Music as a Performing Art

The Musical Arts - Music as a Performing Art

• Music is a time-bound experience that requires a live performance to be fully realized.
• Rock paintings in certain locations suggest that rituals were once performed with chants.
• Music exists through a variety of musical instruments across different cultures, including flutes, pipes, drums, and percussions
• Music can be both vocal and instrumental

Subject Matters and Music Art Forms

• Filipinos have a deep love for music.
• Popular music genres include classical, K-pop, heavy metal, and rock.
• Music is expressed through sound, whether from instruments, the human voice, or both.
• Lyrics tell you what a song is (patriotism such as national anthems, seasons like Christmas, religious belief, hope, grief, love)
• Music includes both instrumental and vocal music

Socio-cultural Functions

• Music plays a role in Filipino rituals and ceremonies, serving as a means of cultural expression and social cohesion.
• Music contributes to the formation of cultural identity and the preservation of Filipino heritage and maintaining cultural continuity and expressing local values.
• Music is categorized into sacred (chants, hymns), secular (entertainment, community, or social functions), and theatrical (operas, concerts) forms.

Philippine Music Evolution

• Traditional and ethnic music represents pre-colonial forms.
• Hybrid forms that emerged that have both Spanish and American influences.
• Post-colonial modern Filipino music has also emerged.
• Hybrid musical forms blend local and Western elements with Spanish and American influences.
• European musical forms, religious chants and ballroom dances, introducing local practices.
• The kundiman (traditional Filipino love song) and harana (serenade) are new musical genres
• American colonization influenced Filipino music with the introduction of jazz, popular music, and Western classical styles.

Nicanor Abelardo

• Nicanor Abelardo (1893-1934) was a composer, pianist, and known as the Father of Kundiman.

Antonio Molina

• Antonio Molina (1894-1980) was a composer, conductor, and National Artist for Music in 1973.
• Molina was the longest-running Dean of the CEU Conservatory of Music.
• Assigned as musical director of CEU Conservatory of Music in 1948, retiring in 1970 and becoming Dean Emeritus.
• Molina's compositions exceed 500 including "Hatinggabi", a serenade for solo violin and piano accompaniment.

Analyzing or Appreciating Music

• Can use Music Theory and Analysis by Ramon Santos
• Musical Forms and Structures encompasses the formal characteristics of genres considering melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic elements.
• Understanding musical practices and their social, historical, and cultural contexts through ethnomusicological perspectives
• Technical aspects of the music, contextual background, performance elements, and personal interpretation.
• Traditional and Ethnic Music involves the Tagalog, Visayan, and Mindanaoan people.
• The role of music in maintaining cultural identity, with its diverse musical instruments and vocal techniques used in different regions.
• Folk Music reflects the customs, values, and everyday life of rural communities.

Examples of Kundiman

• Nasaan Ka Irog by Nicanor Abelardo
• Minamahal Kita by Mike Velarde Jr. (1940)
• Ang Maya by Jose Estrella (1905) Examples of Ballad
• Bituing Marikit by Nicanor Abelardo
• Mutya ng Pasig by Nicanor Abelardo
• Anak by Freddie Aguilar
• Tadhana by Up Dharma Down

Post Colonial Music

• Reclaiming nationalistic identity.
• Addressing nationhood and social issues.
• Synthesis of multicultural elements (traditional + modern, global to local).
• Contemporary music like OPM.
• Rock and Alternative (Eraserheads, Rivermaya).
• Ballads and Love songs (Regine Velasquez, Martin Nievera).
• Music Television and Radio (MTV, Myx).

Theatrical Arts

• Theater is a part of our lives
• Projecting ourselves when we interact with others (persona or character)
• Acting is using elements of theater

Theater & Drama

• "That theater whose setting is the street" (Bertolt Brecht)
• Theater means drama or play in performed state
• Drama and play are literature elements of theater absent performance
• Theater - a drama or play with a performance element
• Drama or Play is not a performance, but rather a plain story
• Theater, drama, and play are the same

Theater and Ritual

• Repetitive enactment referring to myths( mythos mean story)
• Myths are stories, image, or memories that a community cherishes
• Myths make shared beliefs concrete through a story
• Use myths as guidance (story of Adam and Eve)
• Panunuluyan (Christmas story, Salubong, Holy Week)
• Ethnolinguistic communities (anitos, baylan, babaylan, etc.)
• Rituals have basic elements of theater
• Traditional theater came with colonizers
• Used mainly for Christianity

Philippine Theater Evolution

• Spanish colonial | Western drama and religious performance (Moro-moro, Carillo or shadow play, Sinakulo, Sarsuwela)
• American Colonial | Modern Theatrical Practices
• Vaudeville (Bodabil) shows variety like comedy, magic, musical skits
• Honorata "Atang" de la Rama, the Queen of Kundiman and Zarzuela first Filipina movie star, starred in Dalagang Bukid

Carnival Queen (Luisa Marasigan)

• Luisa Marasigan was a graduate of Centro Escolar de Senoritas.
• She was the 2nd Miss Philippines of Manila Carnival.
• Carnival Festival during the early American period.
• The annual Manila Carnival takes place before Ash Wednesday
• Songs in an opera that are sung in solo are called Aira (a form of soliloquy).
• Sarswela made by Severino Reyes titled Walang Sugat (no wound)

Elements of Theater Arts

• Literary such as script or story adopted on a stage performance
• Performance such as acting out of the script
• Technical such as lights, music, and added elements

Philippine Theater Evolution

• Traditional Theater consists of indigenous performance like the epic chanting of the "Hudhud" and the dance-drama "Singkil" from the Maranao culture.
• Komedya is a Spanish-influenced theater that evolved from Moro-Moro, blending local and foreign elements.
• Sarswela is a Filipino musical theater including elements of Spanish song and dance performances - Zarzuela and Noli Me Tangere.
• Contemporary Theater involves various genres of drama and comedy to experimental and devised works.
• Literary Elements - there are 6 elements of theater according to Aristotle in his Poetics

Plot and Storyline

• Plot/Storyline is what is happening or whats the story is.
• Theme is the meaning of the play. What is the main idea or lesson from the play, subject matter, and content
• Characters are people created by the author brought to life by the actors.
• Dialogue uses nuances that a character has performed or read from the script
• Music/Rhythm is part of the performance and rhythm is how the actors speak
• Spectacle - visuals like set design, costumes and lighting

Plot Moments

• Preliminary events tell what happens before the plot and introduction.
• Initial incident starts the plot (conflict between the protagonist and antagonist).
• Rising action is a series of events leading up to the highest point or the climax
• Climax is the turning point that leads to the ending.
• Falling action is the resolution.
• Denouement the unraveling that brings the plot to the conclusion.

Performance Elements

• The director directs the play like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• Character creation is where the actors interpret the character like the first stage of production is actors and the directors discussing and analyzing the play
• Method acting is fully entering the role and feeling like that character through delivery of lines to express the character
• Action and Non-verbal skills is where an actor uses the body, blocking or positioning, gestures, and facial expression.

Technical Elements

• Scenery and props | Site of the dramatic actions like indoor or outdoor, movable pieces
• Costumes and Makeup | Exaggerated (oriental), natural (occidental)
• Style | Visual look of the production (historical, modern)
• Sound | Lines need to be heard with supporting sounds; can set the mood

Principles of Composition

• Focus on the theme is Unity
• Coherence means every part of the script connects with the other parts. May be different with episodic (Senakulo, Comedia or Moro-moro)
• Emphasis is when some elements of the play stand out (emphasis on the protagonist and antagonist)
• Good writing is done through storytelling and answering the questions- who, where, what, how, and why
• Conventions entails how things or the characters are developed (supporting characters, how heroes or rivals are)
• The types are expressed through songs
• Audience means to rework or in retelling stories to suit the audience groups.

Subject Matter

• Tragedy
• Comedy
• Melodrama

Key Plots

• Overcoming the Monster: Star Wars, Ang Panday
• Rags to Riches: Filipino telenovela
• The Quest in search of an object:The Lord of the Rings
• Voyage and Return: The Odyssey
• Comedy: Conflict to resolution
• Tragedy
• Rebirth

The Cinematic Art

• Cinema in the Philippines is in a world cinema
• The Philippines is set in a regional and international context, and as an American colony.
• Cinema in our country is the same as a colony in that industry
• National Cinema and Film makers had several tensions and contradictions
• National Cinema and Film makers had several tensions and contradictions by bringing the world to the Philippines
• Shaping cultural meanings and contrasting representations (French films to US)
• Technology and modernity ideologies
• Diversity of meanings depending on the place of showing and even the selection of exhibitions
• Films that offer escape from the war
• Spoof or parody of imperialist ideas.

Filipinos and Films

• Paved the way for production capabilities with overexposed sentiments
• Generate a nationalist cinema through previous Tagalog theater
• Navigating the colonial legacies and emerging national consciousness
• Early Cinema is from a French term Cinématographe by Louis and Auguste Lumiere from their motion picture apparatus in 1890
• Pioneer filmmakers and inventors
• Film is from the recording on a strip of celluloid film coated with light sensitive material

Moving Pictures

• A movie or motion picture is the illusion of movement on screen
• Strands of films: Feature and documentary, silent films
• French projected in Manila in 1897
• Hollywood Studios, Universal, Warner Brothers and Disney
• ITALY: Cinecittà
• ASIA: Shaw Brothers Hong Kong

2. Elements of Film

• Concepts or the idea of the film
• Full script
• Lens used for camera
• Movements (panning, tilting, rolling)

Camera Shots

• Extreme wide shot (EWS) (panoramic shot; subject is not visible)
• Close up (subject's feature)
• Medium close up (between MS and CU)

Editing

• Editing is done by putting together the science of things
• Music and SFX is from sound
• Dialogue is from a talking actor on film
• Compositions is for the layout of the film
• Film Grammar is the layout of a sequence