Kim, T :: Fantasy on Three Korean Bird Songs

Bill Holab Music presents 'Fantasy on Three Korean Bird Songs' for four flutes by composer Texu Kim. 

The composer writes, ''This piece is based on three Korean songs (or part of them) that contain the word ‘bird’ in their titles. The first part incorporates melodic fragments of Sae-ta-ryeong (bird song), which emerged from Jeok-byeok-ga, one of the Pansori (Korean folk epic sagas) pieces that is based on a 14th-century Chinese novel, ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms.’ 

'In the second part, a very simple melody of Sae-ya Sae-ya Pa-rang-sae-ya (bird, bird, blue bird) with only three pitches, do, fa, and sol, undergoes various metamorphoses. Widely spread in Korean peninsula in early 20th century, this children’s song laments the falling of the Donghak peasant revolution, an anti-feudalist and anti-imperialist movement at the end of the 19th century in Korea. 

'The finale interweaves the two aforementioned folk melodies with the hook of the modern-day K-Pop song by Psy, the singer-song-writer of Gangnam Style.  Titled Sae (bird), this pop song has nothing to do with a bird, ironically, with the exception of a single line in the chorus, “I have become a bird,” a modern Korean slang that could be translated ‘I am devastated,’ referring to the singer’s fear of losing his girlfriend. The broad gamut of Korean musical traditions is re-mixed in a post-modern and festive way in my piece.'