The musical score to British film director Percy Stow's "The Electric Leg," a 1912 black and white silent film that was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archives, is an original music composition created 100 years after the film's release using modern scoring techniques, featuring a combination of music software, electronics, and computers with a recording of live musicians. The process of creating the score involved dramatic analysis, strategic design given specific technical and budgetary constraints, composition of thematic material, creation of digital realizations or "mockups", a scoring session with the live musicians conducted in sync with the picture, and mixing the resultant recording to blend seamlessly with virtual instruments.

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Volume I

Béla Bartók, Concerto for Orchestra, and Affinities with Korean Folk Music

Volume II

Korean Rhapsody for Orchestra

By

Kwangsun Hwang

Doctor of Philosophy in Music

University of California, Los Angeles, 2014

Professor Paul Chihara, Co-Chair

Professor Ian Krouse, Co-Chair

When I realized that both Hungary and Korea belong to the same Ural-Altaic language region, I began to ask whether there is any connection or similarity between Béla Bartok's music and Korean music. Bartók, one of the most representative composers of Hungary, was strongly influenced by Hungarian folk music. It is commonly believed that the cultural aspects of a nation or a region, including music, are strongly shaped by the spoken language in the land. Based on this notion, this dissertation explores certain affinities between Béla Bartók and Korean folk music. My discussion centers on Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (1943), which represents the last and highest stage of Bartók's compositional career, during which he synthesized Eastern and Western components; and it uses this piece as the basis for comparing the composer with Korean folk music. In particular, I compare Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and Korean folk music in terms of rhythmic patterns, scales, and articulation. In addition to offering insights on Bartók's Concerto and Korean folk music, this research examines Korean composers whose works have demonstrated similarities vis-à-vis Bartók. These composers include Isang Yun, Unyung La, and myself. The major purpose of this research is to uncover under-studied connections between Bartok's music and Korean folk music.

Departum is an original music composition for string orchestra (formation: 3, 3, 2, 2, 1). Its title is derived from the words “departed” (i.e. deceased, defunct, dead, late, former, last), “departure” (i.e. an action of leaving, typically to start a journey; a deviation from an accepted, prescribed, or traditional course of action or thought), “partum” (the process of childbirth). The piece is conceived in three larger sections, all three of them, as well as their sub-sections, existing within the coordinates that these words set - they emerge and disappear unexpectedly, in untraditional manner, almost as being abandoned in order to try a different route. Symbolically, the three of them might also represent three stages of childbirth.

Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra is an original music composition for symphonic orchestra, featuring an alto saxophone soloist. The music presents a conflict between fast, short accents from the orchestra, and lyrical sustained notes from the saxophonist, embodied in a motive consisting of three step-wise descending notes. Part I is resolved with the saxophonist succeeding in converting the orchestra to lyrical passages. Part II is a slow movement, in which the conflict is materialized in the awakening of an original chorale melody that utilizes the inversion of the three-note motive from Part I.