; here, in a nod to the exceptional qualities of the musician who gave the first performance of the piece, Hyunchae Kim, Na has written a virtuosic kayageum part.

In The Wind Has No Destination II (2020), Na asks the player to pluck strings on the left side of the bridges in addition to the usual way of playing kayageum (plucking the strings on the right side). This produces sounds of indeterminate pitch which often do not coincide with the general tuning used in the piece. Here, Na wanted to expand the use of this playing technique and also to make the notation communicate more directly to the player what is to be done.

Na has frequently written for the the kayageum as part of an ensemble. She has written 16 works where the kayageum appears in an ensemble made solely of traditional Korean instruments, and 8 works where the ensemble of which kayageum is a part includes either western or Japanese instruments.

Koto
Na’s music for the Japanese koto deserves special mention. 6 pieces for solo koto or solo bass koto and 28 ensemble pieces including koto were the result of her personal friendships with Japanese koto players, particularly Shoko Hikage.

Selected awards
After moving to San Francisco in 1988, she was twice awarded the Korean National Composers Prize, in 1994 for Western instrumental music (Variations) and in 2003 for Korean traditional instrumental music (Fragmentary Study).

Selected readings
Music by Korean Women Composers – Hyo-shin Na’s “Variations for Piano” – Ramona Sohn Allen, Claremont Graduate University, 2000 Korean-Euro Dualism and Selected String Compositions by Hyo-shin Na – Hanna Yu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008 Compositions by Hyo-shin Na – Jeong-Hwa Park, Arizona State University, 2008 Cultural Co-existence: Traditional Korean Music and Western Art Music in  Hyo-shin Na’s “Chohanga 2” and “Song of the Midnight Battlefield” - You-kyoung Kim, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Born in the 20th Century: Contemporary Flute Works by East Asian Female Composers – Grace Ju-Yeon Wang, University of Maryland – College Park, 2019

Listening links
Variations for piano solo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciugLTAIwWo

Rain Study for piano solo https://soundcloud.com/user-625981961/rain-study-for-piano-solo-1999-by-hyo-shin-na-thomas-schultz-piano

Dirge for violin and piano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KKxkxpppA8

Song of the Firewood for 25-string kayageum solo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbHnNxcQKXc

Kayageum Song for sanjo kayageum/voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEsrAl80iVo

Ocean/Shore 2 for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZkkW60tVxQ

The Sway of the Branch for haegeum and violin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvZcSMSCSho

Cloud Study III for violin and piano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN_nAZSk-co

That Old Woman for 25 string kayageum and bass koto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-LFKtEs-58

PIA for piri and piano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_JdABPEv7M