• Sijohaknonchong
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• v.42
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• pp.7-28
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• 2015

This article defines sijo's musicality in two ways and verifies how musicality is shown in modern sijo with some examples. First, the first metre of a song's fourth part, that is, the sijo's jongjang, should include a reverse of its poetic image. A song consists of five parts. Each part is sung as a part of the song, that is, the sijo's dimetre, trimetre, or tetrametre, but its fourth part is sung as the monometre which is the first metre of its jongjang. This is because the first metre of a sijo's jongjang forms the axis of the reverse in its poetic image, and when this works properly, it can maintain musicality as a sijo. Second, a sijo's tetrametre and sijo-chang's gak should correspond as the same value along with the completion of its meaning. If a sijo does not keep the metre, each part's completion of meaning and also the sijo-chang's gak become problematic, so it is impossible to perform sijo-chang. Only when each part's completion of meaning and the gak of the metre correspond to each other as the same value, the sijo can maintain its musicality. Next, the study verifies how musicality is shown in modern sijo. This was examined through the examples of gyeol-metre and yangjang-sijo in dan-sijo that cannot form any tongsa madi, arrangement of syllable units beyond metres, or the examples of loose reverse of meaning in a transitional phrase. The two kinds of musicality presented by this author have already been proved with old sijo. However, modern sijo has been created mainly centering around its image, so such musicality has been ignored and sijo's identity has been damaged seriously. In sijo, musicality gives life. If modern sijo is created mainly around its image, it can never be called as sijo unless it has musicality. Although modern sijo is not performed as music, it should be equipped with the form to be performed as a chang. This is how sijo can maintain its musicality. It is thought that now is the time to recognize modern sijo as the matter of communication between sijo-chang and sijo literature, not just as the combination of sijo-chang and sijo literature.