Overview
Title: Monolog for solo bass clarinet
Composer: Isang Yun (1917-1995)
Composition Year: 1983
Instrumentation: Solo Bass Clarinet (Low C)
Extended Techniques: Quarter tones, pitch bends, extreme altissimo
Difficulty Level: 5/5
Today we’ll be looking at my all-time favorite bass clarinet solo piece: The Isang Yun Monolog! This is a phenomenal work that beautifully demonstrates what the bass clarinet is capable of - you will not look at that instrument the same way again once you’ve listened to the Yun. That said, learning it and performing it is no small feat, so let’s get underway.
The Monolog was written in 1983 for bass clarinet virtuoso and teacher Harry Sparnaay. The piece is essentially an expansion of the second movement of Yun’s Clarinet Concerto (1981), which is played on bass clarinet. It is also one of many clarinet pieces that Yun wrote during his life; in addition to the Monolog and the aforementioned concerto, he wrote two quintets clarinet and string quartet and a piece for clarinet and piano called Riul. Additionally, his work for solo oboe, Piri, has been performed and recorded on clarinet.
In order to understand the nature of the Monolog, it’s important to know the composer’s past. Isang Yun was born and raised in what is now South Korea, but moved to West Germany in the 1950s and built his career there. In 1967, he was abducted from his home by South Korea’s intelligence service and brought back to Seoul, where he was (falsely) convicted of espionage and sentenced to life in prison. Yun was regularly beaten and tortured over the next two years, only being released from jail after a petition signed by hundreds of prominent musicians was sent to the South Korean government demanding his freedom. Yun returned to Berlin and became a German citizen in 1971. He would never set foot in South Korea again.
In short, Yun went through an extremely traumatic period for absolutely no good reason, and you can probably imagine how bitter he was about it. That’s the key to understanding the bass clarinet Monolog: The whole piece is a controlled release of his rage at being falsely imprisoned. Even the quiet spots aren’t peaceful; instead, they represent anger simmering beneath the surface, waiting to erupt. And by the way, this isn’t my personal take on the piece: This is stuff that Yun told Harry Sparnaay, who told his student Michael Lowenstern, who told me! You can’t get anything better information than that!
Analysis
The technical challenges of the Yun Monolog are no joke. This is one of those pieces that stretches the limits of one’s playing ability in almost every way. Fortunately for us, Yun has a very “thorough” compositional style: He has very specific directions for how every measure of the piece is played. This means that, while the pages are quite dense, we have a clear road map for navigating the Monolog. Below are my own notes on what to consider in your practice:
The phrases: Two things that should immediately stick out to you when you first look at the sheet music: The abundance of long notes and the greater abundance of ornaments. These two things reflect the influence of Korean music on Yun’s compositional style. Using the musical style of his homeland, he created a compositional method called Hauptton technique, or “main tone” technique. As the name implies, Hauptton technique involves building phrases around singular pitches and “transforming” them through heavy ornamentation, including pitch bends, trills, vibrato, and grace notes. This is similar to how much Korean music is structured - the only difference is that in Korean music, the ornaments are improvised. Since Western musicians aren’t trained to do that, Yun writes the ornaments out for us, hence the dense writing style. By the way, all those 32nd notes you see? Yeah, those are ornaments too - treat them as such. Any time you see a note that’s held out for a long time, or one that comes back over and over, know that that note is the central point of the phrase, and everything else around it is how the phrase “develops.”
The dynamics: This piece demands *huge* dynamic contrast. The parts marked ppp should be nearly inaudible, and any pppp parts should basically be al niente. For the louder dynamics, I like to think more about color than pure volume, particularly for anything marked f or ff. Save the real power for fff or higher. For any hairpins that only go up one dynamic level (for example, ff to fff), give 10% less at the beginning so you have somewhere to go; vice versa for any such decrescendo.
The quarter tones: Quarter tones on bass clarinet (and on clarinet) are often tricky to play just because of the nature of the instrument. In the case of the Yun Monolog, the quarter tones are written reasonably well. All the downward quarter tones can be played through simple manipulation of the embouchure. The upwards quarter tones are not as easy. Most of them you’ll have to partially vent a certain key and lip down with the embouchure to get the right pitch.
The extreme altissimo: And here we have arguably the hardest thing about the Monolog. If you’re new to the extreme altissimo, I’d advise practicing intervals and overtones in your warm-ups before or while learning Yun. Don’t go overboard practicing any of the altissimo sections, or else you’ll start biting. I won’t give specific advice for fingerings here because the effectiveness will vary between instruments and mouthpiece setups. All I’ll say is to prioritize response and stability of pitch. If it speaks easily enough and you can get it in tune, it’s good.
Final Thoughts:
Remember that the gestures are the most important thing in the Yun Monolog (and any other piece).
Even the long held-out notes are going somewhere; make sure that’s always apparent.
This whole piece is brimming with resentment and anger - use that fact to guide your phrasing decisions.
To get a feel for the Korean influences in this piece, it helps to listen to performances of traditional piri music - YouTube has a whole bunch of videos for this. Listen to how the performer builds phrases by taking a singular pitch and transforming it through ornaments, pitch bends, and improvisation - how organic and effortless it sounds. That’s the sound Yun emulates in his instrumental pieces.
Have fun with this! This is, in my opinion, the best bass clarinet piece out there. Take full advantage of the fact that we have it!
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