Philippine Classical Music

Philippine music today is a unique blend of the traditions of the East and the West. It represents a flexible and wide variety of oriental and occidental influences, with the scale tipping heavily to the latter. Because of our long exposure to the culture of the western world, an imbalance in our cultural values was brought about by inevitable historical circumstances and foreign domination in the course of our growth as a nation. Our Asian heritage which existed prior to colonization was almost wiped out. A large percentage of our population understand and perform 19th century European and American types of Philippine music, both parochial and secular.

Philippine music present the collective experience of its people as expressed in its folksongs and creative music, a reflection of their feelings, hopes and aspirations. Philippine music may be classified into traditional/indigenous and contemporary/western. There are two types of traditional Philippine music – the indigenous music of the pre-hispanic origin, and the hispanized or western-derived. This paper specifically deals with western-derived classical music.