On April 3rd, hundreds gathered at the Korean Cultural Center in London, UK. They were there to see an exhibition titled "The Sounds of Korea Heard Through Science." While there were officials from Korea who organized the event, the majority were local residents, indicating a significant level of interest. This seemed to connect the interest in K-pop artists like BTS and BLACKPINK to traditional Korean musical instruments.
According to the Central Science Museum on the 5th, the exhibition that opened in early April attracted over 1,700 visitors in just two months. Kwoun Seok-min, director of the National Museum of Korea, noted, "Korean traditional music transcends simple art to become science," adding, "We undertook our first overseas exhibition interpreting traditional music through science in London to mark the 80th anniversary of the Central Science Museum."
The museum analyzed the characteristics of our traditional instruments and sounds using mathematics and science, displaying them in a manner that local visitors could easily understand by comparing them with Western instruments. The instrument that garnered the most interest from locals was the Hwangjong Yul-gwan, which is a tube that can accurately produce the pitch of 'Hwangjong,' the scale standard of our court music, Aak.
For accurate tuning of musical instruments based on the Hwangjong Yul-gwan, it must be precisely crafted. King Sejong appointed Park Yeon as a musical director to reform Aak, and reportedly, the first thing Park Yeon did was to create a new Hwangjong Yul-gwan.
How could Park Yeon implement accurate pitch in the 15th century without digital equipment? Shin Eun-kyung, director of the Korean Science and Technology History Department at the Central Science Museum, explained that Park Yeon employed reverse engineering and standardization techniques widely used in modern engineering.
Originally, the Hwangjong Yul-gwan, which originated in China, was sized by aligning 90 grains of millet in a row. However, the millet size varied between China and Korea, and even within the same country, the size of millet grains was irregular, making it difficult to derive a consistent length for the tube.
Reverse engineering is an engineering technique that infers how an already created device operates and draws a blueprint based on that. Park Yeon created the new Hwangjong Yul-gwan after undergoing multiple trials and errors, using the sounds of existing instruments that produced accurate pitches as the standard.
Additionally, Park Yeon did not use irregularly sized millet grains directly, but instead divided the length of the existing Hwangjong Yul-gwan into 90 parts to create grains of the same size for use as a standard. This is an implementation of standardization, which became fundamental in modern engineering, in the 15th century.
Mathematical principles were employed to create the remaining scales based on the Hwangjong Yul-gwan. The method used was the "third-cutting profit method," which involved cutting one-third of the length of the Hwangjong Yul-gwan and then adding one-third of that length repeatedly. Director Shin remarked that "when the lengths of the tubes or strings are in a ratio of 3 to 2, the principle governing the absolute fifth note is elevated," which echoes the mathematical rules of music discovered by ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras.
Local visitors also expressed interest in traditional Korean instruments such as the Taepyeongso, Daegeum, Gayageum, and Janggu. Although Eastern and Western instruments utilize the same scientific principles, differences in materials result in each possessing unique timbres.
For example, the sounds of the Daegeum and clarinet are underpinned by Bernoulli's principle. According to Swiss scientist Bernoulli in the 18th century, as the speed of gas or liquid increases, pressure decreases. When air is blown into a reed or mouthpiece made from flexible materials like reeds or bamboo, the airflow leads to lower pressure inside, causing the reed to close. Due to the reed's own elastic restoring force, it opens again, and this cycle creates vibrations.
While the Bernoulli principle itself is the same, the timbre of the Daegeum and clarinet is different. The difference lies in the materials. Daegeum produces a unique vibration and distinctive timbre due to the use of reeds, a plant that is easily found on the Korean Peninsula, making it inherently different from Western wind instruments.
The same applies to the Gayageum and violin. The Gayageum's resonator uses a front board made of paulownia and a backboard of chestnut. In contrast, the violin primarily uses spruce for the front board and maple for the backboard, leading to differences in timbre because of this material distinction.
The exhibition concluded with a focus on how advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) could expand and develop traditional Korean music and Gugak. This exhibition showcased new compositions of Gugak by mathematically analyzing the structure of Gugak with a team from the Institute for Advanced Studies and POSTECH, and teaching them to AI.
Helen Jones, director of international cooperation at the Science Museum in London, stated, "Science museums are often thought to be only for children, but the Science Museum in London and the National Museum of Korea share a broad perspective that science is part of culture," adding, "I am very pleased to see a delicate scientific exhibition about the beauty of music that adults can also enjoy."