This paper examines the practice of continuous singing in kagok (kagok yeonchang) between man and woman through the analysis of the editorial intention revealed in the epilogue of the Kagokweollyu.
Pak Hyogwan, who wrote the epilogue, was deeply conc...
This paper examines the practice of continuous singing in kagok (kagok yeonchang) between man and woman through the analysis of the editorial intention revealed in the epilogue of the Kagokweollyu.
Pak Hyogwan, who wrote the epilogue, was deeply concerned that the texts of the kagok were fixed among modes, songs, and singers. Therefore, he attempts an overlap of texts among the modes, songs, and singers in Kagokweollyu. The reason the texts of Kagokweollyu overlap is due to Pak s idea of singing kagok. In particular, the overlap of texts between the man s songs and woman s songs is distinctive.
However, this was not Pak s unique idea. Other kinds of singing practice such as the man and woman singing shown in Kyobanggayo, the musical pieces of the songbook Seungpyeonggok by An Minyeong, and the kagok pedagogy by Hamdongjeongweol all show that the texts overlap between the man s and the woman s songs. The strict division between the texts of man s and woman s songs in the songbook should be attributed to the editorial rules considering the characteristic of the resource as a songbook literature. In practice, the texts of the man s and woman s songs could overlap in the yeonchang of kagok.
If we want to learn something from Kagokweollyu, it should be simply more than learning a song. We should learn the experimental spirit of the editor that is shown in the epilogue and the editorial method of Kagokweollyu. In other words, we should learn the flexibility of the yeonchang of kagok. The yeonchang was performed according to different performance situations and purposes, for which the man and woman singers sang various songs with diverse texts, and thus, the texts were not fixed between man s and woman s songs.