“Commemorating Unsuk Chin”

Special session proposal for SMT 2021

Format: Integrated special session; 3 presenters; 1.5 hours

On the occasion of her 60th birthday, the special session aims to explore the music of the
South Korean composer Unsuk Chin, one of the most exciting and significant composers of
our time. In her self-described “cosmopolitan” musical style, critics have often pointed to the
influence of Ligeti (with whom she studied), Bartók, Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Xenakis,
among others, in her works. In addition to common modern-classical compositional devices,
she also incorporates non-Western musical materials such as the sheng (Chinese mouth organ)
and rhythmic adaptation of Javanese gamelan. The resulting compositions prominently
feature rhythmic vibrancy, microtonal and spectral harmonies, coloristic texture, timbral
variety, and innovative forms.
Chin’s creative output has been recognized by leading musical institutions, festivals,
performers and conductors. However, while Stefan Drees’ book Im Spiegel der Zeit. Die
Komponistin Unsuk Chin (2011) surveys writings about Chin’s work by professionals in the
performance area, her music has yet to receive extensive scholarly attention. To rectify this
neglect, the session intends to position Chin’s compositions as objects of rigorous analytical
investigation. The session therefore diversifies the repertoire of twentieth- and twenty-first
century music theory scholarship by focusing on this underexplored, non-Western woman
composer.
The session engages with two overarching themes. First, it delves into Chin’s novel approach
to canonic Western genres such as etude and concerto through creative treatment of rhythm,
formal concepts, and instrumentation. This examination positions Chin’s music within the
context of her contemporaries’ diverse compositional techniques in dealing with similar
genres while highlighting her distinctive contribution. Second, it holds significance beyond
analysis in a narrower sense by emphasizing the dynamic qualities shared among the works
chosen for analysis. Each paper addresses Chin’s music as defying fixed, static formal frames:
tapping into performance-perception oriented temporal analysis; defining musical form as a
process of consistent textural and timbral change; and detailing the circulating energy that
creates organically unfolding musical form.
The proposed session consists of three papers examining Chin’s works from diverse
perspectives of analysis, form, performance, and perception, as follows:
1. “A Perception-Informed Approach to Performance of Metric Structure in Unsuk Chin’s
Etudes” decodes the rhythmic complexity causing discrepancies between performance and
perception in Chin’s Etudes Nos. 2, 5 and 6.
2. “Unsuk Chin’s Textural Expansion and Collapse as Formal Processes” takes Chin’s
flexible manipulation of texture and timbre as the essential criteria for the formal
organization of her Piano Concerto, Cello Concerto, and Etude No. 5.
3. “Ritual and Rotation in Unsuk Chin’s Šu: Concerto for Sheng and Orchestra (2009)”
analyzes this concerto’s rotational principles and dynamic formation in conjunction with
Korean traditional music originating in Shaministic ritual.
 “A Perception-informed Approach to Performance of Metric Structure in Unsuk Chin’s
Etudes”
Unsuk Chin’s six Etudes build on the rhythmic concerns of Ligeti’s Etudes, especially the use of
complex metric structures involving polyrhythm and frequent meter changes. The experimental
nature of these rhythms creates significant difficulties for performers, especially in cases where
the relation between the composer’s metric notation and possible rhythmic perceptions is tenuous.
I argue that in order to successfully convey the rhythmic organization in performance, it is
necessary to disentangle notation from metric perception by considering alternative forms of
notation, using existing theories of metric perception. For the sake of demonstration, I focus on
select passages from Etudes 2, 5, and 6, without attempting to analyze the rhythmic organization
of the entire work.
I proceed to create methodology for re-notating metric grouping in two stages. First, I identify
rhythmic and grouping cues that create phenomenal accents using the framework suggested by
Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983). Although their model is intended to analyze common-practice
tonal music, I argue that it can be adapted for use in post-tonal music. I identify several
preference rules that define the most likely ways in which listeners parse these complex meters,
creating groupings from both rhythm and pitch cues. I propose two additional preference rules
that optimize the process from the performer’s viewpoint.
With this in place, I propose a distinction between radical and conservative listening, following
Imbrie’s (1973) phenomenological analysis. In this model, two possible listening responses may
occur when listeners are presented with a new metric structure different from the meter they had
previously entrained to. Listening in real time, a conservative listener attempts to hold on to the
pulse they recognized despite the appearance of contradictory phenomenal accents (in
anticipation of its eventual re-alignment with the music), while a radical listener will
immediately shift their metric expectation to adjust to these new cues.
Since a given metric notation is unable to capture both experiences at once in passages that
support multiple ways of listening, composers are faced with a choice. They may either choose
to consciously prioritize one metric layer, or else adopt an agnostic notation which acknowledges
neither, by choosing a meter which does not correspond to any of the phenomenal accents. This
agnostic strategy proves particularly problematic from the performer’s perspective, as evidenced
by empirical research on polyrhythm tracking by Poudrier and Repp (2013). Consequently, the
choice of meters in the re-notated version must also adopt one of the listening types in each
passage, based on specific contextual considerations.
I demonstrate the re-notation process using particularly dense passages in Etudes 2, 5, and 6,
offering alternative, though equivalent, re-notations which reflect the metric experience of
listeners of both types. Finally, I argue that informed performance of rhythmically complex
works requires investigation of the relation between perception and notation, which yields new
performance strategies. The presentation will use multiple slides with alternative re-notations, as
well as recorded performances and MIDI versions of the Etudes.1

Bibliography
Arom, Simha. African polyphony and polyrhythm: musical structure and methodology.
Cambridge university press, 2004.
Imbrie, Andrew. “‘Extra’Measures and Metrical Ambiguity in Beethoven.” Beethoven Studies 1
(1973): 45–66.
Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray Jackendoff. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT Press,
1985.
London, Justin. “Cognitive Constraints on Metric Systems: Some Observations and Hypotheses.”
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 19, no. 4 (2002): 529–50.
London, Justin. Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Poudrier, Ève, and Bruno H Repp. “Can Musicians Track Two Different Beats Simultaneously?”
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal 30, no. 4 (2013): 369–90.

Musical Examples

1. Etude No. 2, mm.18-22 in original notation in 4/4

1
The MIDI file of Etude No. 2 is available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xLJvlHNoRKE_ra6tUNk5fIOhklZLfu_i/view?ts=5ff670b2
2. Rejected ‘conservative’ re-notation in 11/16

3. Proposed ‘Radical’ re-notation with meter changes; 3/16 bars avoid offsetting eighth notes
 “Unsuk Chin’s Textural Expansion and Collapse as Formal Processes”
Unsuk Chin has often spoken of her passion for astronomy and cosmology, referring to
phenomena such as the big bang and celestial light as the inspirations for her music. Elsewhere,
she has described her compositional process as linear, where the initial musical moment
prescribes the course of a work. Taking those remarks as points of departure, this paper delves
into the formal processes of Chin’s music. While many writings have noted the ethereal and
expansive qualities of her music, few studies have investigated the connections between the
phenomenal aspects such as timbre and texture of her music and the formal design. This paper
examines three pieces from various points of her career, including the Piano Concerto (1997),
Piano Etude No. 5, Toccata (2003), and the Cello Concerto (2013). A common strategy of
formal process used in these works is expansion and collapse of the texture. Like the life cycle of
celestial objects, the initial idea serves as the musical core, around which a sort of anti-
gravitational tension is created through textural and timbral changes, including pitch contents
veering away from the core; when the intensity reaches a certain threshold, the music collapses
onto the initial moment, often signifying the structural points.
The opening of Toccata centers around the pitches C and G and unfolds by incorporating the
partials of the fundamental C in a loosely ascending order, thus “composing out” its harmonic
spectrum, until all twelve pitch classes are employed eventually. As this gesture of moving away
from the core pitch repeats throughout the piece, six sub-sections emerge; each section begins by
returning to, or collapsing onto, a C7 chord, the collection of the four pitch classes that make up
the first seven partials of C (Figure 1). Each section is also characterized by distinct rhythmic
ideas that grow progressively complex, moving from sixteenth-note moto perpetuo to various
polyrhythm patterns (Figure 2). At the pinnacle of rhythmic complexity, the piece comes to an
abrupt dissolution. Therefore, within the overall through-composed form, a sense of structure
arises through textural expansion and collapse, driven primarily by the pitch class organization
and rhythm. Similarly, the fourth movement of the Piano Concerto progresses through a linear
expansion of rhythm, instrumentation, and dynamics in tandem with disintegration of the pitch
centrality of F. In the first movement of the Cello Concerto, the recurring consolidation onto the
central pitch G# after each flux of musical events helps identify its formal structure, that of a
sonata form.
I compare Chin’s approach to structural principles in Ligeti’s work, including large-scale
harmonic transformation through intervallic expansions and contractions (Roig-Francolí, 1995);
the elevation of instrumentation and timbre as the determinants of form (Bauer, 2001); and the
notion of “integrated parametric structures” (Howland, 2015). This comparison allows
contextualizing Chin’s approaches among some of the notable strategies of formal processes in
the twentieth and twenty-first century music, while underlining the unique characteristic of
Chin’s music, namely that primary parameters such as pitch and rhythm remain audible,
generating an idiosyncratically iridescent sound world.

Bibliography
Anderson, Julian, and Tristan Murail. 1993. “In Harmony. Julian Anderson Introduces the Music
and Ideas of Tristan Murail.” The Musical Times 134: 321-323.
Bauer, Amy. 2001. ““Composing the Sound Itself”: Secondary Parameters and Structure in the
Music of Ligeti.” Indiana Theory Review 22/1: 37-64.
Bernard, Jonathan W. 1999. “Ligeti's Restoration of Interval and Its Significance for His Later
Works.” Music Theory Spectrum 21/1: 1-31.
Cuciurean, John D. 2012. “Aspects of Harmonic Structure, Voice Leading, and Aesthetic
Function in György Ligeti’s in Zart Fliessender Bewegung.” Contemporary Music Review 31:
221-238.
Drees, Stefan, ed. 2011. Im Spiegel der Zeit: Die Komponistin Unsuk Chin. Mainz: Schott,
Hicks, Michael. 1993. “Interval and Form in Ligeti's Continuum and Coulée.” Perspectives of
New Music 31/1: 172-90.
Howland, Patricia. 2015. “Formal Structures in Post-Tonal Music.” Music Theory Spectrum 37/1:
71-97.
Levy, Benjamin R. 2009. “Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti's “Apparitions”.”
Perspectives of New Music 47/2: 59-87.
Ligeti, György. 1964. “Metamorphoses of Musical Form,” translated by Cornelius Cardew. Die
Reihe 7 “Form–Space”: 5-19.
Morgan, Robert P. 1998. “Symmetrical Form and Common-Practice Tonality.” Music Theory
Spectrum 20/1: 1-47.
Roig-Francolí, Miguel A. 1995. “Harmonic and Formal Processes in Ligeti’s Net-Structure
Compositions.” Music Theory Spectrum 17/2: 242-67.
Webb, James. 1997. “Unsuk Chin’s Piano Concerto No.1.” Tempo 202: 51-52.
Whittall, Arnold. 2000. “Unsuk Chin in Focus: Meditations & Mechanics.” The Musical
Times 141/1870: 21-32.

Musical Examples and Figures

Figure 1. Sectional divisions of Toccata and their transitions marked by return of C7 chord

Section 1: mm. 1 – 16
Section 2: mm. 17 – 34
Section 3: mm. 35 – 49
Section 4: mm. 50 – 68 b.2
Section 5: mm. 68 b.3 – 81
Section 6: mm. 82 – 100 (end)

Beginning of Section I: mm. 1-3

From Section 1 to Section 2: mm. 13-20

Transition from Section 2 to Section 3: mm. 33-40

Transition from Section 3 to Section 4: mm. 45-52

Transition from Section 4 to Section 5: mm. 65-70

Transition from Section 5 to Section 6: mm. 77-83

Figure 2. Rhythmic patterns in each section

Section Rhythmic patterns Examples

1 Sixteenth-note
figurations in
fragments

2 4:5 polyrhythm
between LH and
RH

3 4:5 polyrhythm
continues

4 16:5, 3:4, 4:7

polyrhythms
between LH and
RH

5 - Return to the
sixteenth-note
texture
- 3:4 polyrhythmic
patterns
- Near “free”
rhythm

6 Triplet eighth notes

against septuplet
 “Ritual and Rotation in Unsuk Chin’s Šu: Concerto for Sheng and Orchestra (2009)”
Unsuk Chin is best known for a rigorous compositional style that draws on modernist influences
of Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti, and Isang Yun (Whitall 2000). These influences are
particularly apparent in the way her two concertos depart from traditional aspects of form and
interaction in this western instrumental genre. Her early Piano Concerto (1997), while exhibiting
classical impulses to pit the solo piano against other instrumental forces, resists the teleology of
sonata form through abrupt temporal shifts induced through the polyrhythmic layering of
instruments (Kim 2016). In her concerto for sheng (Chinese mouth organ) and orchestra (2009),
Chin takes an even more radical step by deconstructing the concerto form: while the sheng and
orchestral instruments participate in a contest where the latter act as the soloist’s shadow and
echo to form organically evolving textures, the contraction and expansion of the metric
framework based on the 4+3 pattern generate temporal ruptures that resist traditional forms of
development.
The proposed paper focuses on the role of ritual and rotation in this one-movement concerto for
sheng and orchestra. In Egyptian mythology, Šu is a symbol for air, a concept that refers to the
sheng’s articulations and extended techniques in accompanying instruments that cover a wide
spectrum from pitch to noise. The formation of the main notes introduced by the sheng provides
its harmonic foundation as well as the rotational principle that articulates the concerto’s main
formal junctures, which I interpret as a seven-part structure that alternates between a slow refrain
(R) and rhythmically animated episodic section (E). Example 1 (a) illustrates the sheng’s initial
theme (R1): the four-note kernal of the sheng’s opening theme expands into harmonic clusters of
various configurations, while the violins “shadow” the main notes with muted harmonics.

(a) R1: Sheng’s thematic refrain in 2/2 + 3/4 meter (mm. 1-18)

[A, Bb, C, C#]

[G#, A, Bb, C, C#, D, D#, E, F#]

[G, G#, A, Bb, C, C#, D, Eb, F]
 (b) E1: first episodic section in 2/8 + 3/16 meter (mm. 70-74)

Examples 1 (a) and (b): Sheng’s main theme (R1) and episodic material (E1)

Example 1 (b) illustrates the first episodic material (E1), characterized by the layering of
materials derivative of R1 into polyrhythmic cycles. As the concerto unfolds, the sheng’s theme
undergoes a bold transformation that borders between noise and sound as Chin explores its
timbral potential.
In addition to analyzing the rotational principles in the harmonic and metric organization, I will
interpret the organic processes the concerto traverses with respect to Shaministic rituals in
Korean traditional music—e. g., the rhythms and energy formation of Samulnori drumming
figures prominently in shaping the extensive development.1 In closing, I will situate Chin’s
compositional aesthetics and her transcultural identity within the globalized terrain of
contemporary music of the twenty-first century and, more specifically, in reference to music by
other notable composers of East Asian heritage.

1
Samulnori is a modern percussion ensemble originally created for the celebration of harvest (see Howard 2015).
Bibliography
Howard, Keith. 2015. SamulNori: Korean Percussion for a Contemporary World, SOAS
Musicology Series. Farnham: Ashgate.
Kim, Eunhee. 2016. “A Study of Unsuk Chin’s Piano Concerto: The Influence of György
Ligeti’s Piano Concerto.” DMA thesis: Ohio State University.
Whittall, Arnold, 2000. “Unsuk Chin in Focus: Meditations and Mechanics.” The Musical Times
141/1870 (Spring): 21-32.