Artisan Captures Sublime Sounds
Reaching for That One-Percent Possibility
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
It was an unusual scene to see a queue of people with their traditional music instruments waiting for special ``treatment'' inside a small workshop of artisan Go Hung-gon, located in Sungin-dong, Seoul.
The 56-year-old master maker of Korean traditional instruments was busy repairing and tuning instruments such as the ``gayageum,'' a 12-stringed Korean harp and the ``ajaeng,'' a seven-stringed instrument.
His workshop, looked like a ``hospital'' for broken instruments and at the same time, a ``factory'' for new ones.
``I think my workshop is sort of a hospital for many traditional instruments that need my treatment,'' Go said in an interview with The Korea Times.
He usually mends the instruments as daily casual work, but his main line of work is producing the traditional instruments from scratch.
Go was designated as Important Intangible Cultural Property No. 42 for making traditional instruments _ mostly stringed wooden instruments _ in 1997.
He first began making the instruments at the age of 20 after learning from the late master Kim Kwang-ju (1906-1984), Go's neighbor at that time in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. He spontaneously developed his interests in the making of the traditional instruments from Kim.
His selection of traditional instruments varies greatly. Among the 20 kinds, there are 17 kinds of stringed instruments that he usually makes, which include the ``bipa,'' a Korean mandolin and the ``geumseul,'' a Korean lute. The two are rare instruments that are made for special occasions such as museum exhibitions or royal court music performances.
``The range of instruments that I make varies quite a lot. But I usually create gayageums,'' he said.
Like other traditional instruments, making a single gayageum is quite a complicated and delicate procedure.
To make one gayageum, he uses paulownia trees, which is known to be the major raw material for the wooden instrument as it has good resonance qualities.
``When making a gayageum, it is important to purchase paulownia wood of the highest quality. I then dry it in the open air, in natural conditions, which exposes it to wind, sunlight and sometimes rain,'' he said.
The dehydration process does not simply mean making it dry; it's a kind of ``mellowing'' process for the timber.
It takes about five to ten years to simply dehydrate and ``mellow'' the wood. During this process, many of the raw materials become useless because they are susceptible to decay or cracking.
``Only one out of 100 pieces of wood comes out of the dehydration process with the top quality needed so that an instrument for a master player can be created. The rest of them, some 99 percent, are middle-to-low quality and will be produced as just training instruments and not for masterpieces,'' Go said.
The instrument body is made from a single piece of paulownia wood and the resonator chamber is hollowed out of it.
Its soundboard should be made of paulownia, but a harder wood such as chestnut or walnut is used for the sides and the back, so the resonator chamber is made of both materials.
On the soundboard, ``anjok,'' or the movable bridges, support the strings. These bridges can be moved to adjust the tuning.
The strings enter at the top of the body, and underneath are ``dolgwae,'' or tuning pegs.
At the other end, the strings are wound around free floating pegs, looped through holes at the bottom of the instrument, and then the strings are all tied together in a coil.
This type of traditional stringed instrument is also found in other neighboring countries such as China and Japan.
But Go said that the Chinese or Japanese stringed instruments produce sublime yet immense sounds. Whereas Korean stringed pieces generate a clear and delicate sound because they use silk strings.
Go has been committed to manufacturing these instruments based on traditional techniques for more than 30 years. However he continually tries to revise the instruments to keep the tradition alive in this culturally fast-changing modern era.
``As time goes by, culture changes. Thus music should change too. When I first attempted to revamp the traditional instruments, many traditionalists opposed it. But now more and more traditionalists are welcoming it because the modernized instruments are useful to play various kinds of music,'' he said.
He has tried to reform the gayageum as it is the most widely-used instrument both in the past and the present. The instruments now are 17-stringed, 18-stringed, 21-stringed and 25-stringed.
``Before my attempt in reforming the gayageum, revamped gayageums had already been made. When modernzing these traditional instruments, changes should be made around the original tones and then they should be designed to perform various kinds of music,'' he said.
Manufacturing any kind of traditional instrument is laborious work as it is creating sound that is ``invisible.''
``I can make the best quality instruments with beautiful exteriors because I can see the results. But it is very hard to make the best sound because it is 'invisible.' It's the craftsmanship that conquers the internal quality,'' he said.
``To create the best sound, all techiniques should be tallied perfectly. This is something that can only be reached with feelings and experience, it is not something I explain logically,'' he added.
Most of his know-hows are based on research, on old documents such as ``akhakgwebeom,'' or illustrated text on traditional music made in 1493 by the roal order of King Seongjong.
But he emphasized that self-searching for a good sound is the most important virtue that a craftsman shoud retain. ``Learning the techiques to create the instruments requires time, for example 14 years like me,'' he said.
``I have about 80 apprentices. But if trainees do not make an effort to improve the quality of the sound in his or her own way, they cannot become a master,'' he said.
Teaching the know-hows to pupils has limitations, he said. Go said that the way of the master is to study and search alone, beyond the physial skills it takes to make better sounds, because sounds are very delicate. ``A little glitch in the construction procedure leads to disaster with the sound. To make the best sound, we traditionalists should struggle with ourselves,'' he said.
``I have never been 100 percent satisfied with my work. I am only satisfied with 60 to 70 percent of my work, as my crafts sometimes do not produce the perfect sound. I am always trying to make better quality sounds,'' he said.