This piece is neither a requiem mass nor a lamentation for a particular person, but music of consolation for all mankind, as B. A. Zimmermann’s Requiem für einen jungen Dichter and P. Hindemith’s A Requiem for those we love are, implying ‘prayer and invocation for alienated human beings and poor-hearted souls.’ Composed in 1975 for a commission from the Korean Culture & Arts Foundation, the direct ideas of this work came from the deaths of his mother and close friend Shin, Dong-Yup, the poet. Three oboes represent the wails of the souls of his mother, Shin, and the composer himself. Beyond invocation of the spirits of the dead, this piece paradoxically sublimates a negative recognition of the realities such as alienation, rupture, and anxiety to sympathy, love and earnest wishes.
(Jun, Sang-Jick (Composer, Lecturer at the Seoul National University) / Translated by Seo, Jeong-Eun (Lecturer at the Seoul National University)