Voice of Transitions – Lecture by Dr Shin Hyang Yun

Voice of Transitions: Vocal Works by Younghi Pagh-Paan
Dr Shin-Hyang Yun

In research on Younghi Pagh-Paan, the composer is frequently regarded as a bridge-builder between Korean tradition and the Western avant-garde. However, the question of how this bridging role is specifically realised through her particular treatment of the voice within contemporary music remains largely unaddressed. Pagh-Paan uses the human voice not merely as a musical instrument, but as the bearer of a longing for a place where linguistic boundaries between cultures are overcome.

The lecture focuses on vocal works by Younghi Pagh-Paan from various creative phases, in which she used speech sounds – primarily the Korean phonemes of the underlying poems – as vocal text. The lecture explores the following questions: How are the speech sounds, which are foreign to the German-speaking world, employed in her compositions? What sound patterns emerge as a result, and what does the audience perceive? To what extent do these fulfil a cultural transitional function? Finally, the socio-utopian aspect of linguistically double-coded composition in general will be highlighted.

Further reading:

• Shin-Hyang Yun: Sounds of Echo. Korean-German Composers on the Move, KlangKulturStudien series, Vol. 14, (eds.) Lars-Christian Koch/Raimund Vogels, Berlin/Münster: LIT, 2022.
• “Poetic Images as a Sound-Utopian Concept. Just Wait… Balde by Younghi Pagh-Paan”, in: KlangZeiten – Music, Politics and Society (ed.) Nina Noeske, Vienna et al., 2026 (forthcoming)