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Spanish conquest, a Filipino
classical music repertoire took off and evolved from
the European art music tradition.
Over the years, a definition of Filipino classical
music has been developed according to social and
artistic parameters appropriated yet distinguished
from western musical culture, and based mainly on
such factors as talent, formal training, technical
proficiency, creativity, and a Filipino
self-identity.
The development of literature on Filipino classical
music literature can be traced back to the 1860s and
lasted till the end of the World War II. This
literature included practically all forms of western
art music from short instrumental pieces and solo
art songs, to opera and other music theater forms,
and extended multi-part compositions for solo
instrument, chamber ensemble, and symphony
orchestra.
The most exalted aspect of music classicism
inherited from the west is the art of composition.
It did not only place the Filipino composer on a
loftier platform in the local music community but it
also offered him an imagined place among the masters
of a musical culture that he has long assimilated as
an integral part of his own native heritage.
Nationalism and Filipino Art Music
The rise of the Filipino classical music tradition
coincided with the rise of national consciousness.
Perceived as one of the highest forms of civilized
human expression, art music provided a formidable
arena for expressing a nationalist aspiration as
well as a pride in a Filipino cultural heritage.
Even during the height of the revolution against
Spain, patriotic hymns, marches, and the so-called
revolutionary kundiman had already proliferated in
the circles of the literati as well as the ordinary
ranks of freedom fighters, both composed by trained
musicians or extemporized by ordinary plebeians.1
Under the American colonial administration, the
spirit of nationalism permeated the literary and
theater genres, including the zarzuela; for this
creative artists and producers were severely
chastised for their dramatic works’ seditious
contents.2 Filipino society was also looking to its
creative artists for the construction of concrete
symbols of “Filipino-ness” by which the nation and
its people could develop self-respect and
respectability in the global community.
The Americans sought to develop the creative skills
of the Filipino composers in the same level as
composers from the western world and to create and
produce a distinctly “Filipino” classical music
literature. For this reason, Filipino music students
were directed to draw inspiration from nationalist
movements in the arts and music of other westernized
peoples outside western Europe like Russia, Hungary,
Finland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, and Mexico.
Acting under the largesse of the American imperial
government, the Philippine Assembly established the
Conservatory of Music of the University of the
Philippines in 1916 for the purpose of providing
professional academic training to Filipino
musicians. According to its first Filipino Director
Francisco Santiago, courses in composition were
introduced “aimed at the enrichment of our native
music... novelty, style, and form were stressed to
improve native compositions so that the country
might treasure and preserve them for future
generations.” (Bañas, 1970, 123) The UP Conservatory
of Music became the principal breeding ground of the
most prominent classical music composers of the
Philippines. A rare pronouncement by another
Filipino composer captures the prevailing pragmatism
in the collective nationalist sentiment among
Filipino composers at the time, even revealing a
savvy attitude towards his country’s colonial
masters:
The nationalization of our music is so important
that it merits more than a passing notice. It is
true that America, with all her progress in music,
is still without a national music. But America can
never have one; perhaps thousands of years from now
when conflicting foreign elements have unified into
one compact thing, she can produce music that is
somehow distinctly American. What about our kundiman,
awit, and kumintang? Let us dig them up and from
them fashion a music that is truly Philippine.
The above statement was made by Nicanor Abelardo,
the man who stood tall and prominent at the height
of classicism in Filipino music.
Nicanor Abelardo was born in the town of San Miguel,
Bulacan on February 7, 1893. Based on the
biographical sketch by the eminent scholar E.
Arsenio Manue15 and his life story written by
cellist-educator-writer Ernesto Epistola6, Nicanor
Abelardo was an exceptional talent who was
completely molded and cultivated by the social
environment of his time.
Just like other individuals who later became noted
for their musical careers, Abelardo’s childhood was
surrounded by the arts, particularly music. His
paternal grandmother was a celebrated performer of
duplo and karagatan7, his grand-uncle Pedro Henson
was a visual artist and poet, his mother Placida was
a church singer, and his father,8 who at one time
earned his living in photography, gave Nicanor at
age five his first lessons in solfeggio and the
bandurria. Abelardo’s legendary talent and precocity
for music were immediately evident. He played his
father’s arrangement of Rossini’s William Tell on
the guitar at six, tried his hand on other
instruments, played danzas, jotas, and polkas for
the capers by the town’s haranistas, and composed a
waltz at eight. At nine, his painter-uncle Juan
Abelardo brought him to Manila where, while
attending primary schools and assisting his uncle in
the latter’s trade, Nicanor learned to play the
piano practically on his own. He also shared voice
lessons given by the Italian teacher Enrico Capozzi
with his cousin Virginia.
Abelardo possessed an unbridled artistic urge and
pursued erudition in the other arts, as well. He
tried learning to paint under uncle Juan’s guidance
and also engaged in writing poetry in Tagalog and
Spanish, informally tutored by a literary friend
Mariano Velayo. He played the piano as an apprentice
of Francisco Buencamino for the silent movies in
Cinematografo Filipino. Soon after, he was making
the rounds of other theaters, from the cheap and
small, to the high class establishments.
He associated with the famous zarzuela librettist
and producer Florentino Ballezer, first as an
instrumentalist, and later as composer and director.
His talent was like a sponge that absorbed whatever
music - traditional or modern - seeped into its
corpus. And he particularly reveled in the new and
the untried.
Everything that Abelardo fancied to undertake came
quite easily. It was only at the Conservatory of
Music of the University of the Philippines,10 that
his rare ability was formidably challenged. Within
the walls of the institution could be found the most
revered artists and music experts in the country -
foreign as well as local - as members of the
faculty. Abelardo’s yet untapped sense of discipline
immediately came into full bloom as he inundated
himself with exercises in harmony and counterpoint.
Finally, he was learning the higher grammar and
poetics of a language that he had known and used
since childhood.
The UP Conservatory of Music became his musical home
where his raw faculties were weaned to formal
perfection, his imagination and acute sensitivities
matured, and emotions and expressive instincts found
nourishment, refinement, and aesthetic consummation.
While polishing his craft in counterpoint and
harmony, Abelardo broadened his command of the
entire tonal language, aligning his practice with
the music of Wagner, Chopin, Liszt - the late
romantics - who brought harmonic chromaticism to its
expressive limits. He learned the art of tone
painting, thematic development, and formal
structuring not as fabricated materials or devices,
but as subtle and spontaneous poetic expressions.
His growth as an artist, composer and musician
extraordinaire was phenomenal. To begin with, his
admission to the Conservatory was purely based on
merit since he did not possess a high school
diploma. Upon his junior year in 1918, he received
an appointment to teach solfeggio and harmony.
According to Epistola the larger world of Nicanor
Abelardo is the tragic story of a man whose
metaphysical consciousness and aesthetic
sensibilities and powers were unceasingly confounded
by the physical realities of human existence.
Looking at his short but highly charged life is like
witnessing a surreal drama. All the elements were
there - the humble beginnings, the rise of the
phenomenal genius, a difficult marriage, a bohemian
existence, a family to support, expressive energies
constantly searching for perfection, the doting
master and teacher, the life of nocturnal
minstrelsy, friendships and camaraderie, alcoholism
and unfulfilled dreams. His music spoke not only of
his life but epitomized the climate, mood, and
spirit of the Filipino cultural and social landscape
in the 1900s.
Nicanor Abelardo finally graduated in 1921 with a
Teacher’s Diploma and the next ten years of teaching
and professional activities saw a musical career
that scintillated not only in its avid probing of
every thing known musically at the time, but also in
realizing this knowledge through his prolific
creativity. Indeed, Abelardo was able to fit into
his enormous creative bag virtually all the existing
musical forms and media existing then: zarzuela,
opera and operetta, symphony, concerto,11 sonata,
string quartet, suites, fugues, overtures, ballad,
serenade, art song and Filipino evolved art song;
the classical kundiman, kumintang, balitaw, danza,
vocal duets, trios, choral music, marches, hymn
(sacred, patriotic, commemorative), trio, short
character pieces (nocturne, valse, cavatina,
capriccio, intermezzo, polka, fantasie impromptu,
reverie, barcarole, bolero), incidental music, tone
poem, the foxtrot, tango, paso-doble, two-step,
folksong arrangements, and music for different
instrumental ensembles.
Nicanor Abelardo was a musical poet. He wrote some
of his texts but also heightened the aesthetic
impact of some of the best poetry of his time13
through his copious musical arsenal.
Besides being a creative genius, he was a
storyteller and chronicler. He painted in musical
tones real-life tales of woe and love. Abelardo
closely observed and depicted local humanity in all
its manifestations, from the noble and sublime to
the mundane and humorous. He wrote music about the
bato-bato, the sinigwelas, bibingka’t langgonisa,
Kenkoy, the Philippine Health Service, wine
drinking, Lola Basiang, and the sampaguita. And in
all its variety and color, Abelardo was able to
portray his native social environment with the
appropriate images, sometimes grave and solemn,
sometimes light and comic - always poetic but never
trite nor vulgar.
In 1931, Abelardo was able to go to the United
States and enroll at the Chicago Musical College. In
barely a year, Abelardo was able to assume and
internalize the idiom of the Expressionist School of
Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Because of his
complete understanding and command of the European
harmonic language, it became completely natural for
him to absorb the concept and language of atonality
that was still in evolution from the chromaticism of
the late and post-romantic eras of western music.
It can be safely said that Abelardo was the first
Filipino modernist composer, one who was able to
keep abreast with contemporary trends in the western
musical world of the early twentieth century. Thus,
his entire output far outweighed and outreached the
stylistic and idiomatic scope of both his
predecessors, contemporaries, and even some post-Abelardo
generations of Filipino art music composers before
the 1950s.
What then is the music of Nicanor Abelardo?
An in-depth appreciation of Abelardo’s music
requires a clear definition of the general stylistic
and aesthetic schema of the Filipino classical
music.
One of the most important characteristics of
Filipino classical music, whether vocal or
instrumental, is its heavy reliance on the song.
Thus, melody, more than any other musical structure
permeated in practically every musical piece.
A large proportion of Filipino musical compositions
are also program-oriented, based on extra-musical
meaning such as stories and tales, depicting
characters, objects and circumstances. After all,
Filipino life and culture is predominantly storied,
and it is through narratives—epics, ballads, rumors
and gossips—that Filipinos have preserved their
traditional worldview and cultural ethos. The advent
of classical music into the local expressive culture
provided another medium for telling stories with
greater sophistication and modernity.
In the aspect of language, Filipinos studied harmony
as a system of functional progression of chords
according to a tonal center. On the other hand,
counterpoint was learned more as a compositional
device, rather than as the syntactic foundation of
the harmonic language and western polyphony.
The music of Nicanor Abelardo did not only fulfill
the canons and dogmas of Filipino art music, but
also transcended their boundaries. The depth of
Abelardo’s musical expression digs deep through
different aesthetic layers, from intense lyricism,
mysticism, and almost manic-depressive drama to
subtle humor, simplicity, and candor.
One work that reveals so much about Abelardo’s
musical style and his distinctive musical ideas is
his song “Mutya ng Pasig”. Composed in 1926, “Mutya
ng Pasig” could well represent a mature level of
Abelardo’s classico-romantic poetic imagination.
The Kumintang
“Mutya ng Pasig” was conceived as a kumintang,15 a
musical expression that Abelardo believed to contain
in its pre-Hispanic rhythm formula and modal
configuration, the oriental sentiment and the deeper
aesthetic consciousness of the Filipino psyche (See
Ex. A). Thus, he treated the kumintang not merely as
a source of structural material, but a unique form
of native expression, of which he intended “Mutya ng
Pasig” to be a representative of its classical
variety.
“Mutya ng Pasig” is a unique song in that it is the
song of two persons: the narrator-poet Abelardo, and
the river nymph. It therefore demands that the
singer take on a dual identity and to reveal this
duality through a highly sensitive musical delivery.
The first part is the song of the poet, starting
with a dramatic recitative that describes the
mysterious aura of the entire scenario of a quiet
river gently bathed by the light of a peering moon
and slightly stirred by the gentle evening breeze.
This vivid scene was tonally depicted by Abelardo
with a drone on the dominant tonal region,
disquieted only by the punctuating sub-dominant
chord (A-flat) subtly elaborated by the kumintang
motif. Furthermore, the text is made prominent
through its poetic recitation based on another old
tune formula called tagulaylay. In his other works,
the drone appears as one of Abelardo’s preferred
devices in expressing mystery and a feeling of
ominous anxiety and tension.
After a momentary pause on the tonic, both melody
and harmony begin to pick up motion on the line
“tila ginising ng habagat” [awakened by the gentle
breeze] and the text begins to describe the presence
of a mysterious figure, whose gleaming white image
and long flowing tresses appear to breath life and
agitated excitement to the whole scenario. And the
small ripples of the kumintang motif in the piano
becomes surging waters as her presence grows from
apparition to reality.
Abelardo’s musical poetry tries to capture every
detail of this animated scene, including the
syncopated sparkle and flicker of the bubbling
waters.
Harmonically, the entire unfolding drama is still
framed against the prolonged dominant chord drone,
creating so much harmonic and emotional tension with
its elaboration and the almost uncontained melodic
swells that it accompanies.
The tonic (in the E-flat major mode) finally appears
in m. 30 as a significant harmonic region only at
the end of the first part, or at the end of the
poet’s dramatic narrative, revealing the Mutya ng
Pasig in her full glory. “Mutya ng Pasig” begins to
tell her story with a lyrical melody and an active
harmonic motion, enhanced by vivid chromatic
contrapuntal lines in the accompaniment. As she
reaches a climactic point in her tale,” ...ang
pag-ibig ng mamatay, naglaho rin ang kaharian... “
[when love died, my kingdom vanished], Abelardo
jabbed a sudden and jarring harmonic shift to a
remote tonal region (from Eb major to F#7) to
dramatize the line: “...ang lakas ko ay nalipat sa
puso’t dibdib ng lahat... “[my strength was moved to
every other heart and breast]. The initial F#7
traverses through a passing-chord sequence towards
the subdominant Ab to reach its pinnacle of tension
in Bb dominant 9th chord. In this sequence, Abelardo
enhanced the feeling of agitated urgency and tension
with his chromatic suspensions, acciacaturas and
other harmonic dissonances.
The first part of the final statement of “Mutya ng
Pasig” “...kung nais ninyong ako’y mabuhay...” [if
you wish for me to live] is depicted against a
background of an ominous calm, in direct contrast to
the shattering force of her final exhortation,
“pag-ibig ko‘y iyong ibigay!” [give me back my love]
(EXAMPLE F - “Mutya ng Pasig” ms. 49-50)
“Mutya ng Pasig” is the classical romantic and
musical poet Nicanor Abelardo at his best. It
reveals several important aspects of his craft and
his own interpretation and realization of the given
canonic parameters of creative writing at the time.
First, in his adoption of the kumintang as the
central framework of this work, Abelardo did not
merely quote the tune of the kumintang, but
attempted to appropriate the spirit of the kumintang,
including its tempo and its style of delivery (tagulaylay,
m.6). Thus, his own melodic inventions throughout
the song were intended to be a piece of kumintang
with all its structural peculiarities and aesthetic
character, expressed in the modern harmonic
language.
Secondly, the piece is musical poetry not only for
its almost sacred respect for the text, but also in
the highly sophisticated musical portrayal of the
text’s meaning, imagery, and metaphor. The harmonic
dialectics of Mutya ng Pasig is also quite unique.
First, it is set in the rather difficult key of
E-flat minor, connoting gravity and seriousness in
western music literature, but also providing the
composer so much harmonic space to create a wide
variety of chromatic shades and tonal hues. Abelardo
heightens the dramatic tension through the use of
dissonances, in both contrapuntal or linear context
as well as non-harmonic tones. Mutya ng Pasig does
not only show Abelardo’s linguistic and poetic
mastery but also his visual sense in the way he used
the musical texture in painting the transforming
scenarios of the song.
Finally, Mutya ng Pasig shows that the greatest
strength of Abelardo’s music lies in his melodic
inventions which control or dictate for the most
part the entire conduct of his songs and even
non-vocal works. Abelardo’s melodies are well
crafted and extremely musically functional in the
sense that their construction is highly dependent on
what is being expressed and in the manner Abelardo
chose to express them. In Mutya ng Pasig, the
configurations of his melodies show such variety,
from being simple and discursive to lyrical or
dramatic or dramatically lyrical.
“Nasaan Ka Irog” and the Kundiman
One musical form of premier significance that came
out of the classical music period is the kundiman,
today considered a Filipino cultural emblem in the
same breath as the barong tagalog or the pasyon. It
is perhaps the fortune of the kundiman to belong to
the Tagalog tradition, the predominant language and
culture of Manila and its art academies, as well as
the language of the leading progenitors of art music
in the emerging nation-state. Thus, the kundiman
developed into a national symbol of Filipino
artistic expression, mainly due to the interest and
efforts of the art music composers in finding
sources of identity for their collective expression.
From its isolated beginnings as another oral form of
expression in Tagalog, the kundiman may be traced to
old modal tune formulas such as the kumintang and
awit, that were used by suitors to sing out
extemporized verses of love and passion.
The kundiman underwent transformation from a
formulaic piece of music to one of high poetic value
and creative independence. Nicanor Abelardo’s
kundiman contributed a great deal to this
development, as mirrored in his modest but highly
dynamic output in the ten-year period from 1920 to
1930. In the listing of Manuel, Abelardo actually
composed less than ten kundiman, starting with “Kung
Hindi Man” in 1920. However, a close study of these
compositions will show how Abelardo raised the
kundiman to an art form wherein poetry and music did
not merely compliment each other but became one
formal entity.
His first officially documented kundiman “Kung Hindi
Man” illustrates a kind of a test piece in which
Abelardo appeared “rule-bound” in dealing with his
melodic materials, as well as other structural,
formal and harmonic parameters. His melodic phrases
are visibly anchored to pre-existing materials from
the old kundiman. The following example shows
melodic fragments that have striking similarity to
tune phrases from “Jocelynang Baliwag”:
The next major kundiman of Abelardo is “Nasaan Ka
Irog”, written in 1923. Stylistically, the work may
be categorized as belonging to his mature period
starting in 1921, the year he completed his
teacher’s course at the UP Conservatory of Music.
“Nasaan Ka Irog” is Abelardo’s memorialization of
the doomed love affair of bosom friend Dr. Francisco
Tecson, to whom the said piece was dedicated. In its
over-all conception, Abelardo manipulated language,
music, and time structures to create a highly
unified dramatic musical poetry. Just like in Mutya
ng Pasig, he combined both the elements of speech
and song in dealing with the poetic lines, while he
explored the semantic and phonetic regions of the
harmonic language in painting the meaning and
emotional sentiments conveyed in the text.
The opening melodic structure is a clear departure
from the symmetrically constructed melody of “Kung
Hindi Man” in that its configuration is more visual
than tonal, a kind of circuitous line describing a
searching motion. Moreover, the rising motion at,
the end of the phrase is almost like a literal
replication of the question mark as well as the
semantic and tonal property of speech:
“Nasaan Ka Irog” shows Abelardo taking greater
liberty in expanding on the framework of “Kung Hindi
Man.” His melodic phrases, no longer tethered to the
old kundiman formulas, are like bold extended
strokes, almost wildly exploring the height and
depth of the singer’s vocal range, and weaving
through different directions (See Ex. I) or leaping,
with intense passion.
Perhaps the most telling tone painting that Abelardo
accomplished in “Nasaan Ka Irog” is his deliberate
avoidance of the tonic as a harmonic region of rest
in the entire First Section in the minor mode. In
the First and Second sections, all the harmonic
motions lead to the dominant (V), a point of the
highest tension and instability in the tonal
harmonic system.
PLATE: Harmonic Reduction of “Nasaan Ka lrog”
It is only at the end of the Second Section (ms. 38)
that the entire music finally resolves in the tonic,
where resignation is expressed in the text “ngayong
nalulungkot ay di ka makita” [now that I’m lonely, I
can’t seem to find you]. Immediately however,
another dramatic recitation re-introduces the
dominant that opens the Final Section.
“Nasaan Ka Irog” as a masterpiece in classical
kundiman literature was accomplished by Abelardo by
stretching its formal mold - its melodic, harmonic
and textural parameters, reconfiguring them as
commanded by his artistic imagination and his own
dramatic interpretation of the text.
A comparative view of Abelardo’s major kundiman
offers an insight into his over-all stylistic
approach and creative process. Phrase lengths of his
melodic structures, for example, is clearly dictated
by his sense of drama in the musical delivery of the
poetic lines, varying from a one-measure phrase to
the five-measure varieties.
In “Kundiman ng Luha” (1924), the 1-3 phrase sets
are followed by a 3-5 phrase set:
In the Third Section of Kundiman ng Luha, this
variance in phrase-lengths is quite apparent, 3-2-2
and 2-2-4 sets:
The most potent element in the kundiman of Abelardo
and all his other compositions for that matter, is
his poetic command of the chromatic harmony. His
imaginative utilization of the different harmonic
regions, as well as the different colors and shades
of his chord structures were meticulously attached
to meanings and states of emotion. He was able to
heighten tension through the use of 7th and 9th
chords, hidden dissonances, or by accelerating the
harmonic motion.
As the Harmonic-Melodic Phrase Table and the
Harmonic Outline Chart would show, each of the five
kundiman cited do not only have varying melodic
phrase structures, but harmonic progressions as
well. The First Section of “Kundiman ng Luha”
illustrates a kind of stasis-and-motion harmonic
sequence. It shows that the first four phrases are
all a prolongation of the tonic minor, but
immediately picks up motion as the poet begs the
beloved to open her heart to his mourning and ailing
soul.
Kaluluivang luksang luksa at may sakit Buksan mo’t damayan kahit saglit.
[To an ailing soul in mourning Open your door and aid me even for a moment]
A more active harmonic sequence occurs during the
Third Section as the poet’s desperate and fatal need
for his beloved intensifies. Abelardo unleashed his
emotional intensity through a series of secondary
dominants, passing through different harmonic
regions, complimented by a surging sequence of
ascending melodic phrases and an agitated
instrumental texture.
The harmonic motion of Abelardo’s classical works is
not only functionally logical but semantically
appropriate, always giving deeper or greater shade
of meaning to the music in terms of emotional
nuances and shades of sensuality.
In his songs, Abelardo’s sensitivity to the text is
almost sacred. Although the prosody sometimes
suffers due to the limitations of the conventional
rhythmic vocabulary of western music vis-à-vis the
complex syllabic construction and accents of the
Tagalog words, his musical rhythm was carefully
fitted to the natural inflection of key words and
climactic stresses of the poetic lines in the
musical phrases.
The songs and other works for the voice are truly a
showcase of Abelardo’s creative genius and dramatic
instincts. But what about his instrumental
compositions? How did he exercise his creative
skills on text-less music?
The Instrumental Works
To answer this question, one might consider 1921 as
a year of unveiling. It was the year he completed
the requirements for the Teacher’s Diploma in
Science and Composition17 and a year of intense
creative activity. In the listing by Manuel,18 a
total of nineteen compositions were written, ranging
from large-scale works such as the Mountain Suite
and the Academic Overture for orchestra,
four-movement and three-movement sonatas, and a
string quartet, to short solo instrumental pieces
that include his First Nocturne, Fantasie-Impromptu,
and Valse Caprice for piano, the Cavatina for
violin; and the Romanza for violoncello.
These compositions reveal the young composer as
attempting to wander in the backyards of Chopin,
Liszt, and Beethoven in terms of adopting and
absorbing the instrumental idioms and poetic
parlance of the masters of western romantic music.
Even at this initial stage of his creative career,
Abelardo’s non-vocal compositions are quite
indicative of their dependence on the song. Although
the thematic materials are simple and rather
uncharacteristic, they are undoubtedly inspired by
the singing voice as in the First Nocturne, the
Romanza for cello and piano, or the second section
of the Fantasie-Impromptu.
As Abelardo expanded these themes, however, they
lose their innocence so to speak, as they become
transformed into highly energized organisms of
affective expression. Abelardo turned to the
kundiman for many of his melodic structures. In
fact, these melodic structures appear to serve as
Abelardo’s “love motifs.”
In his instrumental works, Abelardo capitalized on
the wider range capability of the instruments
vis-à-vis the limitation of the human voice. It is
not only the range and linear direction that
Abelardo explored but also the variety of phrase
lengths that he could utilize to create greater
drama. Note for example the motivic-phrase divisions
in the Cavatina melody from ms. 20-32, with the
possible phrase-measure groupings: 2 (1+1), 2 (1+1),
4 (1+3).
Another area of commonality among all these works is
an extremely fertile harmonic ground by which
Abelardo caused them to traverse.
Abelardo’s romanticism and sense of drama found
poetic realization in the variety of ways that
remote tonal regions representing emotional
polarities, are processed towards or in contrast to
each other in the context of transformational
representation. The First Nocturne is one such
example where Abelardo bridged two remote tonal
regions: c# minor and Bb major (lowered major
seventh or bVII), triggering the sequential harmonic
motion with an altered lowered-supertonic six (bII)
and proceeding to the submediant seventh(V17) and
finally to the raised subdominant seventh (IV7)
which Abelardo made to serve enharmonically as a
lowered modifier (Neapolitan function) to the
lowered major seventh or Bb major. See the following
harmonic outline of ms. 11-24.
The transfer to the tonal region of Bb however was
not totally consummated but simply used as a vehicle
to present a new melodic idea (the “love motif”) and
jumpstart a series of passionate utterances soaring
to new emotional levels and reaching a climactic
point in measure 42, the dominant seventh (V7) of c#
minor, the home key. Note the following harmonic
reduction of ms. 32 to 46, outlining the return to
c# minor via the submediant seven (V17).
(EXAMPLE 0.2 - Harmonic Outline of FIRST NOCTURNE
ms. 32-46)
In the return to the home key, Abelardo created a
passage wherein he presented a dialogue by means of
answering and intersecting contrapuntal lines of
different rhythmic character:
This seeming recap is not final, however, in that
Abelardo entered another level of tonal
consciousness in the region of D-flat major (ms.
59), the enharmonic equivalent of the parallel
major. In this new tonal arena, Abelardo combined
the two thematic, materials, expressing the union of
two seemingly remote musical statements: one, a
brief downward melodic figure of tender character,
and the other an extended and emotionally aggressive
statement with an ascending figure at the end).
One’s imagination can perhaps be stretched to
suspect that Abelardo designed the Nocturne as a
portrayal of the beloved and the lover in a love
dialogue, finally coming together at the end, united
in another level of transcendental consciousness.
The poetic use of transformational harmony to
portray emotional and affective transcendentalism is
also quite evident in Romanza for cello and piano.
In spite of the simplicity of the melodic material,
(even less complex than the First Nocturne),
Abelardo was able to give it a dynamic flowering.
The piece is in three parts, a kind of an A-B-A1
form, whose sections differ from each other in their
melodic materials and harmonic directions.
The harmonic settings of the A and B sections are
quite different. In A, the harmonic motion
progresses over a descending bass line that seems to
explore the depth and breadth of the tonal space,
while the upper melodic line moves in an ascending
direction. Harmonically, the motion is simple, going
from the I to the V, but gathering emotional tension
in the areas of ii6/5 and iv and proceeding to the
highly unstable dominant eleventh chord (V-11) via
the German 6th (#IV b6/5), as illustrated in the
harmonic outline of ms. 22-34:
The B part on the other hand is shaped by ascending
lines, first in the bass and later in the lower
inner voice, passing through highly remote harmonic
regions such as lowered major supertonic (bII) in
ms. 44 and proceeding to the lowered submediant
minor seventh (bvi7) that functions as a dramatic
point of release to the mediant seventh (iii6/5) on
the way to another temporary domain of VN (I1-7). It
finally returns to the tonic region after an
exhaustive journey through different states of tonal
sensuation. Furthermore, Abelardo was already using
the pedal point in providing greater instability and
tension, as can be seen and felt in ms. 45-48 and
ms.53-56.
The return to A is not merely a re-articulation of
the thematic material and its initial harmonic
character, but is actually a forward motion and
follow-through of the emotional drive that began to
swell in Section B. While the harmonic motion of A1
replicates the downward bass line of the First
Section. This motion goes even deeper. The entire
music is now expressed with greater textural
exuberance, mixing counterpoint and passionate
exchange between the cello and the piano, and
reaching its climax in the remote tonal region of C#
major, possibly signifying a total change in
consciousness and perhaps even a state of ecstasy
and erotic fulfillment. The difference between this
dramatic, transformational approach to the V and the
German 6th approach in the First Section is quite
striking in that the first approach is not as strong
as the final climactic moment in the Final Section.
Abelardo and Modernism
The next collection of extended classical works were
written during his one year residency at the Chicago
Musical College in 1931. His brief American sojourn
was both an escape from a spiritually and creatively
constricted environment as well as a journey into a
realm of new challenges. These challenges were
multi-pronged, starting from his struggle to free
himself from the restrictive demands of his academic
employment, to his search for resources to support
his new endeavor,19 and his own internal battles
between his unquenchable thirst for alcohol and his
unrelenting pursuit to satisfy his equally
unquenchable thirst for artistic freedom and
fulfillment.
By sheer determination, Abelardo was able to travel
to the United States and got admitted into the
Chicago Musical College. He easily passed all the
music examinations given in the morning of June 10,
1931, covering the bachelor’s to the master’s levels
that astonished the examination panel as well as his
own adviser.20 By July 13, a little more than a
month after he formally enrolled, the first movement
of his Violin Sonata was finished. The music of the
Violin Sonata is like a long-overdue eruption of a
seething musical volcano. Its soaring melodic lines
and highly ambiguous and unpredictable harmonic
progressions are like the furies unchained from
their imprisonment in the realm of the classical
romantic idiom.
In his highly revealing letter to his pupil Hilarion
Rubio, Abelardo expressed his artistic euphoria on
his musical emancipation:
Of my studies, nothing have been more encouraging.
After a stay, of scarcely three weeks, I have
written a “sonata” for violin, and a Fugue for
string quartette on the atonal basis. 1 have been
released at last from the Classical Bond, I have
been sent to wander in the new horizon taking for a
guide Hindemith, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, -
and the ultra modern style.
The challenge and intimidation that confronted his
musical creativity upon his admission to the Musical
College easily wore off. On August 19, some two
months after his arrival, he wrote another letter to
Rubio, revealing his remarkable self-confidence:
My stay here or rather my having come here gave me
an idea that, after all, we are not too far behind
anybody else as far as music is concerned.Perhaps I feel kind of optimistic about my
ability, but the fact is that I came to the
conclusion that ‘There is nothing new under the sun’
and the unseen things are always ‘There’; we do not
see them simply because we do not have enough
‘Light’ to illumine our view.21
The tonal language of the Violin Sonata is not
atonal in terms of the pre-serial and serial works
of Schoenberg and his school starting from op.11 (Drei
Klavierstuecke). It is cast more according to the
tonal explorations of the Second String Quartet and
the Chamber Symphony, in which reference to tonality
is intended to dramatize its deconstruction by
entering into a field of tonal ambiguities. While
Abelardo wrote his Sonata in the domain of “a” as
the tonal center, the entire music was written as
though challenging the over-all influence of “a” as
a place of rest. The over-all scheme of the three
movements is in fact based on a tritone
relationship: a-minor/major (1st Movement); E-flat
major (2nd Movement); a-minor (3rd Movement).
(EXAMPLE R.1 – 1st Movement Violin Sonata ms. 1-16)
Taken as a whole, the statement of the First
Thematic area is jarring in its ambiguity. The
melody that is boldly introduced by the solo violin
appears to focus on “e”, while the piano
accompaniment establishes an octave pedal on “a” but
tonally muddled by “non-harmonic” quartal
structures. At this initial passage, it is very
clear that Abelardo was using the tritone and the
perfect intervals (of 4th and 5th) as the main
polarities in play in the entire work, and no longer
the tonic versus the dominant.
The first thematic material shows an unfettered
character, the melodic contour no longer strictly
bound by triadic harmonic cells but pitting
different intervallic units as a point of contrast.
This can be observed in the upward melodic lines in
ms. 3-4 with leaps of perfect fifths (p5) and in its
parallel in ms. 7-8 with leaps of augmented fourths
or tritones. Even at this opening statement, Abelardo had already
indicated his intention of obfuscating any sense of
conventional harmony by creating a tonal arena that
pits perfect (p4 and p5) intervals against imperfect
intervals (+4ths) instead of tonic (I) and dominant
(V) as the foundation of the larger formal schematic
design.
This is further underscored in the transition
between the first to the second thematic groups (ms.
29-36) which is completely based on the quartal and
whole-tone structures. In this particular instance,
it seems obvious that Abelardo was aware of the
so-called “mystic chord” of Alexander Skriabin,
consisting of superimposed tritones and creating a
feeling of mystery and uncertainty.
(EXAMPLE S – 1st Movement Violin Sonata ms. 29-42)
In the Recapitulation section, Abelardo stated the
first theme with the full force of the piano and
only followed by the violin playing a variation of
the theme after the first 8 measures.
The First Movement of the Violin Sonata reveals so
much in what Abelardo must have experienced in
giving vent to his sense of discovery and
exploration, reveling almost deliriously in a
new-found musical landscape. He treated and absorbed
every bit of musical knowledge both old and new as
part of a metamorphosed self, and not as added craft
or technique in constructing newly-sounding pieces
of music. The intensity, lyricism and poetic drama
that characterized his earlier works merely found
greater latitude in his expanded language and in his
liberated musical consciousness.After hearing the performance of the first two
movements of his Violin Sonata, he wrote:
Commencing with my work, (Violin Sonata), ...you can
more or less imagine it to be traditionally
classical and academic, taking into consideration
that it was the first composition I wrote here. It
commences with a vigorous minor theme dissolving
into a rather plaintive subject and which is worked
out to a climax, followed by the development, the
recapitulation and coda. The second movement is most
interesting, consisting of a passionate theme of the
Wagnerian ‘melos’ (Riemann) which later on was
developed into a canon in unison by itself at one
bar’s distance. But, somehow or other it has seemed
to reflect my inner emotions, annihilations, and
optimistic hopes ... my cry of agony, my burst of
passion, my longings, my hopes and resignations, as
I sat there listening to myself reveal my inner
emotions that way!
Following the Violin Sonata, Abelardo exhibited a
wide breadth of new structural materials and
creative processing of these materials in the spirit
of experimentation. He wrote:
...I am encouraged to write in the modern idiom now.
‘Atonality’ is the watch word; and Debussy,
Schoenberg, Ravel, Hindemith, Bartok, the models ...lt
is not my desire to say that I can write like
Debussy, Eric Satie, etc., but I can write as
Abelardo and nothing more.
The other major works written in 1931 are the
Cinderella Concert-Overture, Panoramas and the
Sinfonietta. Of the three, the Sinfonietta, a
one-movement work for string orchestra, contains
some of the most remarkable evidence of Abelardo’s
expressionist inclination as well as his
experimental attitude. The structures that he
crafted in Sinfonietta are quite a departure from
the aesthetic realm of structural balance, symmetry,
textural and temporal logic, stretching the
boundaries of conventional musical discourse
according to Abelardo’s relentless search for
expressive fulfillment. Emerging from his creative
explorations in Violin Sonata and Cinderella
Concert-Overture, Abelardo’s modernism in
Sinfonietta is not only bolder, but brimming with
daring conviction. The opening statement alone
indicates a very clear tonal design in which the
dichotomy between tonal harmony and atonality are
presented in direct opposition to each other - the
first phrase cast in minor interval, while the
consequent phrase is a series of fourths based on
Skriabin’s “mystic chord” formation.
This phenomenon is not new in western literature,
which in fact echoes the opening statement of Arnold
Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie where a highly
chromatic Wagnerian passage resolving in F-major is
suddenly shattered by a trajectory of ascending
perfect fourths.
In the Recapitulation in ms. 162, the concept of
harmonic transformation is again felt as Abelardo
reveals the hidden “tonal dressing” of the 3-note
opening statement - C major going to a dissonant
E-flat major.
In the Sinfonietta, Abelardo was able to stretch his
musical ideas to a wider expressive sphere through
rhythmic intensification, extreme chromaticism, and
a highly contrapuntal texture that layered against
each other three to four lines of different rhythmic
characters. The Closing Theme of this work shows
Abelardo in his latest expressionist frenzy as he
put his kundiman love motif through a series of
expanding sequential repetitions.
In spite of the over-extended chromatic language
that Abelardo acquired and practiced from 1931 till
his passing in 1934,24 his music and poetic
expression remained ingrained in the song, more
specifically the kundiman and the kumintang which he
embraced and internalized as the source of both his
individual and Filipino sensitivity and temperament.
The wide variety in the characters of his musical
materials, that are at the same time traceable to
common structural backgrounds show not only the
extraordinary creative sense of Nicanor Abelardo but
also his unquenchable thirst to experiment. In this
regard, his late work A Study in Kumintang, a 43-bar
miniature for piano quintet is like an exclamation
point. Using a kumintang modal fragment as a roving
drone-pedal point, the entire piece is a virtual
test in combining an ancient local music with his
newly found modern atonal language.
Conclusion
While it may well fit to label him as a modernist,
Abelardo was in reality a romantic through and
through, trying to express his yearning and longing
not with the conscious predetermination and
formalistic symbolism of his European models, but
with a highly spontaneous and almost subliminal
feeling and reaching out for the unknown. It is
indeed difficult to sort out through Abelardo’s
extant body of works, of what is of major
significance and what is of lesser creative or
artistic value. For in every work, one will find a
part or parts of the complex musical spirit of
Nicanor Abelardo that absorbed the entire sonic
environment of his time, whether it be his sense for
the classical and the poetic, or his more mundane
humor and uninhibited sensibility for folk music or
jazz, or his craving to experience the unknown. For
whatever it is worth in the early twentieth century
history of Filipino music, the musical life of
Abelardo stands singular for its having encapsulated
the exceptional in the achievements of the Filipino
composer of the time. But more importantly, Abelardo
transcended the Filipino penchant for mere
replication and duplication of pre-existing musical
models. He strove to explore the aesthetic realm of
his individuality and the Filipino psyche, by
expressing his very own life in the remarkable
manner that he knew how, and in new ways to
communicate that he indefatigably sought to
discover. The legacy of Nicanor Abelardo is
enormous, and this brief account is merely a modest
attempt to lift the lid on a hidden treasure.
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