Commentary

In addition to the conceptual ideas Isang Yun shares in his interview-which, as I will suggest below, have profound implications for music theory and analysis far beyond Yun's music specifically-we should take note of the value the interview format itself holds for the production of new knowledge.The interviewer, Akira Nishimura, asks nuanced questions that lead Yun to consider aspects of his compositional practice that might be glossed differently in a different presentational format.Nishimura also introduces examples from Yun's compositions that illustrate key concepts, draws comparisons to concepts from other compositional practices, and pushes Yun to clarify important ideas.All of this illustrates the value of thinking through ideas in dialogue (Chua 2022)-resisting the Western assumption that philosophical thinking and theory-making (and, by extension, composing) are fundamentally solitary endeavors (Ahmed 2006; Collins 2000).[2] In his interview with Akira Nishimura, Isang Yun describes aspects of his "linear musical language" through which characteristic linear gestures "ranging from fine microtonal tremors to tremolos wider than a third" animate musical processes that at once form cohesive, living wholes and "transform without end."Yun borrows ideas from Korean singing styles (A-ak and Namdo Chang are named in the interview) and East Asian philosophy more broadly.But the actual content of those musical styles are seldom explicitly present in his music; rather, Yun folds traditional ideas-say, the gestural impetus of an A-ak court melody-into a "more general grammar" that also reflects his training in high-modernist compositional techniques in Europe.