Monolog

While Yun began as a strict exponent of 12-tone technique, he developed in the early 1960s a unique synthesis of Western and Oriental music using repeated pitches and musical shapes to create points of reference perceived as tonic moments, and novel virtuosic techniques to create an effect of ornamentation much closer to Chinese or Korean music than to Western. Monologue (1983) is an elaboration of the middle movement (for bass clarinet) of the clarinet concerto which he worte the year before. Written for the great Dutch bass clarinet virtuoso, Harry Sparnay, it strains the capabilities of the instrument in alternating sustained and frenetic sections to create a work of extreme intensity and beauty.