josé s. buenconsejo, phd (college of music, university of

José S. Buenconsejo, PhD

(College of Music, University of the Philippines Diliman)

© Copyright of University of the Philippines Diliman. All rights reserved. 2013

In this paper, I explore a preliminary history of Philippine music literacy or of the culture that

produced music notations, later forms of which can be called "compositions" as these are so

understood, in Philippine modernity. With the rise of music publishing popular music in the last half

of 19th century, "compositions" authored by Filipinos were circulated as commodities in the local

market, even foreign ones, and these were bought by middle class consumers who comprise the

piano-owning leisure class. In this history, I would emphasize that there occurred a radical shift

sometime in the middle of 19th century from notated music that was used in a performance

connected to church rituals (and thus which represented religious-dominated communities

concomitant to early modern feudalistic Philippines) to one that was becoming more secular, market-

oriented polity beginning the last quarter of 19th century. Further on, with the rise of music

academies in early 20th century, which were private institutions supported by elites and middle class

consumers, music commodification took the form of live musical theater, art music concerts held in

public theaters and, not to be missed, film music scores.


It is imperative to deal with specific performance contexts that gave rise to varying sets of

notated musical works and their pragmatic meanings. As it shall be later shown, one can

correlate the types of notation that were attendant to dominant musical practices of a

particular historical period. Thus, we can arrange the extant notations in the Philippines

into a series in a chronology of historical periods, without implying, however, that the

chronology is linear for certainly history is much more messy than one can imagine for

and each period produces diverse musical notational practices. Nonetheless, certain

types of notations have tended to dominate particular periods, thus warranting the

heuristic positing of analytical historical labels. This parameter for constructing the

historical periods is tentative and heuristic here because, conventionally, historical

periods are reckoned in terms of the development of normative musical styles.


Francisco Santiago (1889-1947) and Nicanor Abelardo (1893-1934)


17th to 1820s (early modern)

Mid-19th to 1920s (regimental bands,

music schools in Intramuros, print

culture, musicians' unions, piano culture)

1920s (Music Academies, notably UP Conservatory of

Music)


A notation is a symbolization of sound and the amount of information encoded into the music

symbolization or representation would depend upon the purposes to which the symbolization is

meant to serve. Music notation is thus a kind of writing for it can with varying degrees describe or

prescribe how music is heard or how it is to be played or sung. Since the 17th century, notations in the

Philippines can be classified into the following categories:

(1) Transcriptions (of remembered sounds).

(2) Paraphrase (or arrangement of remembered sounds). A paraphrase or arrangement is

done to adopt or adapt the remembered sounds to the performance medium that would have its

specific idiomatic figuration.

(3) Notations with no composers' attributions.

(4) Compositions with composers' names.


Ritual Music of Spanish Catholic Church (17th century unto early 19th century)


Source: David Irving, Colonial Counterpoint (Oxford UP, 2010)


devaluing of individual effort in composing and hence its corollary, i.e., the importance placed upon the ceremonial function of music in ritual which represents the collective rather than the individual.


From Chua, Kirial de Baclayon (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2010) © Copyright of University of the Philippines

Diliman. All rights reserved. 2013

Music Sources Apposite the Emerging Philippine Public Spheres of late 19th Century


Spanish regimental bands proliferated and these accelerated the diffusion of Western musical knowledge and skills, on top of what was already in place since 17th century, i.e., the experience of evangelizing functional church-imposed music…. In these bands were trained the musicians who later played in local, day-to-day social life activities such as religious processions, funeral processions, government civic events (e.g., welcoming of dignitaries), and especially in town fiestas that always have band concert serenatas and incidental music in comedias. A look into the musical requirements in comedias suggests that popular Spanish tunes and rhythms (valses, jotas, marchas, and danzas) were incorporated as staple comedia music and I surmise that the Filipino folk songs must have grown from this native musical theater context.


Aside from formal training in music in the bands, the church continued the music training of Filipinos (now inclusive of mestizos, creollos, sangleys, and indios) as in the institutionalization of the Manila Cathedral's Colegio de Niños Tiples and the San Agustin Church in Intramuros. Having had the prestige and rigor similar to the music training found in the Spanish regimental bands, the first generation of reputable Filipino composers came out of this church social environment. Notable examples were Marcelo Adonay and Simplicio Solis.


From mid-19th century with the introduction of lithographic printing technology, commodification of popular sheet music supported the market for pianos, music books, and band and orchestral instruments from Europe. The 1877 annuario lists down a list of music stores selling piano in Manila and another list of "compositores de piano." The biggest music store La Lira published a catalog of its inventory in 1887 and it contained all European works, thus attesting to their great consumer demand.

In 1872, lithographer Parra printed five volumes of religious music meant for Franciscan use (Cantoral para el uso de las religiosas de Santa Clara de la Cuidad de Manila), but which must have also been sold in the market to other religious orders. These compendiums had various types of sacred musics with no attributions to the notators' names whatsoever, thus this was a remnant of the previous period. This goes to show that it followed the tradition of devaluing individual authorship in sacred music because that music was for ritualistic purpose. Contrariwise, on January 6, 1878, La ilustracion de oriente, an announcement appeared in that newspaper, this time with the composer's name ("Eusebio Alins"), about the sale of a piano piece in the then chic danza style, La Flor Manila. This piece later became associated with the primary doyen of Manila's elite social circle, Dolores Paterno. From then on, we find some newspapers printing music in their issues, suggesting the novelty of a work called "composition." In addition, there were composition contests that attested to the "new-ness"--a modernity-- of the practice of composing music, again, with composers' names attached to the musical pieces. A newspaper article in 1892 printed the winning piano composition by Vicente Sotto.

By then, in the 1890s, popular sheet musics so quite popular already. Filipino compositions were even published by foreign publishing houses so that it was only natural that local music publishers had to join the capitalist market competition. The most famous of these piano music composers during the second period was Julio Nakpil. He was a self-taught musician, but coming from the upper class background, he had access to Spanish language and must have read the comprehensive Eslava music theory books (a copy of which UP music library has). But for those who can't read Spanish, a unique document, a music theory method book in Tagalog, was published in 1885 by Fr. Jose Zamora, a native priest. This was intended for the masses who couldn't read the language of the elites: Spanish. It was printing again that afforded the spread of music literacy and with the circulation of information in the public sphere, the emergence of Philippine civil society became a necessary consequent.


(4) With the opening of Suez canal that drastically cut the time to travel to and from Spain. The acceleration in travel time resulted in the following:

(a) Travels by French Mallat, English Bowring, and Puerto Rican bureaucrat Walls y Merino who inscribed impressions of Philippine landscape by way of music transcriptions of popular-folk songs (1892). Their transcriptions were similar to the effort of that 17th century Jesuit priest who transcribed the passion melody as a sign of awareness to music cultural difference.

(b) Many operatic companies and later zarzuela troupes visited the Philippine Islands and disseminated Western works and it is for this reason that concert overtures and tunes from operas were visibly represented in public concerts and veladas.

(c) Filipino musicians began to be exported to key cities in China (Shanghai and Hongkong), IndoChina (Vietnam and Singapore), and Malaysia. It must be noted that the demand for highly-skilled Western-trained Filipino musicians brought the export of their labor to countries where they were most needed in the entertainment industry. In mid1880s, well-known musicians in Manila organized themselves into a union, which regulated the practice of music. It must be noted that a certain mobile Filipino musician named Libornio died a hero in Peru for having started band music in that country.

© Copyright of University of the Philippines


Indeed, it was the 19th century conservatory-type training in elite churches and band music training plus music commodification (as afforded by the technology of lithographic printing) and ease of global flow that set the stage for composers to inscribe their musical ideas as individual acts of creation.


20th Century Music Academies unto the Hegemonic Rise of UP Conservatory of Music


What was in Abelardo's mind when he hid his name for this piece? Was it shameful to borrow a foreign musical language, so that it warrants hiding one's identity? Was he being ironic, reflecting upon his self-awareness that he was free a "Filipino" yet bound to contemporary, still colonial, music language? Did he actually copy a passage from an unknown European exemplar, just to finish a work that was uninspired but needed to be done in order to comply with requirements in Chicago? While it is certainly true that the rare music manuscript collection in UP possesses secrets into modernity and spread of capitalism in the Philippines, the use of name "hiram," is unfortunately too secret to be unravelled at the moment. That can be deferred to future reading.


These projects are underscored by an assumption that music sources are valuable materials, especially for music historians, who are in need of answers to basic theoretical questions pertinent to Philippine humanities and culture, among many, (1) the development of Philippine music as it encountered modern Western culture, (2) the relationship between orality and literacy in the formation of folk, art and popular Philippine musics, and of (3) the Filipino music compositional creative industry in the midst of globalizing capitalism and exchange.


UP music library has the largest collection of printed sheet music, which is a proof to the print music industry since 1890s. In addition, UP music library has the largest collection of manuscripts of original Filipino art music owing to the hegemony of the UP composition program in the Philippines.

By preserving these music sources, one is made permanently aware of the richness of Philippine cultural history, a matter that can consequently bring about national pride at the achievements of past Filipino musicians and their contribution to national cultural development. By finishing the gargantuan task of doing an exhaustive, scientific thematic cataloguing, one can then write accurately about Filipino achievements in the realm of music composition. © Copyright of University of the Philippines


Thank you!


josé s. buenconsejo, phd (college of music, university of

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