Liann J. Kang

My inspiration for this piece comes from a Korean national treasure, the Sacred Bell of King Seongdeok (성덕대왕신종), the largest bell in Korea, which is known more widely as the “Emille bell” (에밀레 종), pronounced “em-ee-leh.” The Emille bell is named as such because its sound, coming from the huge bell’s distinctive spectrum and beating effect among its many partials, resembles a vibrating voice slowly calling “emille…,” which means “mother” in old Korean.

A number of different versions of folktales exist about the bell and its distinct sound, all telling that the sound of the bell is the crying of a child who was sacrificed and cast into the melting bronze in construction of the bell, as supposedly only through the sacrifice of a child could the bell be completed. The appalling story is not based on fact, but its visceral horror show that the deep resonance of the huge bell captivated people at the time with enormous emotional depth and impact.

Isn’t it alluring that a certain combination of tones, a crafted sound, can let people feel emotions, recall memories, and bring them into a different time and space for a moment? The narrative structured by sounds can express something impossible to portray in words. Music moves us in a way distinct from other art forms: sound and music are ephemeral in nature. After the vibrations of the air fade away into nothingness, the stories that it told exist only in our mind. On the one hand, the sound itself will never exist again. But the memories that it leaves behind and the stories that follow can remain eternally.

Emille portrays not the existing stories made based on the bell, but rather the idea of narrativity itself that lives inside the sound. How far can our imagination go with the sound of just one strike of the bell? Could I weave a crafted sonic story from the layers of emotions embedded in a single sound object? The piece started from these questions. As well as being an inspiration, the recording of the bell is used as a primary sonic material throughout the piece, processed with various ways with electronics.