Composer Spotlight: Sungji Hong

With independent house concerts happening all over the country and orchestras like the LA Phil reinvigorating the concert hall, this is one of the most exciting times for classical art music in America! The variety of sounds, genres, and musicians working today is astonishing, and there are thousands of talented composers tirelessly honing their craft. One of the goals of Deus Ex Musica is to introduce new audiences to some of the exciting voices working today – both established and emerging artists! And we are particularly interested in celebrating the music of composers who both seek a rich spiritual life in Christ and actively explore their faith in their music.

This month’s Composer in the Spotlight series is Dr. Sungji Hong. An award- Korean composer now living in the US, Sungji teaches composition at the University of North Texas. Commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation (USA), the National Flute Association (USA), the Texas Flute Association, the Tongyoung International Music Festival (Korea), the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (Korea), the Keumho Asiana Cultural Foundation (Korea), the International Isang Yun Music Society (Germany) and the MATA Festival (USA), Sungji’s music reflects an intelligent, playful exploration of timbre.

Sungji, tell us about your journey into music. How did you begin?   

I discovered classical music while I was passing by a Piano Academy in my neighborhood. I would go there every day to listen to the sound coming from the window - it was a fascinating experience. Eventually, I told my mom that I want to learn the piano. By that time, I was five years old. I started practicing on a paper piano until my parents got me a Young Chang upright piano. I wrote my first piano piece when I was a 5th grader. My piano teacher was a composer as well, and I remember during my piano lessons he was talking about musical ideas and the musical structure of the pieces. Certainly, he influenced me, and he was one of the first who encouraged me to compose. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons that I am greatly interested in the structure of my compositions.

Do you have a favorite sound?

I like the sound of nature like rustling, wind, birds, insects, raindrops, but most of all, I love the low frequency of the rumbling and the thumping of powerful thunder sounds. They remind me of the power of the creator of all things.

Cheongwon Gun, South Korea

You have written many intense, colorful large ensemble works which synthesize “traditional” instrumental techniques with “noise” and sound design. This includes Kiklos for orchestra awarded the First Prize at the International Competition for Original Ballet Music (ISCM World Music Days-Slovenia 2003). How do you typically begin working on a new piece? What is your compositional process?

Kiklos is a Greek word meaning cycle. I wanted to write about the four seasons, and I began the piece with the season summer, from which the inspiration came from the sounds of thunder and raindrops. I observed the phenomenon of thunder and measured the durations which varied each time. I was interested in the whole experience of the thunder and eagerly waiting for a rainy day to hear the thunder while I was working on the piece. I imagined the sound of thunder as a sequence of behavior, the cumulus stage (built up), mature stage (tension), and dissipating stage (release). I made a decision for the harmonic material based on the inverted harmonic series (tempered) to recreate the sound of thunder: the upper partials are distributed in the low instruments, and the lower partials are in the high instruments of the orchestra. The whole piece is constructed upon carefully conceived pitch material. Kiklos was first performed as an orchestral ballet in October 2003 by The Slovenian National Theatre Opera & Ballet (Choreographer, Stasa Zurovac) at National Theatre in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

You studied composition at Hanyang University (Seoul), then your MMus at the Royal Academy of Music (London), and Ph.D, in composition at the University of York (UK), and now you are living in Texas. As an Koren composer living and creating far from your family and cultural roots, what are the challenges you face?

I have collected influences from the places that have been part of my life. I was born and raised in Seoul. I went to Hanyang University to study composition. That is where I learned the fundamentals of my musical training. While I was a graduate student at the Royal Academy of Music in London, I had a privilege to listen to numerous world premieres of living composers (Lucino Berio, Mauricio Kagel, Arvo Part, Elloit Carter, Henry Dutilleux, and Pierre Boulez). Later I went to the University of York in England to pursue my Ph.D. in music composition. There I spent most of my time composing, traveling for concerts, and interacting with professional performers and ensembles. Also, I learned to appreciate and listen to the sound of nature.

Later I moved to Greece; I studied Greek at the School of Modern Greek Language of the Aristotle University, which allowed me to delve deep into Byzantine music and art and to talk with experts in the field. Greece’s religious and social landscape is deeply rooted and influenced by the Greek Orthodox Church. While in Greece it was great to be immersed and influenced by Byzantine music and Greek culture. Besides, while I was living in Greece, I taught music composition at the AMC-AKMI Metropolitan College (Thessaloniki Campus of Wales University in the UK) which allowed to interact with music college students.

Aristotle University, Thessaloniki

I'm currently living in Denton, Texas, and teaching at the University of North Texas. I am far from Europe and Asia, but now it has become much easier to attend premieres and performances of my music within the US and to work with professional performers and ensembles. I love meeting musicians in person and collaborating. I am blessed to experience various cultures and to learn languages. I embrace them all as I understand that there must be a purpose for it.

Are there any artists or religious works that are especially significant to you?

Visual arts play an important part in my creative process. I try to give musical life to dramatic and poetic ideas derived from paintings. I admire painters such as Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Duccio, and El Greco. I am inspired by pieces or composers that place a high value on strong expression, dramatic shaping of ideas, harmonic color, and on a lyrical sense of line. In my own music, I aim for a structure that seeks to create a sense of journey.

Paintings by El Greco (L to R) View of Toledo (1600), The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind (1570), Opening of the Fifth Seal (1614)

You’ve written many works exploring the sonic potential of the clarinet in particular, most recently, Exevalen, for bass clarinet. What is it that fascinates you about the clarinet? How do you approach writing for clarinet?

The inspiration for this piece is based on the painting La expulsión de los mercaderes del templo (The National Gallery in London, UK) by El Greco. EXEVALEN is a Greek word meaning ‘he drove out’ which I thought of as a word that describes the painting precisely. The title suggests impetuous and dashing gestures that underline the direction of the music.

EXEVALEN, written for solo bass clarinet, explores sonic capabilities of the instrument as follows: tremolo with harmonic overtones, sweeping glissando throughout the upper partials of the instrument, and rapid succession of spectral multiphonics from low fundamentals. I categorized these sounds into three different types. The first one could be described as burst or explosive sound that are represented with following performance techniques - attack, slap tongue and flutter tongue with loud dynamics (sfz, f, or ff). I named the second sound type as ghost. It includes key tremolo, bisbigliando tremolo, lip pressure tremolo and air noise. For these techniques, the clarinetist plays the fundamental, but we hear only high partials. It suggests that something is there but not clear if it is actually there. I play with the ambiguity of this idea. These sounds are heard with very soft dynamics p or pp. The third sound type is about complex sonorities such as spectral glissando, spectral multiphonics and multiphonics. This work is the result of an ongoing collaboration with Sarah K. Watts. She first performed the piece on July 28 during the ClarinetFest 2019 at the Auditorium, University of Tennessee.

Trio Mediaeval, ECM Records

Can you tell us about the inspiration for Missa Lumen de Lumine? How do you typically start writing a piece that includes text?

The title comes from a phrase of the Credo: Lumen de lumine (Light of Light). The inspiration of the piece came from the meanings, sounds and associations that derived from the text. As a result. I relied on the structure of the text to form the structure of the piece. I wanted to create a sense of wonder in the sonorities explored through different vocal tessituras and textures. The careful consideration of the delicate contrapuntal textures along with the timbral individualities of each voice aims to emphasize their particular voice character and enhance their expressive means. Missa Lumen de Lumine (2002) written for Trio Mediaeval received critical acclaim and reached the top ten on the Billboard Classical Chart and Itunes classics (Stella Maris, ECM 1929).

“Yet the most crystalline pillars in this house of mist and time resolve themselves in Hong’s beautiful Missa Lumen de lumine…it grows like vines in ruins grown truer with age. Like the light of its title, this mass is composed of prismatic strands, some of which unify in single threads of chant and others of which refract, visualizing the nature of their own splitting. Between the heavenly Gloria and Agnus Dei, one is left drifting in these precise rhythms and changes. Hong is highly respectful of the texts of the Mass Ordinary and forms of each line a secret braid, ending often with a subtle flourish in the spirit.” - Tyran Grillo, Between sound and space (8 June.2012) on Missa Lumen de lumine

What was the inspiration for your most recent sacred work, Elevatus (2018), performed by Ensemble Mise-en?

The inspiration for this piece is based on the fresco L'Ascensione (c.1305, The Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy) by Florentine artist Giotto di Bondone. Elevatus is a Latin word meaning ‘he was taken up’. It consists of the following three ideas: the ghostly fleeting ascending glissandi, the fluctuating air sounds, and the swelling suspended notes. The whole piece develops around or between these three gestures turning on themselves or going through transformations. Elevatus was completed in 2018. It is scored for flute, clarinet, trombone, piano, vibraphone, violin, and violoncello. It received its first performance by Ensemble Mise-en under the direction of Moon Young Ha on 17 May 2018 at The Cell, New York (NY).

You have an ongoing interest in visual art, and you’ve said that this has shaped much of your work. In particular, you recall the National Gallery’s exhibit “the Life of Christ” in 2000 as the inspiration for a twenty-year, multi-work project focused on the life of Christ. What is it about the person of Christ that you find so compelling?

While I was studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, I often spent my time at the National Gallery. I have a strong passion for art which enables me to find new ideas and inspirations for my music. In the summer of 2000 there was an exhibition at the National Gallery in London under the title “The Life of Christ” and this was the catalyst for my twenty-year project - the subject of which is Jesus Christ. After visiting that special exhibition “The Life of Christ”, I went again, right next day, because I could not stop thinking about the artists who invested their passion and dedication for their whole lives. For them it was compelling subject and they had to express through their art. Although we live in a different era 700 years later or more, and I use different medium, music instead of painting, yet I share with them one common interest, Christ. I thought, “This is fascinating and I must express it via sounds.”

My twenty-year project: “The Life of Christ” which includes both vocal and instrumental music, will have about twenty-six musical episodes depicting events in the life of Jesus. I did not work in chronological order, but I will put all the episodes in chronological order by the time when my project is done. I expect to write a few more episodes in order to complete the project. It is going to be interesting for me how I have developed my musical language during the last twenty years from the viewpoint of this particular theme.

To hear more of Sungji’s music, please visit: https://www.sungjihong.com/

Interview with Sungji Hong conducted by Josh Rodriguez via email between December 1-20, 2019

If you are interested in contributing an article or would like to recommend a topic for exploration, please send an email to: blog@deus-ex-musica.com Photos used with composer’s permission. Photo of Trio Mediaeval from ECM.

A list of the completed episodes from Sungji’s “The Life of Christ”

1] The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-1:31): The Annunciation (2001) for ob & perc

2] The Adoration of the Kings (Matthew 2:10-12): The Adoration of the Kings (2002) for fl, ob, mand, gui, hp, perc, vc, db

3] The Adoration of the Kings (Matthew 2:1-2): Vidimus Stellam (2020)* for flute

4] Nativity (Luke 2:1-21): Noel nouvelet (2017) for SATB a cappella

5] Mass: Missa Lumen de lumine (2002) for three female voices (SSA)

6] The Light of the World (John 8:12) for 12 solo strings (2008)

7] The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13): Pater Noster  (2004) for mixed voices (SATB)

8] The Uncreated Light (2 Corinthians 4:6) Shine (2015) for fl & electronics

9] The Light of Life (John 8:12): Lucem vitae (2017) for cl, vn & pf

10] The Light of the World (John 8:12): Lux Mundi (2018) for ob, vn, vc & pf

11] Jesus Presented at the Temple (Luke 2:29-32): Nunc Dimittis (2016) for brec & tenor

12] The Baptism of Christ (Matthew 3:13-17): Et Descendit (2015) for fl,va, hp

13] Jesus Cleanses the Temple (John 2:13-17): Exevalen (2019) for bass clarinet

14] The Transfiguration: O Nata Lux (2015) for three female voices (SSA)

15] The Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13): Transfiguration (2017) for alto flute and ensemble (picc, ob, cl/bcl, pf, vn, va, vc) with electronics

16] The Raising of Lazarus (John 11:38-43): Lazare veni foras ! (2016) for picc, cl/bcl, trb, pf, vn & db

17] Palm Sunday (John 12:12-18): Evlogimenos (2015) for cl, pf, vn, vc

18] The Lord's Supper (Last Supper) (1 Corinthians 11:23–24): O sacrum convivium (2019) for mixed voices (SATB)

19] Agony in the garden (John 17:1-5): Agonia (2019) for fl & pf

20] The Crucifixion of Jesus (John 19:16-22): Estavrosan (2020)* for fl, cl/bcl, pf, vn & vc

21] The Death of Jesus (John19:28-37): Postea sciens Jesus (2016) for mixed voices (SATB)

22] Resurrection (John 20:1-10)*

23] The Ascension (Acts 1:1-10): Elevatus (2018) for fl/picc, cl/bcl, trb, perc, pf, vn & vc

24] The Ascension (Acts 1:1-10): Epirthi (2018) for piano

25] The Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13): Osei Py(i)ros (2020) for trombone (in progress)