Song of Spring Morning (2025)

for Voice and Piano

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Commissioned by Geumjeong Arts Center

Premiered on 27th June 2025 at Geumjeong Arts Center, Busan, South Korea by Soprano SunHae Im and Pianist Richard HyungKi Joo

Digital Single Released by Soprano Haegee Lee and Pianist Young Hwan Jung

Son’s Song of Spring Morning draws on verses 1, 3, and 4 of Yun Seon-do’s The Fisherman’s Calendar, a masterpiece of 17th-century Korean poetry. This work depicts the stillness and vitality of a spring dawn—the thawed river, the mountains stirring with life, the call of birds, and the blossoming of flowers. Through contemporary vocal writing, Son conveys the poem’s timeless celebration of nature and the quiet joy of a simple life, carrying forward the philosophical spirit of traditional Korean verse.

Obu Sashi Sa (The Fisherman’s Calendar)

Obu Sashi Sa, a cycle of forty shijo poems portraying the four seasons at one of Yun Sondo’s favorite retreats, is widely regarded as the pinnacle of shijo composition. The central figure, the fisherman, is a time-honored symbol of the sage who lives in harmony with nature, a motif rooted in Korean literary traditions. Yun Sondo was inspired to write this series while reworking the earlier Obu-ga (“Fisherman’s Song”) by Yi Hyŏnbo—himself drawing from an anonymous Goryeo-era poem—which had previously been adapted into nine verses in collaboration with the scholar Yi Toegye. Among all shijo cycles, Obu Sashi Sa stands out as the most ambitious in scope. As the reader journeys through the changing seasons alongside the fisherman, they experience daily life as Yun himself knew it from his time on Pogil Island. Yet beneath the serene surface of nature’s rhythm lies a deeper tension: the internal conflict of the Confucian scholar-gentleman torn between the ideals of reclusion and the call of public duty. While maintaining many elements of traditional shijo, Obu Sashi Sa also departs from convention in notable ways. It plays with variations in syllabic structure and introduces two refrains not typically found in the genre. The first is a rotating series of lines describing practical tasks aboard the boat—casting off, hoisting and lowering the sail, rowing, and more. The second is onomatopoeic: chighukch’ong, chigukch’ong, mimicking the creak of the anchor chain being wound, and osawa, a rhythmic chant echoing the sound of the oars in motion.