The Study on the Convergence Factors of Korean Musical - Focusing on the Structure and Numbers of Musical 『Seopyeonje』 -

Abstract

The musical 『Seopyeonje』 used as a main material of Korean antique melodies with the convergence and the main characters of this musical are Songha, Yoobong and Dongho who had been tried to find their own music through popular music and the traditional songs, Pansori. This paper investigated and analyzed the many types of convergence in style, structure and melody with the elements of music based on Changkuk and music theory of Korean traditional melodies through the main numbers of the musical 『Seopyeonje』. As a result, there are some high artistic values of structure, style and melody in the musical 『Seopyeonje』 by considering effectively the convergence of musical genres and ensembles of instruments and vocals. Firstly, from a structural point of view, the main three characters played two different music roles in Pansori’s melodies and the popular music performance as a production number, respectively. This structural convergence makes the audience to immerse themselves in the musical dramatically. Secondly, the most distinctive factors are the performance of Pansori enclosed in harmonic progressions of popular music and the pentatonic melody changed into tonal melody. Lastly, the remarkable numbers of musical 『Seopyeonje』 have included the same interval structure of Bonchung and Hachung which are the Korean traditional theory even though the melodies of numbers in the musical are not based on the pentatonic scale. There are some limitations in implementing several convergence methods by analyzing the musical 『Seopyeonje』. We suggest a better future research on many musicals by applying several convergence methods.