Korean Music

 The music of Korea is studied by ever-increasing numbers of ethnomusicologists internationally, who are drawn to it as a research area by its many intriguing aspects. While sharing certain cultural features with its larger and better-known neighbours China and Japan, Korea also provides some striking contrasts with other parts of East Asia in its musical culture, both traditional and contemporary. South Korea today is better known for its spectacular successes in Western classical music, and in the “Korean wave” of films and television programmes that have become popular internationally, than for its traditional music; yet traditional music retains a special position as a marker of national identity, a medium of new and often topical composition, and an ingredient in current “fusion” musics. North Korea, meanwhile, has developed a very different musical culture from many of the same materials, one that is becoming increasingly accessible to outside researchers. The music department at Sheffield offers special expertise in Korean music, with the potential for research topics including:

• Transformations of traditional music in modern Korea
• Musical narrative and theatre genres, including all-female opera and newly-composed p’ansori story-singing
• Contemporary Korean composers
• Western classical music in Korea
• Korean popular music
• Musical exchange between North and South Korea
• Comparative studies of Korean and other musical cultures