Soojung Park (b.1983) - Coexistence (world premiere).mov

"The coexistence of one thing with another is the fact that they exist together at the same time or in the same place." When I was thinking of a title for this piece, there was tragic news in South Korea about attacks by North Korea. This music is not composed for protesting about political problems pertaining to wars in between countries such as Korea. However, it is true that the relationships between the musical instruments are presented in similarly conflicting atmospheres experienced by countries embroiled in tension with others. This music, simply structured as A, B, A', aims firstly to present progress, based on 'serial modes' in which all instruments start from a high A and finally return to it via contrapuntal isorhythmic and heterophonic textures, and secondly to produce colourful sounds as each instrument's unique timbre is mixed or contrasted with others. In Section A, all instruments struggle at the high A, eventually being stretched to other pitches and lower range. While all instruments except the viola freely sound all modal pitches, the viola only follows a serial mode's pitches emphasised by flute, guitar and vibraphone during their iso-rhythm process. Section B has contrasted tempo and rhythm from A, and A' is presented as a mirrored development of A. ©Soojung Park About the composer: Soojung Park Soojung Park was born in Seoul, Korea and began to study contemporary music composition during the first degree at Hanyang University, Seoul. She decided to do further study in the U.K. when she listened to music by a Korean composer studying in England. Soojung has composed for various ensembles, solo instrument and orchestra music for the past decade. She usually takes initial ideas for compositions from sounds and motions of materials such as ambulance sirens, sounds of walking and voices and the Christian Bible. Also she is very interested in music illustrating colour or presenting a narrative. Music by Park has been influenced by many various contemporary composers including her supervisors in both Korea and the U.K. Not restricting herself to a single concept for her music, she is journeying to create an assimilated, personal musical style. She was awarded an MA in Composition from the University of York and is supervised by Dr Kevin Malone at the Manchester University for PhD.