Isang Yun, Ludwig van Beethoven: Pathétique

VIRTUOSITY AND PATHOS, BEAUTY AND TRUTH
Kaya Han with Isang Yun's piano works and Beethoven's ›Pathétique‹

In Johann Georg Sulzer's General Theory of Fine Arts (Leipzig 1793) 'Pathos; Pathetic” above all to those passions “that fill the mind with fear, horror [sic!] and dark sadness”, i.e. to those feelings which, because of the size of their subject, are attributed to the tragic, while the gentle and pleasant passions to the ethos , the sphere of morality.

His 'hard of hearing', as it was called at the time, had bothered Beethoven since 1798, a symptom of his individual suffering. Nevertheless, the revolutionary consciousness of the 1780s continued to have an impact in Europe after the French Revolution, at least until September 1814, the beginning of the Congress of Vienna, which coincided with the restorative-restrictive Metternich era, in which all liberal and national movements did their best were suppressed.

Freedom, equality and fraternity - Beethoven represented the ideals of the French Revolution, while Yun fought for the liberation of his country from military dictatorship and tyranny. He longed for the reunification of his homeland, which had been divided by foreign powers as a result of World War II; he suffered from the division of Korea and endured imprisonment and torture.

Despite the cultural and historical distance of around two centuries, certain similarities can also be identified in the music: melodic intensity, tension and drama; language character and language-like syntax; a sometimes combative dramaturgy aimed at concrete turning points, whose breakthrough imagery can at least be identified in Yun's late work. Both Beethoven and Yun sought a balance between expression and structural thinking, between apparent irregularity and a continuously flowing stream of sound.

The only three-movement Grande Sonate pathétique in c minor op. 13, composed in 1798/99 and published by Hoffmeister in Vienna in 1799, is – along with Les Adieux op. 81a – the only sonata that Beethoven published with an epithet. It does not yet show the dramaturgy of the 5th symphony ›Through night to light‹, nor does it develop the heroic tone that he set between the Eroica (1803) and the Battle Symphony op. 91 (1813). Nonetheless, Beethoven created a sonata with symphonic aspirations, the first movement of which is characterized by a passionate, combatively pathetic tone.

In contrast to probably all of Beethoven's other slow introductions, the Grave introduction of the Pathétique recurs several times in the further course. The references to Bach's Partita in C minor (BWV 826) and Mozart's Fantasy and Sonata in C minor (KV 475 & 457) are obvious. But while Mozart's pathos is aware of the transience of everything earthly, Beethoven's rebellious tone is by no means in agreement with the status quo. The song-like theme of the slow movement in rondo form brings a sublime intonation that also belongs to the signature of the pathetic. The theme of the song is taken up again twice without variation, finally in the higher octave - an expression of increased intensity and development. The concluding rondo shows the balance between the preceding movements also on the structural, motivic-thematic level. Kaya Han realizes his almost elegiac intonation, as prescribed in the score, in the tempo of an allegro, but not allegro molto.

Isang Yun wrote only three pieces for piano alone, each of which seems to adequately represent his three creative phases. Shao Yang Yin was composed at the end of 1966, after the world premiere of the orchestral piece Réak (on October 25, 1966 in Donaueschingen), commissioned by the Swiss patron and harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer. As a title, Yun initially considered ›Nocturne‹ or ›Fantasia notturna‹. The final choice of title, Shao Yang Yin, was explained in the first edition published in 1968: »Shao Yang Yin, the Chinese title of the composition, suggests thinking of the great, mutually complementary opposites ('Yang Yin') of Taoist teaching.

However, the addition ›Shao‹ (= small, light) makes it clear that here the contrasts of everyday life (moods, conditions, time sequences) are transferred to the musical.”
The premiere coincided with the period in which Yun had been kidnapped from West Berlin to Seoul by the South Korean secret service and suffered imprisonment and torture there because of his contacts with North Korea, which are prohibited under South Korean law (June 1967 to spring 1969): In September 1967 Antoinette Vischer recorded Shao Yang Yin in Basel for Wergo; the work was premiered in Freiburg im Breisgau on January 12, 1968 by Edith Picht-Axenfeld.

On November 5, 1966, Yun had begun composing and wrote to Antoinette Vischer: "I will not consider the piece [as] an intermediate work, but [as] a real work with the best of my ability!" He commented on the completion of the score on December 14, 1966: »I didn't want to write the piece in an extraordinarily experimental way. I don't know enough about the instrument for that. But an atmospherically genuine, singing musical piece, sometimes with brilliant bridging and also delicate, gliding plays between phrases.«

Two days later he turned to Antoinette Vischer again: »You have certainly received the manuscript and a letter from me by now. I forgot to say: the performance marks in the piece are decidedly unharpsichordistic. The reason: the piece must also be played on the piano. Therefore performance marks are primarily intended for the piano.«

In the first edition, Shao Yang Yin appeared as a harpsichord piece. Isang Yun's wish for a new edition for a copy of a historical harpsichord on the one hand and for piano on the other could only be implemented after his death on November 3, 1995 in autumn 1996. It was not until 1998 that the piano edition by Kaya Han and a harpsichord edition with the new registration by Edith Picht-Axenfeld – emphasized by color printing – were published.

The development of a version for piano also has the character of an interpretation: the decisions for or against octaves that Kaya Han had to make can only be partially justified by the harpsichord registrations. In order to expressively bring out the characters and colors of the sound gestures, she also uses the extreme positions of the modern concert grand piano. In doing so, she was guided by her listening experience of traditional East Asian music, but above all by her experiences in working with Yun as an interpreter of his piano and chamber music works.

Traces of his engagement with the piano works of the Schönberg school are evident in Five Pieces for Piano (1958), the first valid work that Isang Yun published in Europe. In order to connect with the new music of the western avant-garde, Yun came to Paris from Seoul in 1956 and to Berlin in 1957, where he studied with Schönberg's pupil Josef Rufer, among others. The Five Pieces are – if not dogmatically – worked through and through in serial form, and they show elements of motivic-thematic work.

Everything is - reduced to the essentials - expression and language; each phrase, each section of form, emerges from the previous one in a contrasting derivation or developing variation. Each of the cyclically related pieces expresses an individual gesture: The first piece has an 'exposing' character; the melodic second Yun called 'romantic'; He described the third as 'motoric', the fourth as 'rondo with a giocoso character', and the fifth as a kind of 'coda' that summed up the material developed in the previous pieces in a 'mosaic' manner. The thematic core of the second piece - falling minor third plus semitone - is a reference to Schönberg's piano piece op. 11 no. 1 and the sound world of Alban Berg.

Interludium A (1982): Ever since the Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1975/76) at the latest, Isang Yun's 'main note' A has become a code for harmony, for purity and perfection. Formally, the A in the interlude forms an axis of symmetry and mirroring. The note A appears urgently in several octaves, becomes the axis in the tonal space, the center of symmetrical chord formations; it is also present as an imaginary point of reference through a recess. It is about a changing illumination of this sound in changing contexts. After Ravel's Le Gibet (The Gallows) from Gaspard de la Nuit and the 10th Sonata for Piano by Aleksandr Scriabin, Interludium A is probably the most consistent examination of a single note in the history of piano music.

The overall form of Yun's composition can be interpreted as three parts, but also as five parts. Interlude A begins with an introduction of heavy chords that are exposed – from bottom to top – in the extreme registers of the piano. Yun strives for a liquefaction of the chordal rigidity and immobility through melismatic plays and ornamental excesses. In a meditative-melancholic slow section, which begins again in a dark register and gradually conquers the higher registers, Yun withdraws to the main note A and a few chromatic secondary notes.

A lively transition aims at the liquefaction and merging of the hitherto relatively static states of aggregation. In varied work, Yun combines proliferating melisma and variable upwards and downwards movements that lead to flowing fields of trills. The rigid chords return one last time in radical ups and downs. Forgivingly, Yun unfolds filigree sound fields in quiet dynamics in the extended epilogue.

Walter Wolfgang Sparrer