Traditional Music and the Work Concept: The Kayagŭm Sanjo of Hwang Byungki

In The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, Lydia Goehr argues that the Western concept of a musical “work” has been extended to “music of almost any sort.” This phenomenon has profoundly affected the world’s musical life, yet it has not been systematically studied. This paper examines a country—Korea—where the “work-concept” has been imported with Western music and extended to traditional music. Yet it also highlights a musician—Hwang Byungki—who has continued to treat a traditional genre (kayagŭm sanjo) as something different from a “work,” illustrating how traditional music may help contest the “conceptual imperialism” of the work-concept.