The creativity of contemporary Korean yangak (Western Classical music) composers has been expressed through various musical experiments and techniques since Western Classical music was introduced in Korea in the 1880s. The spread of Western music has had an impact on the rise of Westernization in Koreans' cultural life. Cultural oppression during the Japanese Occupation (1910-1945), followed by the Korean War (1950-1953), and political, social, and economical instability through the 1970s has shaped the musical culture and played a major role in Korean composers' ideology of Korean music. With the increasing political stabilization and economic growth in South Korea beginning in the 1980s, a group of young Korean composers, called the Third Generation Composers Circle, began to lead the modernization of Korean music. They proposed the establishment of a proper Korean music through the creation of a musical democracy to reach Korean audiences through familiar musical concepts, as well as by exploiting Western Classical compositional techniques and incorporating Korean traditional musical materials to express Korean national and cultural identity.

Byung-Eun Yoo (b.1952), a member of the Third Generation Composers Circle, has created compositions based on the style of traditional Korean folk music. Yoo particularly expresses his national and cultural identity through a series of sanjo compositions that integrate traditional musical elements with his own distinctive musical language. A study of Byung-Eun Yoo's Chajinmori and Tanmori for Piano (1987), Piano Sanjo, No.2 (1994), and Sanjo for Cello and Piano (1993) demonstrates how the composer attempts to synthesize different musical traditions in terms of form, rhythm, mode, melody, and harmony. By choosing to compose sanjo, Byung-Eun Yoo has united the most nationalistic form of Korean traditional music with the piano, the universal Western instrument. The significance of his piano sanjos lies in the composer's effort to recreate and communicate between Korean traditional and Western Classical music worlds.

Some historical background of the development of yangak (Western Classical music) composers' musical expression through political, social, and economical flux is required to place Yoo's music in context, as well as a discussion of the compositional goals of three generations of yangak composers. Since the musical aspects and tradition of Korean and Western music are different, a brief survey of Korean traditional music and its general characteristics is necessary.