TUNUGAN: FOUR ESSAYS ON FILIPINO MUSIC is intended to fill in avoid in critical writing on Philippine musical literature—reflective and analytical discussion of important markers in contemporary Filipino musical life.  The four essays that comprise the book are intended to address professional musicians, scholars, and advanced students in musicology, composition, theory, art studies and the social sciences, offering a composite insight into aspects of systematic, historical and ethnomusicology.  In the context of modern semiotics, the author applied these methodologies in an attempt to expose the semantic domain and musical meaning of three specimens selected from the broad cross-section of Filipino expressive repertoires—the classical composition in the music of Nicanor Abelardo, the oral tradition in the Ibaloi ba’diw and the Maranao bayok, and the “avant garde”/ modern creations in the works of Jose Maceda.  On the other hand, the essay on the UP Conservatory of Music partly fulfills the historical dimension in these studies, although its main purpose I to argue for the institution’s role in laying the groundwork for the formulation and adoption of a nationalist ideology in Filipino art on the first three topics in terms of classicism, tradition, modernism, creativity and music scholarship.

 

The ultimate goal of this book, however, is to encourage Filipino music scholars and composers to explore the wide spectrum of Filipino musical expression and its institutional agencies, and seek a level of enlightenment, understanding, and creativity in their dialectic, poetic, ideological, philosophical, as well as social and cultural realms. (texts from back cover)

Contents:

Nicanor Abelardo: Filipino Classicism in the Art of Music

Bâdiw, Bayok: Poetry and Oratory as Filipino Musical Cultures

José Montserrat Maceda: Rebellion, Non-Conformity, and Alternatives

The UP Conservatory of Music: Nesting Ideologies of Nationalism in a Filipino Music