Concerts & Works

Almost every aspect of life is made up of patterns. Even phenomena that seem not to repeat can be perceived as patterns, depending on one's perspective. Music, too, can therefore be understood as a succession of patterns at its core. With this in mind, I first made an improvisatory sketch whose patterns were not readily apparent. Filled with irregularities, as though a child were striking the piano keys, this sketch was gradually refined through various transformations and repetitions, and the patterns hidden within it were notated in the score. This approach brings the phenomenon of pattern into contact with time and reflects my musical pursuit of newness within repetition.

This work takes the phenomenon of beating as its material. Beating occurs when two pitches very close to one another sound together, causing the sound to pulse at regular intervals. In this piece, two tones beginning on the same pitch repeatedly move slowly apart and back together. Moments in which we hear the difference between them, moments in which we perceive a single tone, and moments in between that are sensed as pulsations appear in succession. The work was composed as a study of sound that explores the boundary between perceptible and barely perceptible differences.

This work begins with the monologue of a person living in the present. Starting from a single melody, the flute and oboe gradually diverge by microtonal intervals, becoming two tones that produce beating. As conflict between reality and ideals begins, the melody slowly breaks apart and splits, scattering into fragments of short note values. After several cycles of conflict and accommodation, only distant sounds remain at the end, like a monologue left unfinished.

The title Interlude symbolises the time between one stage and the next, a time that belongs nowhere. In this piece, I sought the most effective way to reveal the piano's inherent sound. The work begins with the resonance of the pedal, gradually building scales of perfect fifths and of sevenths into a single form. Constantly moving, this form slowly reaches a single point, sustains it, and then sinks into deep resonance. The work was composed so that every noise arising on stage, including the sympathetic resonance of silently depressed keys and the sound of the pedal making contact, could also function as musical sound.

Some of my recent works for solo instruments take musical terms as their subjects. This stems from my strong interest in the process of building an entire piece from the smallest unit, as though making something by hand. Musical terms and playing techniques are among the most basic units of music and possess a natural quality of their own, which is why I continue this work. The musical term gliss. means a sliding motion: it gives sonic form to the sensation of moving smoothly up and down, as on a slide. In this work, I explored not only changes of pitch but also the various forms of glissando a cello can produce, from the changing timbre of the bow as it moves from near the bridge towards the fingerboard, to harmonics arising from the fingerboard and scordatura. Beginning with noise that might otherwise carry no meaning, the piece layers musical elements such as trills and microtonal progressions to create a single grain or texture, before returning to a state of pure noise. At the end, two bows rub vertically across the fingerboard, tracing a form similar to that of the opening. Yet heard against the traces of what has already sounded, this is no longer merely the noise of the beginning: it takes on its own role as a movement.

Three years ago, I composed Doppelganger for two cellos. This year, I returned to writing a duo, this time for marimba and vibraphone, seeking a richer range of timbres. The idea of the doppelganger begins with another being that looks exactly like oneself, particularly the online self we encounter every day. The two instruments play similar pitches and rhythms, but diverge through slight differences in timing, as though each were the other's shadow. While writing the piece, I reflected on the various images that project who I am, and completed it through an ongoing process of questioning myself.

Written for ensemble, this work reflects our lives in the present day. Each instrument represents an individual, and I composed it while imagining moments of encounter and separation, from the quiet of dawn to the bustle of everyday life. Taking the twenty-four hours of a day as a formal framework, I joined twenty-four fragments together and adjusted their lengths to the flow of the music. The instruments' individual sounds repeatedly build up in layers to form a single grain or texture, then disperse again, creating a flow like a single breath. The electronics were made by recording and editing the everyday noises around us, and are adjusted in real time to form a shared texture with the sounds on stage.

In German, NACH means 'after' in a temporal sense and 'towards' in a spatial sense. While observing over a long period how a sound produced by a strong resonance gradually decays, I became interested in the many ways in which its proportion of noise and its overtone content change. These acoustic transformations became the central material of the work and were given musical form.

Fingerprints leave traces. Inspired by the work of artist Lee Wooseok and my conversations with him, this piece is the result of focusing on the fingerprints he studies and gradually adding my own thoughts to them. A fingerprint, both a trace and a record of someone, takes an individual whorl-shaped form that can also resemble nature. In attempting to depict the form of a fingerprint itself, I used natural sounds contrapuntally to create a sense of depth, and devised a performance using space with Ensemble One+1's experimental spirit in mind.

Schlagspur literally means 'the trace left by a strike'. The piece arose from the experience of an afterimage remaining in one's field of vision after looking at one place for a long time, even when the original form has disappeared. It was composed with the aim of giving musical form to a phenomenon anyone might experience. Exploring the auditory afterimages created by the snare drum's brief but powerful sounds in combination with electronics, I used themes and transformations to create patterns that, while seemingly irregular, gradually become familiar. Various urban noises heard around us were then woven together contrapuntally to leave another trace.

Based on the reverberation formed by instrumental sounds, this work explores the process by which resonance is refracted and reconfigured through different time offsets assigned to each instrument. Six trombones act as reflective surfaces for one another: identical or similar figures appear with slight differences in timing, overlapping and diverging to gradually break down a single sonority. Sound is thus perceived not as a single event but as a multilayered structure existing simultaneously on different levels. Piano and percussion serve as a resonant layer that supports and extends this sound, shaping the density of the space through sustained vibration and repetition. In particular, the mechanical repetitive structure in the middle section gradually brings the previously different time offsets into alignment, forming another layer that contrasts with the fluid sonority. Ultimately, the work presents sound not as a linear flow but as an acoustic space formed at the intersection of different times and spaces, exploring the constantly changing boundaries of reverberation within it.

This piece was composed from inspiration gained through recent encounters with various works of art. The beauty created by balance and symmetry, and the craftsmanship felt in precise structures, led to an interest in meticulous construction. As a starting point, I divided the piano's eighty-eight keys exactly in half to form a symmetrical structure, arranging the pitches, rhythms and overall form so that this principle would be apparent throughout. During composition, however, I gradually came to realise that musical symmetry and balance go beyond their visual counterparts: they involve a complex interaction of many elements, including the energy and density of sound, tension and release. The answer may lie in sound itself, and may only be realised through the performer on stage.

Allegro ma non troppo is a musical tempo marking meaning 'fast, but not too fast'. Written for piano and electronics as a duo, the piece personifies the electronics, seeking to portray them as though in conversation with the piano. The aim was for the two to share a pulse, gradually establish the same tempo, and create harmony through breathing together. Not only their tempo but also their timbres slowly come to resemble one another, until a moment arrives when they sound as one.

Music is an art that works with sound and time. Reading the script for this work, I had a sense of depth, as though past and present were coexisting and gradually blending together. When I also considered myself watching the stage—that is, the present—there were three different points in time. I gave much thought to choosing instrumental sounds that could convey these points sometimes in contrast, and at other times in harmony while remaining subtly separate. During the work, the word 'recollection' suddenly came to mind. Perhaps those watching this performance will also encounter their childhood selves and their recent past, experiencing various thoughts and feelings within them. I hope that today's art might, if only briefly, awaken childhood memories that have lain dormant within us.

This work captures the sounds and rhythms of the city we encounter in everyday life through electronics and video. It was inspired by Rhythmanalysis, a book by the philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991). I continued the work by observing how urban elements—buildings, vehicles and people's movements—change over time. Later, looking again at the book and the work together, I came to feel as though the city were breathing. I hope that we who live in the city may also look at it from a broader perspective. For this work in particular, I focused on bringing it to fuller realisation by setting music to video by Park Jihoon, an artist active in Daegu.

At some point, algorithms reflecting our individual interests came to inhabit the phones of all of us living today. As we move between virtual spaces shaped entirely by personal preferences and physical reality, the self is continually redefined, while society demands rapid adaptation. Through different music and dance, a pianist and two dancers express these two entirely different spaces and the way we move between and adapt to them. The work was composed to experiment with distinctive modes of expression that might arise at the boundary between the two.

The musical term subito means 'suddenly', and is often used to indicate an abrupt contrast in dynamics. I experienced this technique as a stark contrast within a single space, like an object and its shadow, clarity and cloudiness, or day and night. Although I had habitually used it in several earlier works, I wanted to explore it more closely in this piece. I bring this work to the stage in the hope that music may convey something of this personal experience.

Conceived in collaboration with Seo Jingyo, an artist who presents integrated stage performances rooted in mime and magic, this work was composed as a short music theatre piece. It follows a protagonist who remembers nothing and gradually recovers their memory through interactions with surrounding objects, sounds and people. Particular attention was given to precise synchronisation in order to bring the work to fuller realisation.

'Emulsion' refers to the mixing of water and oil. The title was chosen to symbolise the harmony of traditional instruments, percussion and electronics. By arranging different musical elements in various ways, I sought to explore new musical possibilities and express how diverse elements can coexist harmoniously. Beyond the value of coexistence alone, the work reveals my approach as a composer: searching for something new through re-editing and reconstruction.

This piece was composed for oboist Hyun Seunghye. Closely exploring the oboe's spectrum of timbres, it takes the flow of minute changes in pitch as its principal material and develops around the texture and density of sound. In particular, extreme dynamic contrasts create a flow of tension and release, with a focus on gradually forming an acoustic space. Improvisatory elements are introduced in places, moving flexibly between strict structure and free flow to encourage concentrated listening. Here, 'Play' is not simply amusement: it functions as a creative process of experimental exploration of sound.

This work explores how timbre and pitch change with minute differences in the pressure applied to strings against the fingerboard. Gradual changes in pressure bring out the diverse sounds that can arise between ordinary playing and harmonics, while glissandi and the phenomenon of beating are used as musical elements.

The compositional aim is to create a sense of space through sound, using the varied timbres of each instrument around the regular, repetitive motion of a pendulum. The violin maintains the structure through a steady rhythm, expressing gradual changes of timbre through different uses of the bow. The piano develops recurring motifs to create a flow like a single line, gradually bringing the contrast between the two instruments into focus. Their movements develop with one instrument moving first and the other following its flow, but which instrument comes first is left open to the listener's perspective. The focus was on finding connections between time and space through the space created by minute changes within repetition.

This new work by contemporary composer Dong-Myung Kim receives its first performance at this concert. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis, it expresses the city's complex social rhythms through sound. Beginning in the quiet of dawn, the work moves into the concentrated density of daytime and then a process of gradual disappearance. These processes were perceived as a living organism: emergence and dissolution, inhalation and exhalation, tension and release. Unpredictable events, such as accidents or noises that suddenly interrupt the city's repeating daily life, became important materials for expressing strong musical tension. By focusing on the gradual contraction and expansion of rhythm, substitution and repetition, I captured the way we live through music.

The principal research behind my work focuses on looking at everyday life from a fresh perspective and expressing it through music. This piece is the result of exploring the self in everyday life and the self projected online. Its distinctive feature is the way two different melodies imitate one another while producing subtle differences.

The spaces we inhabit are filled with countless invisible things. The same is true of sound. Sounds regarded as noise often pass unnoticed, yet following them can reveal meanings of their own. While working on a sweltering summer day, there was a moment when the sounds of a fan, an air conditioner's outdoor unit and cicadas seemed natural, joining with my pulse and breathing. Floating brings the everyday noises we readily overlook onto the stage and expresses them through instruments. The process by which the noises depicted by the instruments gradually harmonise with their inherent sounds records those moments spent with everyday sounds while facing the work in the summer heat.

Seoroso describes a relationship in which entirely different things coexist with only a minimum of shared elements. This work reflects our present lives in the two worlds of offline and online. The boundaries between these two spaces—once described as offline and online, reality and fiction—have gradually blurred through the pandemic, and we, too, are adapting in new ways. As online communication, virtual reality and AI become increasingly familiar, the piece begins by asking fundamental questions about the being we call 'I'. It expresses this transitional situation through electronics and dance, reflecting on how different elements can find harmony and coexist.

This work expresses various patterns around us through music, studying the possibilities that appear within repetition. The two instruments play patterns of their own, progressing through minute changes rather than remaining in simple repetition. They then gradually blend into a single pattern, before imitating one another's patterns.

For several years, I have been attempting to express everyday life through music. To me, everyday life is something universal that also creates a complex flow. In this work, I represented recurring daily life as a 'point' and unchanging values as a 'line', exploring the possibilities that emerge as these two elements interact. To capture subtly changing moments within repetitive daily life, I paid particular attention to minimising the range of tension and release while focusing on the delicate changes within it. This requires performers to use sensitive techniques to detect and express minute changes in sound.

This work observes the resonance that follows the playing of an instrument. Rather than remaining solely an auditory experience, it uses multiple media with a focus on enhancing its synaesthetic realisation. The approach taken in the work is for each performer to focus on their own part and play according to the times written in their score, without a conductor. Performers prepare their music individually and present the results of that practice together. This arose from the experience of gathering online to perform during the pandemic, capturing a moment when new possibilities were discovered despite the difficulty of meeting in person. The process by which individual commitments come together to form a single performance is also a record of that time.

Treating electronics as an independent instrument, this work was composed as a duo with flute to portray a process in which the two instruments gradually imitate one another and develop. In this process, they follow one another's forms and try to appear as similar as possible. Yet as time passes, those forms come to be perceived as entirely different, revealing the individuality of each.

This work explores new possibilities between noise and instrumental sound. It addresses the gradual transformation of instrumental sound into noise, or the transition of sounds produced by extended techniques into instrumental sound, focusing on the varied timbres and combinations that appear in the process. To support this exploration, the form and structure were kept simple.

"A performer on stage stands on a tightrope at every moment. They allow themselves no small mistake, perhaps not even a moment of hesitation. Even if a mistake occurs, they must forget it quickly. While trying to make up for it, a greater mistake may be waiting. This work gives narrative form to actions and emotions a performer may experience on stage. It focuses on using musical dynamism to move effectively between tension and release."

Two spaces. A boundary divides them at the instant it is perceived, visually distinguishing their difference in the form of a line. This work enlarges that fleeting moment in which a boundary is created, giving musical form to the processes of change and definition within it through a narrative of boundary formation, fusion, balance and renewed boundaries. The overall atmosphere is relatively dark yet dynamic. In terms of sound, the piece uses gradual transitions between pitched sound and noise, as well as varied changes in the point where the bow contacts the strings.

Beginning with mutual observation, this work gradually depicts each other's sounds and ways of playing. Sound continues without interruption as the performers seek a point at which they seem similar yet different, where distinguishing the difference is difficult. By repeatedly playing the moment at which they become indistinguishable and the minute differences just before it, they gradually fill a space of their own with the various phenomena that emerge.

Taking the night view of Woryeonggyo Bridge as its motif, this work develops imagery through evocative harmonic progressions and melody. The lights and the bridge reflected on the water offered a fresh view of Woryeonggyo, while the gentle ripples stirred by the wind brought a vitality that felt like a living painting. I recalled the emotions of that moment and captured them in music.

Newness is combination. Created through research with a performer into the possibilities of instrumental techniques, this work uses the cello to depict DJing and a range of instruments, including mandolin and gayageum. I composed it in anticipation of what might emerge from connections between entirely different things.

I tried a new approach, different from the way I had worked before. The direction was to weave together sounds that were thoroughly sensory and pleasing, listening slowly to the sounds within and following where they led. Beginning with the question 'What is naturalness?', this work reflects the composer's thoughts on naturalness.

The acoustic term 'critical band' is described here as the range in which the interval between two different tones cannot be perceived: approximately 6.6% or less when a semitone is taken as 100%. What makes this phenomenon fascinating is that the tones are actually different, even though we cannot perceive the difference. At what point do we begin to recognise something as different? I hope that delicate changes in sound will allow us to sense that difference.

Inspired by relief in printmaking, this work was created by first filling the staves with notes and then gradually erasing them. It, too, focuses more closely on sensory perception. Through the process of creating rests, it explores the importance of rest and breathing in music.

The original plan for this music theatre work was to edit and weave together various contemporary music pieces. Before receiving the script, I had already categorised some works and selected promising passages. After receiving it and reading it several times, however, I was moved by its dark yet delicate setting, the subtle psychological changes of its characters, and the careful consideration given to direction and staging. I decided to compose the music myself. Before beginning composition in earnest, I put the idea of 'trying' to myself as a guiding question. As a collaboration between young artists, this idea of trying something was especially important. First, I imagined the stage alongside the script. It was a curious space where loneliness and warmth, and a sense of the modern and the worn, coexisted. A dancer would portray an actor and dance with the music; at other times, the music would follow the dancer's gestures while the actor performed. Becoming one another's shadows, they seemed to inhabit a time and space in which everything was inverted. My first consideration was therefore to balance their roles while allowing them, unpredictably, to resemble one another like shadows. As these thoughts expanded, the musical direction gradually began to take shape. The important task was how to express the delicate changes in setting and character through instruments. Of the various ideas, I chose to classify sounds in a new way, seeking gradual transformation at the same time as blending. I divided the spectrum of sounds the instruments could produce into pitched sound and noise, further subdividing each according to the instrument. I then recombined sounds from entirely different categories, one by one, to find the most suitable sounds. This allowed each scene to have a subtly different sonic texture. Passages filled entirely with noise are also contrasted with passages in which the instruments' inherent sounds emerge as fully as possible. The music of each scene follows its content while remaining strangely unfamiliar. Its value emerges only when everything—footsteps, dialogue and breathing—comes together on stage. I hope that this music theatre work may awaken artistic inspiration in each member of the audience.

The title means scratch(deu.kratzen) or cat(deu.Katze) in German. I sketched the work based on the fact that various sounds are made depending on what and how you scratch it. The main study was how to synthesize various sounds depending on the location and technique of the string, and the sound played earlier was organized so that the following instruments were described in various extended techniques and instrument sounds. Through this, fine differences in sound between extended techniques and a gradual change from instrument sound to noise or noise to instrument sound. Tensions are maintained through dramatic changes in the dynamic.

Space is a series that studies ways of using the piano to approach the acoustics of a hall in three dimensions. This work takes a vortex as its material. The piano on stage is the centre of the vortex, and through spiral-shaped figures and gradual dynamic changes, acoustic energy slowly grows to fill and dominate the hall. The music captures a sequence that passes through an intensely surging section before gradually dissipating.

I listen closely to the sounds around me. White noise, wind, a rattling window and even distant footsteps, normally unheard, gradually become audible. They are highly irregular yet contrapuntal; seemingly incompatible, yet harmonious. On days of unsettled weather, they can also create intense tension. In nature and in the city alike, sound flows endlessly. A space of silence. There, everyone is free.

In a knowledge and information society, it has become possible to connect knowledge from different fields freely and reproduce it as one's own content. Newly created content also gains influence and expands without limit. Unlike the past, when deep investigation was highly valued, the ability we need today is the skill of bringing information together. To me, this resembles the process by which a coffee roaster creates an individual blend by adjusting the proportions of beans. Blend is a study seeking my own answer to the question 'What sounds belong together today?' Through haegeum, percussion and electronics, each with a different timbre, it focuses on finding the passages in which a harmonious timbre emerges.

With the theme of Daegu Stadium, this work was composed by recalling the dynamics felt at the 2011 Daegu World Championships in Athletics. The two violins are proceeding as if they are running to the finish line, and through this process, tension and explosive energy appear. Musical materials include a trill, a scale that descends at a high speed, and a beating effect that appears at microtone intervals.

Patrick Süskind's short story The Contest depicts a chess game between an elderly master and a young challenger. Spectators cheer the young challenger's bold moves and secretly hope that the master will lose. Yet the master ultimately wins through faultless moves aimed solely at victory. Everyone leaves, and the elderly master remains alone. Reflecting my personal interest in the future direction of my composition, this work is an autobiographical reflection on the sonic errors that might occur in a work analytically constructed to perfection through algorithms and numerical sequences. At the same time, I hope it reveals the performer's musical skill.

Two cellists of the same age have lived in different spaces over the same span of time. Using extended techniques as musical material, the work reveals its subjects through symmetry centred on the bridge, parallel relationships using scordatura (alternative tuning), and the crossing of strings.

Tuning systems began with methods using integer ratios on the monochord, eventually arriving at equal temperament (twelve equal divisions of the octave, or EDO). They have since developed into microtonal scales with different divisions of the octave, such as 18-EDO and 24-EDO, as well as a variety of other scales. Before equal temperament, tuning produced beating through commas—differences in pitch smaller than a semitone arising from tuning. Beating is a wave phenomenon in which amplitude periodically rises and falls when two sounds of similar frequency overlap. It also occurs in equal temperament through minute pitch differences from an instrument's natural harmonics, and in scales with microtonal intervals. This work was composed from the observation that beating inevitably occurs even though tuning developed in an effort to resolve it. Taking the historical development of tuning systems as its material, the piece uses open strings and harmonics. Changes in rhythm and dynamics were reduced so that the progression of pitches could emerge as clearly as possible.

In perspective, objects are shown at different sizes according to their distance to express depth. Music, too, creates a sense of depth through various expressive markings, including crescendos. This work studies the sense of space in music, drawing inspiration from the depth found in everyday subjects such as the horizon, roadside trees and moving cars. It uses intersecting and parallel scales, the gradual expansion and contraction of phrases, contrasting expressive markings between the hands, and various extended techniques involving the piano strings.

I once tried to capture something new beyond music. The more I tried, the more direct the expression became, leaving only results I found unsatisfactory. I began writing this work when I felt that a composer's rather weighty intentions might instead hinder the naturalness of music. Unceasing repetition resembling an unremarkable daily routine, and gradual progression that seems to condense the passage of time itself, depict everyday life. I hope the listener can become an observer and feel it fully, without engaging in thought.

For a long time, I listened closely to a piano's resonance in a small space. As it sounded, the sound seemed to grow fainter and spread outwards, while small and varied sounds, including the friction of the strings, reached me from inside the piano. What is called an echo—the reflected sound heard after a strong sound in a confined space—felt natural yet fascinating every time. I composed this work from that material. To express the idea of an echo, I grouped brief sounds with strong energy together with sounds that gradually disappear. I constructed harmony from the spectrum of the piano strings and used various extended instrumental techniques to express the lingering resonance more directly. I also tried connecting the everyday sounds encountered while composing—echoes, white noise, wind heard through a gap in a window—and allowing them to blend together. The idea of an echo applies not only to the material but also throughout the compositional process. While writing, I repeatedly took time to capture and organise the countless ideas derived from the music first created, together with the everyday sounds resonating around me. What I hope for in this process is to record myself at the moment of working while also gradually coming to know myself. Thus, an echo that began with an external subject slowly turns its focus towards an inner resonance.

The viola has a variety of timbres across its strings and registers, requiring sensitive understanding in performance. This work focuses on recombining the viola's timbres through techniques such as harmonics, trills and tremolos, together with dynamic contrasts. I hope that, along with the resonance of the sounds, the energy and breathing of a performer fully concentrated on stage will reach the audience.

At times, I hear tinnitus resembling the noise of electronic devices. Onto the sound that constantly circles in my ears, I freely layer other sounds heard in everyday life. This piece gives musical form through the piano to the sounds the composer is currently hearing, creating unity by organising various playing techniques and rhythms into patterns.

The instruments face one another, like two entirely different people meeting face to face. Sharing a similar register but possessing different timbres, the two instruments follow each other's rhythms, timbres and gestures in an effort to understand one another, creating a single movement. The trombone's multiphonics, depicting the cello's harmonics, are particularly striking.

Sotto voce carries the musical idea of 'singing'. The viola resembles the human voice; in its middle register, it seems to embrace other instruments while retaining a distinctive timbre that also makes it a widely played solo instrument. Subtitled 'Song of the Heart', this work was composed with the hope that it would flow as naturally as possible.

'Song without words' means a song with no lyrics, a name Mendelssohn used for his piano works. Although there is originally a subtitle, this work has none. The composer communicated his intentions only to the dancer and invites the audience to interpret the work freely. A distinctive feature is the way the dancer moves with the electronics, as though singing a melody.

1. Reflection 2. Wave 3. Paradox with Piano solo 4. Impromptu I with Violin solo and Clarinet solo 5. Impromptu II I conceived this work from visual and auditory impressions of places I often pass, such as Suseong Lake and Sincheon-daero. Buildings reflected in the lake, ripples, the sounds of passing cars—everything became material for the piece. From these, I created a fixed scale of semitones and whole tones and used systematic methods such as algorithms and substitution to allow the music to develop organically. The work consists of five short pieces connected without interruption into a single musical whole.

Unlike Aufbruch und…, this work is a study of sound, focusing on a more spatially dimensional approach to the hall's acoustics through the piano. Sounds created by the pianist's keystrokes spread in various directions, shaping rhythms and figures not found in the score. At the same time, they blend with the resonance of the entire hall to produce a distinctive result. Composed for this recital, the work carries the hope that the performer's musical absorption and uniquely delicate sensibility will reach the audience.

This work was my first attempt to use ideas beyond music within a composition, drawing on dialectical thinking. One element takes on a new form through opposition to another, then encounters a further element and repeats a process of conflict and transcendence. I felt that this resembled the cycle of rebirth discussed in Buddhism and sought to express it through music. Written for pianist Kim Hyojoon, the work was performed in Berlin and Mainz, Germany, in 2015.

A strong, short rhythm repeats, progressing gradually through minute changes in pitch. As the recurring rhythm gradually takes hold, the movement of the pitches comes newly into focus. If considered visually, pitch would be the subject and rhythm the background. Conversely, pitches also repeat while rhythm gradually changes, exchanging the roles of subject and background. I hope that this continuous sequence of transformations will allow the work to be perceived in greater variety.

This work was inspired by Gerhard Richter's 4900 Colours, exhibited in Korea that year. In Richter's work, square panels of various colours are first arranged in a five-by-five format. One hundred and ninety-six such units are made in the same way and freely combined, presenting a discontinuous, chance-based work. Looking at the work, I experienced various changes in perception and applied that process to composition. I used the defined framework and varied colours as sonic material, avoiding dissonance as far as possible so that diverse sounds might be perceived as one.

In most of Piazzolla's works, we experience tension and dynamism through tango rhythms, and are moved by beautiful melodies. As a result, his distinctive harmonic progressions and the concerns and conflicts within his working process receive relatively less attention. Forgotten Things sets aside Piazzolla's rhythmic material and takes his concerns as a young composer as its subject. Reflecting on myself through his deep deliberations during the transition from studying classical music to choosing tango, I reconsidered the future direction of my own composition and captured that process fully in music. I also applied an intuitive approach to harmonic progression that was not planned in advance. Emphasising harmony among the instruments, I used consonance so that all the instruments could form a single resonance.

Beginning with the strong resonance of the piano strings, the music gradually reaches a single point as individual melodies are woven into regular patterns. In this process, violin harmonics, bass clarinet tremolos and multiphonics, and the piano's dynamic movement harmonise, making the sound more engaging and filling the empty spaces between them. From the point they reach, the individuality of each instrument emerges and the sounds rapidly disperse. This process was inspired by conversations with performers and their focus on musical breathing. Imagining the interweaving of timbres as inhalation and their dispersal as exhalation, I expressed the tension and release that appear within a natural progression.

I wanted to give meaning to sounds that pass us by, to things regarded as 'noise'. This work gives meaning to the piano's seemingly disappearing resonance. That sound gradually transforms into something familiar to us, then returns to the sound of the instrument. How can we define pitched sound and noise?

This was my first work to use a dialectical idea. One element takes on a new form through opposition to another, then meets a further element and repeats a process of conflict and transcendence. Seeing this as similar to the cycle of rebirth, I sought to express an endless cycle through music. Composed in 2015 and performed in Berlin and Mainz, Germany, the work has been revised for performance at this composition recital.

Color is a series of works for solo instruments that focuses on revealing an instrument's inherent timbre and bringing out the performer's abilities as fully as possible. The entire work is constructed as a reflective structure, with three different elements continually opposing one another at staggered times to create new figures. Slow-motion techniques are also used in places to induce momentary tension.

The Scale series aims to study the varied timbres created by scales. This work is for two pianos and uses equal temperament without additional tuning. It carries the subtitle HWH+, signifying semitone–whole tone–semitone–augmented second. To make use of the piano's register, I built a fifty-one-note scale based on the circle of fifths and combined its elements in various ways. Rhythm also follows a kind of strict system, which I refined through revision so that the music would sound more musical.

This work begins by developing the image of 'brushing past' into various ideas. Visual elements such as fluttering leaves, a match and the tapered strokes of handwriting were given musical form, using bowing and crescendos to express them more directly. From the middle of the piece, I incorporated my thoughts on repetition, studying differences in perception according to the number of repetitions and focusing on finding the optimal number for sustaining tension.

Mirror is a work for eight players, commissioned by the DCMF Ensemble. Initially conceived around a strict reflective structure, it later incorporated the idea of 'sounds reflected in fragments of a broken mirror' to encourage a flowing progression and draw out each instrument's potential. This means imagining how sound might appear if treated as an object and projected onto a broken mirror. All timbres and pitch figures in this work derive from a single sound, and the instruments respond in similar or distorted forms. I intended these varied projected forms to coexist and complement one another within the work, including a process of finding the original sound through musical figures.

The twenty-five-string gayageum is a modified instrument with a relatively wide register. Through its playing techniques and tuning, it can perform various scales. In this work, its twenty-five strings are tuned using semitones, whole tones and augmented seconds so that twelve pitches are distributed as evenly as possible. Inspired by the optical illusion in which concentric circles appear to form a spiral, I took the spatially dimensional timbres of the instruments and their intersecting scales as the main elements. I sought to express musically the effect of a still image appearing to move in an optical illusion. The spiral structure was used through substitutions of rhythmic and pitch structures.

While conceiving a solo piano work, I wanted the piano itself to emerge within the music. The way a keypress causes a hammer to set a string vibrating recalled the machinery I sometimes heard in a factory as a child. It was difficult to enter without earplugs, and I remember being startled by sudden loud sounds amid the regular stamping of products. I gave those memories musical form again through the piano. Strong resonance, rhythmic repetition, sounds of scraping the strings and abrupt development serve as the material.

Shimyon refers literally to a deep abyss and figuratively to an ordeal from which it is hard to escape. This piece was inspired by “Depth Wish” written by German novelist Patrick Süskind. This short story is about a young painter who obsesses over a prominent critic’s review that “she is young and talented but has no depth.” The young painter is gradually pushed towards the precipice of an abyss. The composer focuses on highlighting the main character tormented between hope and despair through the contrasting arrangement of irregular rhythms, powerful reverberations, changing tempos, widening and narrowing register, and diversifying density. These components impart a strong tension and progressively arrive at tautophony. The register slowly widens thereafter to render an abyss more dramatically until it expands to reach the extreme high and low note before disappearing. This arrangement aligns well with the delicate and captivating psychological descriptions in the short story.