Crescent Moon (2004)

  1. Land of the West

  2. Milky Way

  3. Gyesu Tree

  4. Rabbit

  5. White Boat

  6. Blue Sky


-for piano quartet

-duration: 25’

-Commissioned by Stomp Records (EMI) for the MIK Ensemble, premiered in Hong Kong, Jeju, Kwangju, Seoul, Daejon, Tong Yong, Pusan, and Daegu, South Korea

-Soovin Kim, violin; Sangjin Kim, viola; Younghoon Song, cello; Julius Jeongwon Kim, piano

PROGRAM NOTE

Crescent Moon is based on a Korean folk song called Ban-Dal (반달), which was written by Guk-Young Yoon during the Japanese occupation of Korea. It was one of many songs of this era that uplifted Koreans in a desperate time. Over time, Ban-Dal became one of the standard songs sung by every child in Korea. However, Ban-Dal’s innocent and child-like surface is a facade that hides a deeper, bittersweet pain. For many Koreans, the poignance of the song comes from the memory of a collective experience of suffering, wanting to forget the pain of the past and yet not being able to let go, wanting to return to a more innocent time of youth and yet there being no youth to recall as the collective youths of so many were stolen from them.

Much of Korean art is about nuanced understatement. Ban-Dal makes no mention of persecution or patriotism, no call to solidarity, nor is there any apparent emotional expression of anguish. The words of naive innocence are a veil that conceals inner meaning and a longing for hope. I have tried to preserve this feeling of unabashed, child-like naivety in Crescent Moon, which avoids musical sophistication.

At the premiere in Seoul, Korea, the late Bae, Ik-Hwan came up to me after the concert and said, “What a beautiful piece! I can tell your ear and attention to detail is so meticulous, but are you really that innocent?” After more conversation with him, I realized he was trying, very kindly, to tell me that the work needed more grit, and I agreed with him so much so that I revised the work a few years later. However, I felt the revision was insincere and Soovin Kim, the violinist of MIK, said, “I don’t like the new version! Let’s keep the original one!” So here we have it.

Crescent Moon was written for and dedicated to my friends in the MIK Ensemble.

-JAMES RA

SCORES COMING SOON!