performed by Soma quartet
July 6th 2016
Auditorium Cittá di Maccagno, Italy

This piece is my musical response to Korean novel “장외인간” (jang-oe-in-gan) that read recently. The story of the novel starts with a world where nobody remembers a moon existed except the main character, Hunsoo Lee. Moon disappears in dawn and Hunsoo tries to find the cause for the absence of a moon and his lover, Soyo who vanished with a moon. Hunsoo encounters
the world called Mo-woel-dong that exists between Human and gods worlds. And the people in Mo-woel-dong know about that a moon once existed. From this point on, the story unfolds itself in very abstract way constantly conveying Taoist and aesthetics aspects throughout the novel.
The author intentionally makes links or transitions between scenes ambiguous and illogical, creating otherworldly feeling. This strange mood lasts long even after a few hours I put down the book as if I just woke up from dream that I cannot remember. It even affected the way I think about musical parameters and eventually influenced during my process of composition.
There are total seven main sound carpets and transitions are branching out of those phrases. Each sound carpets form bigger sound streams and triggers something to happen. The new triggered sound stream tries to make sense of the previous stream and at the same time provides a seed for a destruction. I could say the music behaves similar to a process of dream where the creator and observer coexists and constantly deconstruct images.

A dawn with vanished moon (2016) for string quartet

Joungbum Lee