Spanish colonial liturgical music in the Philippines: Inventing a tradition

Spanish colonial music, both sacred and secular, enjoyed a long and widespread performance tradition in the Philippines from 1565 to 1898, but this has largely been forgotten or obscured in scholarship of the last hundred years. Musical practices that survive from the colonial period with an intact performance tradition are often reworked, or invented, to serve modern institutional and nationalist purposes, and work indicators of Philippine nationality both in the Philippines and abroad. This state of affairs is the result of both American and Post-independence era historiographies that sought to minimize or erase the perceived Spanish cultural influence on the country. Spanish liturgical music has not been a part of these invented cultural traditions, but recent interest in the form is driving scholarship that may serve as an impetus toward such an invention. Liturgical music is an interesting case among other arts that demonstrate a high level of syncretism with the various additional cultural influences surrounding the Spanish colony: Mexican, Chinese, and Islamic as well as Spanish. The extent to which it exhibits Philippine-ness will go a long way toward determining its existence as a practice among the nationally accepted and exported cultural practices. The music is part of an international parish style common throughout the colonial Iberian world and there are many common repertories that exist between the Old World, the New World, and the Philippines.