Stories inside Stories

Music in the Making of the Korean Olympic Ceremonies

Margaret Walker Dilling

• Publisher: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN:
  9781557292261
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

This volume is about the music in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Seoul Olympics (1988) that were watched on television by millions of people. More specifically, the book is about the planning and decisions that resulted in a remarkable presentation, a narrative enacted in mythic terms from Korean cosmology, archetypes from world religions, biblical imagery of origins, Olympian references, and ancient and contemporary theories of metamorphosis. As we hear Professor Dilling's account of the intentions and experience of the Korean planners and also of the sensory experience of the ceremonies, we approach an understanding of the ceremonies as a performance of "Korea." The volume uses music to fully explore the ceremonies' theme—"Beyond all Barriers"—and the event planners' interpretation of national division as a multistratified problem of global barriers.

Table of contents

• Front cover
• Notes to this edition
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Ammadang: The Day the Drum Was King
• Part 1. Scenes
• 1. Beyond all Barriers
• 2. Planners
• 3. Scenario
• Part 2. Music
• 4. Scores
• 5. Ceremony
• 6. Korean Traditional Music
• 7. Art
• Part 3. Voices
• 8. Controversies
• 9. Perspectives
• 10. Reviews
• APPENDIX A. Chronology of Events Affecting the Olympic Ceremonies
• APPENDIX B. SLOOC Administrative Organization for the Ceremonies
• APPENDIX C. Olympic Ceremony Planning Personnel
• APPENDIX D. Scenes and Composers/Arrangers for Opening-Closing Ceremonies
• APPENDIX E Overview of Modem Olympic Arts Festivals
• APPENDIX F Composers’ profiles
• Musical Examples
• References
• Index
• Back cover