필립 글래스의 오페라 <사티아그라하>에 나타난 비폭력 저항운동과 작곡기법 연구

Abstract

Philip Glass composed the opera <Satyagraha> which deals with Gandhi's actions to regain the rights and freedom of Indians in South Africa, as he encountered and became interested in Satyagraha, a nonviolent resistance movement advocated and promoted by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Indian independence. The purpose of this study is to introduce the opera <Satyagraha> which has not yet been studied in Korea and to examine the content about nonviolent resistance movement by Gandhi which is an important feature of this work and the main composition techniques used in this work. To this end, I first examined life of Gandhi, the etymology and meaning of Satyagraha and the ideological background of the nonviolent resistance movement, explored the profile of Glass who composed the opera <Satyagraha> and his world of music and then explained the production background and outline of the opera. As a result of the study, it was found that the opera <Satyagraha> expressed content related to the nonviolent resistance movement through synopsis focusing on several events related to the protection for the Indian’s rights and interests, historical figures of each act representing the past, present, and future of Satyagraha, lyrics extracted from the Hindu scripture ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and a choir appearing as a crowd practicing Satyagraha. The main composition techniques used in the work were minimalism characterized by additive process and circulatory structure, the chaconne technique in which rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic variations appear based on repeated harmonic patterns and the use of various scales such as major, minor and chromatic scales and modes. It is hoped that through this study, a broader understanding of the opera <Satyagraha> will spread and follow-up research from various perspectives will be produced.