Serenading magnificently at 60

The UST Conservatory of Music is playing extra-beautiful music this year as it marks its 60th foundation anniversary. The Conservatory is the country’s largest music school, with more than 600 students and a faculty of 80 professors and lecturers. It also boasts of a long line of illustrious alumni and music pedagogues and of its pioneering curriculum in music education.

“I am proud that the Conservatory is one of UST’s Centers for Excellence and that it keeps its high standard in musical performances and music education,” Music Dean Raul Sunico told the Varsitarian. “When it comes to music, as far as I am concerned, we are second to none.”

Although music classes in the University started as early as July 1945, the Conservatory’s units then were not credited by the government. Six classes of Piano, Voice Culture, and Violin lessons were held at the back of the UST Gymnasium’s stage.

Only in 1946 did the government allow the Conservatory to confer the degrees after its students and professors, such as Luis Valencia, Elisa Maffei De Luna, and UST ROTC Band conductor Manuel Cuerva of the Lyceo de Barcelona, campaigned for a formal music curriculum.

The Music course was opened under the then College of Architecture and Fine Arts with Fr. Gregorio Garcia, O.P., as its first regent and Cuerva as its first director. The inaugural concert of the newly established Conservatory in March 1946 was attended by the Spanish community and US Army representatives. The concert featured a choir of seminarians under Fr. Garcia, Cuerva, and guest musicians Francisco Buencamino, Pedro Antonio, and Julio Esteban Anguita, a native of Barcelona, Spain and one of the first alumni of the University of the Philippines College of Music in 1933.

The Conservatory moved into a building between the UST Hospital and the Engineering Building called the “concert hut” in 1948.

The Conservatory’s muses

Before the Conservatory’s first year ended, Anguita replaced Cuerva as conservatory director. A year after the Conservatory’s foundation under Anguita, who had formulated the new curriculum for all music schools in the Philippines, top-caliber Thomasian musicians were already taking the place of foreign veterans in the music scene.

The famous alumni of the Conservatory’s first decade were the pioneers of the modern age of Philippine pianism, such as Benjamin Tupas, Regalado Jose, and Benedictine monk Fr. Manuel Maramba; violinist-conductor and music director Sergio Z. Esmilla,Jr.; sopranos Conching Rosal, Sylvia La Torre, Leticia Liboon, Juanita Javier-Torres and Fara Lizardo—who starred in the movie Song of Sto.Tomas filmed in UST in 1950. There was also musical director and film scorer Ernani Cuenco, who organized the Sampung Mga Daliri Atbp., a 10-piano concert at the Philam Life Auditorium during his term as president of the UST Music Alumni in 1984. Cuenco became National Artist for Music in 1999.

In 1958, Bernardino Custodio, the first Filipino conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra, became the first Filipino director of the Conservatory. From 1961-64, National Artist for Music Antonio Buenaventura took over the leadership of the Conservatory and became the celebrated composer who reorganized the UST Symphony Orchestra formed by Professor Manuel Casas in 1927. The orchestra was again reorganized by Fr. Maramba in 1988. In 1992, the UST Symphony Orchestra became a resident company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

The Conservatory faced its most difficult times under Director Sergio Esmilla Jr., as the enrollment in most music schools in the Philippines went down. Coincidentally, it was also during Esmilla’s term that the concert hut was demolished to give way to the rise of the Albertus Magnus Bldg. in 1964, which eventually became the Conservatory’s new home.

Tupas’ directorship of the Conservatory in 1968 produced outstanding young keyboard performers such as Marites Fernandez, Corazon Pineda-Kabayao and Bobby Wong, and wind instrumentalists like Enrique Barcelo.

Tupas was succeeded in 1972 by premier pedagogue Stella Goldenberg Brimo. It was during her term that the title “Director” was officially changed to “Dean,” making her the first leader of the Conservatory to become an official member of UST Academic Senate.

The Conservatory’s students have been perennial winners in the National Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA), the prestigious musical competition for young artists in the country, since 1973. The roster of NAMCYA winners includes sopranos Clarissa Ocampo and Rachelle Gerodias, and trumpet major Raymond de Leon.

“The list of our famous alumni both in the local and the international scene continues to grow and we even have some of them as faculty members,” Sunico said. “The others became members of the country’s most prestigious orchestras like the Philippine Philharmonic, Manila Philharmonic, and San Miguel Philharmonic Orchestras.”

The Conservatory boasts of music groups that have given UST a name in the international music scene. Most of the UST Symphony Orchestra’s instrumentalists have had stints with international choir ensembles such as the Asian Youth Orchestra and the World Youth Orchestra.

The UST Symphony Band, meanwhile, is considered as the first Philippine symphonic band to participate in an international band competition.

The world-renowned UST Singers under Prof. Gener Calalang have graced a multitude of grand musical events both in and out of the country. Since 1993, the choir has earned more than 45 top prizes in major chorale competitions around the globe. In 1995, the UST Singers’ won four first prizes and the Choir of the World Grand Prize at the 49th Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, the world’s oldest international choral competition, held in Wales.

Other musical ensembles of the Conservatory are the Coro Tomasino, the UST Jazz Band, the UST Liturgikon Choir and the UST Guitar Quartet and Ensemble.

Music’s heights

Through the years, various programs were added to the Conservatory’s curriculum.

Under Dean Alejandra Atabug, the Annual Summer Music Camp and Music Festival, organized by Maramba and now headed by Professor Herminigildo Ranera, conductor of UST Symphony Orchestra, kicked off in 1988 to reach out to talented or aspiring young musicians in the country by giving them short-term trainings and workshops. The first camp was held in Dagupan City’s Christian College Seminary and lasted for 16 days.

Erlinda Fule, pianist-alumna of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and long-term professor of music at UST, became dean of the Conservatory in 1992 during which she added the Post-College Bridging Program for Elementary and High School Teachers in the Conservatory’s programs sponsored by the Commission on Higher Education. It was during Fule’s deanship that Ched declared the Conservatory a Center of Excellence in Music Education.

“We are planning to add more programs in our curriculum which I think would need expansions in the learning environment,” Sunico said. “We are just waiting for more competent faculty members.”

As of now, the Conservatory plans to add programs such as Music Therapy, Film Music, and Computer Music.

So far under Sunico, the Jazz Department has been organized. The Pre-College Extension Program for elementary and high school students and Exchange Music Programs with international music schools also continue to be implemented.

“Before, most music graduates would turn out to be just teachers, tutors, and even housewives,” Sunico said. “But now that the uses of music have expanded, our graduates have a brighter future ahead of them.”

As its contribution to UST’s Quadricentennial Celebration as well as to mark its 60th year, the Conservatory will stage Tchaikovsky’s Russian opera Eugene Onegin on Oct. 5, 6, and 7 at the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo in CCP. The production will see UST’s leading voice lights performing a major opera, backed up by the UST Symphony Orchestra, the Coro Tomasino, and the UST Conservatory of Music Dance Troupe.