UC Davis

The Philippines contains a highly diverse musical history rich in avant-garde compositional practices. Composers such as José Maceda and Jonas Baes have been significant contributors composing pieces for several decades that have progressed their praxis specific to this region. These Filipino avant-garde practices were first developed by Maceda while he worked as an ethnomusicologist, leading him to search for non-Western “musical truths” through the discovery and development in his own compositions by incorporating elements from indigenous Philippine and Southeast Asian cultures. Filipino composers in the generations after Maceda, such as Jonas Baes, would follow this path and help further the practice of avant-garde composers in the Philippines. This dissertation investigates and analyzes this traditions in two representative compositions: Basbasan (1983) by Jonas Baes, and Colors Without Rhythm (1999) by José Maceda. These pieces are placed in perspective with the cultural and historical elements that lead to their inceptions, while analyzing compositional techniques that are unique to these composers and the region of the world that they are from.