Madame Park––A Tone Poem for Chamber Orchestra

Madame Park is a tone poem for chamber orchestra. It is based on the Korean classical literature “박씨부인 (bak-ssi-bu-in).” The story is written by an anonymous person in the Joseon dynasty after the Qing invasion of Joseon (1636-1637), in order to overcome despair and the sense of defeat in the war. Madame Park is a female hero who helps the country with her wisdom and miraculous power. The piece consists of four movements. Each movement depicts a scene or mood of the story, featuring Korean traditional musical elements, such as the pentatonic scale, interval of perfect fifth, grace notes, held tones, glissandi, etc. Especially the second movement and the last movement were influenced by Korean traditional musical genres—“pan-so-ri” which is a one-person opera and army music called “dae-chi-ta.