The purpose of this study is to investigate the modern piano culture in Korea from the historical perspective. The piano had emerged as a symbol of modern music and the piano music rooted as a civilized new culture in Korea in the early twentieth century. The piano was brought in through the modernized school around 1910 and the following pianists were representative of the pianist in the early stage: Young-Hwan Kim, Kyung-Ho Park, Ae-Sik Jung, Mery Kim, Won-Bok Kim, Ae-Nae Lee, and Yung-Eui Kim.
The pianists in the early twentieth century in Korea mostly encountered and learned the Western music through the churches and modernized schools built by missionaries. For a full-fledged study, they took decisive actions to go abroad to Japan, America, and even to Germany.
The dominant musical activities of the pianist in this era were performing as a soloist and playing as an accompanist. Even though some pianists such as Kyung-Ho Park and Young-Eui Kim performed piano solo recitals, omnibus style concerts were much more popular; there were lots of omnibus style concerts for various purposes such as missionary, music distribution, group sponsor, and commemoration. In addition, many pianists had appeared as an accompanist for the vocal and instrumental concert in many occasions. It reflects the fact that the piano in this era functioned much more as an accompanying instrument than as a solo instrument.
Solo piano repertoires in this era were limited in the Western Classical and Romantic period; such as the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. These composers’ romantic music intensified the standardization of the repertoire by being presented as an assigned piece for various competitions. Pianists in this era, who embraced the romantic aesthetic as well as the romantic music, dreamed of an ideal world despite the reality of a colonial Chosun. Their illusion and recognition over a civilization has some kind of relationship to Orientalism, which the early Western missionaries had.
In addition, the civilization of the modernity, “being clean and pure”, caused an attention to a “Pure Music” in the music. Many pianists including Young-Hwan Kim, Mery Kim, Ae-Lee-Si Kim, Ki-Sung Yun and Kyung-Ho Park raised a question over the low morality and ethicality of the popular songs and jazz music. However, their “Pure Music” was insensitive to the historical reality of the colonial Chosun.