"Refined Pleasures": Korean music at Musicon

The last concert in the Musicon Festival of East Asian Music featured Korean music performed by the impressive ensemble Jeong Ga Ak Hoe. What a contrast with the preceding Chinese music. One can hardly call the piri oboe 'soft', but it was lyrical, playing in the lower octave in a slow sedate manner to start off the concert. And the haegum fiddle, unlike the Chinese erhu, did not play an easily discernible melody but long, drawn-out, plaintive notes also in the lower octave. 

Piri soloist in the Durham Town Hall
Musicon Festival of East Asian Music 2012

The four pieces in the first half of the concert  had been court or aristocratic entertainments. Consistent with the Confucian observation that "good music makes good politics", music always played an important part of traditional elites' lifestyle. 


The second half included two pieces composed specifically for the group. The opening piece stood out for me: "Soaring Towards Absolute Solitude" by US-based Korean composer Yoon Hyejin. It was inspired by the "Heroic eagle painting" of the late 19th century, depicting an eagle standing on one leg on a stone in the sea. Here, the haegum excelled, with other instruments following along in periodic changes of single notes (like the single leg), in the manner of modern minimalist music.


A lovely flute solo (sanjo) apparently derived from shamanistic ritual music and another modern composition (based on the fusion of a traditional ensemble piece with a boat song) concluded the concert. 


Eight musicians were flown in from Korea specifically for this concert; it was well worth their effort and very enjoyable for us – including the forty members of a Korean student society who gathered from Durham and Newcastle just for the concert. We were also encouraged to learn that the musicians were all aged between 25 and 40, meaning young people are actually learning the traditional musics to carry them on into the future. Consummate musicians, all. 

From left to right: the piri oboe, daegeum flute with a vibrating membrane,
and the saenghwang mouth organ

Musicon Festival: Chinese flute music

True to its title, "Birds in the Shade", this lunchtime Musicon concert in Durham began with an incredible chirping, cheeping flute piece by Lu Panling on the dizi flute (did anyone tweet it?). This is one of several East Asian flutes that has an extra hole covered by a membrane that vibrates, giving a slight buzzing to the sound. As Dr David Hughes, SOAS ethnomusicologist, explained in his introductory lecture on the various instruments at the Festival, we Westerners have spent centuries trying to get the buzzing out of our music, but in East Asia and indeed in much of the world it is avidly sought in many instruments. (Think also of the Indian sitar, or the cockle shells or Coke bottle tops nailed to a Zimbabwean mbira thumb-piano.)

A recital of Chinese flute music
Musicon Festival of East Asian Music
28-29 February 2012

This recital of Chinese flute music involved three musicians, Lu on several sizes of dizi and the vertical end-blown flute xiao, a relative of the shakuhachi played in the previous concert "The Sound of Zen"; Chuang Cheng-Ying on two different lutes, the liuqin and zhongruan; and Wang Xiao on the two-stringed vertical fiddle, the erhu. Unlike the similar Korean haegeum, heard in the next Festival concert entitled "Refined Pleasures", the erhu is a melodic instrument that follows the flute. In Chinese traditional music, these several instruments play without harmony, each with its own variant of a single melody, at its own octave pitch.

The pieces ranged from Mongolian folk tunes to Chinese opera to teahouse tunes (sizhu) to new "national music" (guoyue). One of the most interesting facets of the concert was the juxtaposition of Peking opera style (Jing Opera) with southern opera style (Kunqu). Anyone who has heard Peking opera is familiar with its lively almost raucous style (but without the various percussion here), while the Kunqu style, described as "sentimental" in the programme, was surprising in its lyrical effect. The concert ended with several pieces of guoyue which sometimes offered chords on the lute, but often included countermelodies on the different instruments. With five instruments and three players, the pieces also provided different combinations of instruments to entertain our ears.

The three musicians came together just for this performance; they do not constitute a named group. However, they all live currently in London, so it is possible to hear each playing at different venues. Meanwhile, the SOAS Sizhu Ensemble has a Facebook group and does occasional gigs. Watch out for them for some relaxing teahouse entertainment!

Spring has sprung – maybe

It was heart-warming walking through Durham yesterday. Partly cloudy, no wind and 13° (54°F). Doesn't that sound like spring? And flowers were up in at least two well-tended gardens I passed: heather, snowdrops,  crocus, hellebore, primula and primroses. But I always like best the carpets of crocus, like this one under the tree in front of Durham University Library. These are smaller and more slender than the usual round-leaved cup-shaped crocus blooms, and they were open in cloudy weather. See how they are straining towards the east at 11.30am!
Regular crocus don't open unless in bright sunshine.

Crocus vernus photo by JR Crellin
www.floralimages.co.uk
Creative Commons Licence

The ones under the tree looked like the wild form, similar to Crocus vernus (right). They are so much more delicate and subtle than the strong yellows and purples of the domesticates. Apparently there are 80 species of crocus, so you have a wide variety to choose from in naturalizing them in your grass. But then be careful not to cut the grass too soon after they finish flowering. English lawns often have a patch of long grass well into early summer, and you wonder why it wasn't cut until you realize it is a crocus or daffodil bed!

Welcome, oh herald of spring! (as the Dutch say)

My crocus on a sunny day

   

Northumbrian Music at Market Tavern

More than thirty musicians and who knows how many onlookers gathered at the Market Tavern in Durham's Market Square Wednesday night for the first session of DUFS (Durham University Folk Society). A new tunebook was handed out, and the experienced student musicians tore through the pieces until we asked them to slow down a bit for us newcomers/beginners. There were 15 fifteen fiddlers alone (and a bassoon)! Lots of music played but the drink didn't flow too freely as these students are skint (the dictionary says "lacking funds") — one reason why the session was moved this year from the Court Inn over to Market Tavern: the drinks are supposed to be cheaper.

However, the hordes expected out Thursday night to play pub golf can't be broke if they are expected to do 9 or 18 holes (pubs) drinking, like, a pint of Guinness at each in three straw sucks! Apparently this is a tradition on the first Thursday of term here, but it's the first I've heard of it...I guess I'd been working too hard at the beginning of classes...

The Folk Society not only holds sessions, where students (even I am a student of the pennywhistle) bring their instruments and play out of the tunebook, it also holds singing nights, and fields a Morris Team, a Rapper Team and a Ceilidh Band. Those are, in order, a team that dances Morris dances, the traditional spring fertility dance of English farmers; a 5-person team that dances with "bendy" swords; and a band with caller that plays for ceilidh dances. Their brochure states that a ceilidh (Irish Gaelic, pronounced kay-lee, and I can never spell it right) is like "a barn dance, but much more fun, with better music".

Now, I remember barn dances from my university days, and the beer did flow freely — don't remember the music, wonder why...

The things I learned tonight in addition to virtually all new tunes, are that in Irish music, a piece is usually played twice before progressing to the next of a set of three tunes; however, in the north of England, following the Northumbrian tradition, pieces are played three times before progressing. If only I could have heard our session boss yell out "change" when it was time to change tunes, I wouldn't have had to count...

And here is a recent recording of a session in the newly refurbished Market Tavern (28 Feb 2013)!

Gamelan Welcomes New International Students to Durham

The Durham University Gamelan Society played 3 hours of soothing background music in the café of the Calman Learning Centre last Friday as international students trooped up to the fourth floor to attend the International Students Fair. This event is not nearly so exciting as the Societies Fair this week aimed at undergraduates, where all the university societies recruit new members. The international students mostly got advice on, guess what, "Living in England": how to open a bank account, get a broadband provider, find out about religious services, and what the Durham Student Union does.
   Nevertheless, it was the second year of Javanese gamelan playing at this "international" event, which I think is a nice ethnic outreach showing we value other cultures and their musics; not like being faced with a string quartet or anything. Now, to get some of those international students playing in the gamelan, as this wayang golek puppet entices with his paper advertisement... (The group meets Wednesdays from about 2:30 to 5:30pm in the University Observatory, and welcomes new members. See www.durhamgamelan.org.uk)
   This was the first public performance on the University's new pélog gamelan set - a different tuning system from the sléndro set that has been there for some 40 years. There are more than 80 sets of Indonesian gamelan instruments in the UK and Ireland at present.

(Ironic that this international students welcome event, attended by a large number of Asian and a few African students, was held in the Calman Learning Centre, named for recent Vice-Chancellor Sir Kenneth Calman. It was during Calman's autocratic reign that degree programmes in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and some other "non-Western" languages and subjects were terminated without any justification other than a desire to focus resources on the University's "core" interests, i.e. the West. [Additionally the Linguistics Department was "traded" to another university for theologians; Durham Theology encompasses Christian, Biblical and Jewish studies but ignores other religions - Buddhism, Islam, etc.] Calman later admitted regretting this course of events, and some East Asian language teaching is being revived. Too late to cancel the embarrassment to the University. Ironic also that the Durham business school now reportedly has some 900 students from China - but never mind, they all speak English, no need for anyone to learn Chinese in this modern world, is there? – dweeb)