Yun Isang: Exemplum in memoriam Kwangju (1981) with score

Performers: Hong Seokwon (conductor), Gwangju Symphony Orchestra

Programme notes by "Blue" Gene Tyranny for AllMusic:

Composed in early 1981, this orchestral work describes the previous year's popular uprising in Kwangju, a city of 800, 000, against the brutality of the armed forces of dictator Chun Doo-hwan. Following the assassination of another dictator, Park Chung-hee in October 0f 1979, civil rights were effectively suspended and violent military repression occurred in all of South Korea. On May 18th, 1980, 50, 000 protesting students in Kwangju were brutally attacked by special force paratroopers. The city rose in resistance ousting the military to the suburbs; negotiations were undertaken, but the military re-attacked killing 2000 people with thousands more imprisoned and tortured. The first section of the work, approximately 8 1/2 minutes in duration, describes the build-up of the demonstration with full orchestral unison stabs, developing into sliding and trilling figures, brass rhythmic triplets and rushing woodwinds. There are successive build-ups of strength and interventions by opposing forces until eventually a battle scene, a massacre, is described with chaotic slides and aggressive rhythms, including the use of the multiple whipcrack pak that simulates the sound of gunfire and exploding shells. The second section of the work, a Lamentoso, begins with long sustains and rhythmic undulations, over which wind and brass tone clusters form, with the occasional entrance of a solo cello and massed strings also in clusters. Sighing, sliding figures express the grief of the living for the dead, and also the disquiet and tension underlying the momentary calm in the struggle. The music builds gradually again with horn-calls and march rhythms, this time not capable of being dispersed as in the first section, but resolute and unstoppable.