Jos Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia

Author(s): Michael Tenzer

Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Winter, 2003), pp. 93-120
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VOL. 47, NO. 1 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY WINTER 2003

Jose Maceda and the Paradoxes of

Modern Composition in Southeast Asia
MICHAELTENZER/ University of British Columbia

Maybethe sonority of music bad become more interestingthan before,but

listeners,accustomedfor a millennium tofollowing the keys in their royal
court intrigues,beard a sound without understandingit.Anyway, the
twelve-toneempiresoon disappeared.AfterSchoenbergcame Varese,and
be abolished not only keys but the tones (the tones of human voices and
musical instruments),replacingthem with a subtle,no doubt magnificent
structure of noises, but also inaugurating the history of something different
based on differentprinciplesand a differentlanguage .... Thehistoryof
music bad ended in a flowering of audacity and desire.
MilanKundera,TheBook of Laughterand Forgetting

There is an old proverb: "Man makes plans... God laughs." The Composer
makes plans... Music laughs.
MortonFeldman,A CompositionalProblem

the
early and mid-twentieth
century, the cultivation of contem-
During
porary art music composition in urban centers throughout Asia, Africa
and South America created new cultural contexts for Western music. People
identifying themselves as composers emerged where few or none had been
before, working out their ideas on score paper and building musical com-
munities, sometimes from scratch, to sustain their ventures. Over time they
attempted to make their approach to the Western tradition not just a repli-
cation of imported European knowledge received at colonial and mission-
ary hands, but a living, local entity. This process was social as well as musi-
cal, insofaras composers envisioned new culturallandscapes with themselves
as empowered agents in their creation. At first, most were schooled in con-
servative institutions offering an education of hymns, marches, or the nine-
teenth-centurysymphonic romanticismthen widely thought to have universal
relevance and meaning. But many at a certain point looked up from their

? 2003 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

93
94 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

hymnals or sonatas and wondered how that music connected to their lives,
and how it ought to.'
The Filipino musician and ethnomusicologist Jose Maceda represents a
case in point. Over the course of three-quartersof a century of performance,
research, and composition, he sought to reshape contemporary musical life
in the Philippines and throughout East and Southeast Asia. From the 1950s
on, Maceda attempted to investigate, and ultimately embrace and transform
the spirit of European compositional modernism-particularly the music of
the Greek emigre to Paris,lannis Xenakis(1922-2001), and the Frenchemigre
to New York, EdgardVareise(1885-1965)-and to integrate it with the mu-
sical principles and aesthetics of his own homeland.
My contacts with Maceda-the man, his aspirations, his community, his
music, and his writings-have been the stimulus for this article and homage.2
Although his scholarly writings have circulated somewhat more widely than
have his music compositions, here I draw attention to the latter works, at-
tempting to discover relationshipsbetween his experiences and creative life.3
By casting postwar atonality and Southeast Asian traditionalgenres as inter-
locutors, Maceda has enacted a remarkablecultural drama.

Sonatas and Coconuts: First Inklings

Maceda launched his career as a concert pianist before delving into his-
torical musicology, later turning to ethnomusicology, and then finally to
composition. In 1947 he played a series of recitals featuring Beethoven's
Appassionata sonata before many of Manila'scosmopolitan acolytes of Eu-
ropean culture. In preparing and performing, as he told me, he was repeat-
edly provoked by an interior voice posing what was for him an epiphanic
and previously unasked question, "Whathas all of this got to do with coco-
nuts and rice?"With his inner sense of contradiction and conflict, he may as
well have asked: what have Western musical values to do with Asian ones,
what has composition to do with ethnomusicology, and what had placed him
in the position of feeling impelled to resolve these issues?
A remarkable aspect of his self-questioning was not so much its antici-
pation of new musical directions as its special sensitivity in Philippine con-
texts. For Western music in the Philippines is as old as the Spanish arrivalin
1565, and its dissemination as hoary as Manila'sUniversity of Santo Tomas,
which predates Harvard.The absence of "coconuts and rice"--implicitly, of
indigenous, pre-colonial musics-was not in itself unusual in the experience
of someone like Maceda,who had grown up under Americanoccupation and
in a middle class community of professionals, clerics and civil servants.
This sort of perspective did not arise as a consequence of young Filipino
musicians' musical nourishment being exclusively and literally European in
 Tenzer.Jose' Maceda 95

origin, for European tonality was deeply enough rooted in Manila artistic
circles to have generated its own traditions of piano music, art song, and so
on. One of these genres was the nineteenth century kundiman, a distinc-
tively Philippine type of song musically cousin to the Indonesian kroncong
but much more of a literate genre, like French chanson, with known com-
posers, published scores, and a piano-centered domestic audience. This was
not an overtly nationalisticand symphonic Philippine artmusic in the roman-
tic tradition, as would arise in the mid-twentieth century, but nonetheless
an unselfconscious and treasured native expression. Such were the musical
artifacts of Maceda's childhood milieu, which inculcated aspiring musicians
with a sense of the inexorable authority of European tonality, and fed the
tenacious illusion that there was nothing else musically Phillipineto discover.
Maceda was born in Manilain 1917 and received his academic and mu-
sical training there without losing cultural contacts with Laguna,the prov-
ince of his forebears. He was sent to Paris with philanthropic and family
sponsorship in 1937 to study the piano, where his primary teachers were
MadameBascourret de Gueraldiand Alfred Cortot, a specialist in early mod-
em and romantic repertoire and a student of Chopin's disciple Decambes.
Maceda also worked briefly with Nadia Boulanger, doyenne of mentors to a
generation of American composers, including Aaron Copland, Virgil
Thomson, Elliott Carter,and many others. In 1941 he received the Dipl6me
de Virtuosite at the Ecole Normale de Musique, returninghome soon there-
after because of difficulties under the German occupation. Maceda's recital
program from June 16, 1941 at the Manila Metropolitan Theatre reflects
Cortot'stutelage by including the Bach-BusoniOrgan Toccata, Chopin Etudes
and Scherzi, character pieces by Paganini/Liszt,Albeniz, Debussy and Ravel,
plus the Appasionata, which was to be a performance staple for Macedaand
a provocative musical interlocutor. The performances of these years, he re-
lated to me, constituted:
partof myexperiencesas a concertpianist;... the act of concretizing,express-
ing the thoughtsof classicalEuropeancomposersthroughrefinedtechniques,
phrases,oppositionsof tonicanddominantchords,colors,touch,fingerings,arm
movements,morethanmusicologicalreadings... arewhat broughtme to live
a way of life, a musicalphilosophy.(p.c., April2001)
Maceda speaks of long hours roaming the streets of Parisduring his years
there, and even longer ones readingin his new language,until, he felt, he truly
absorbed the culture's sensibility and taste. "Ithink my experience of Europe
was deep," he told me, "andI got to understand French literature, thinking,
and especially the music." French students in his residence asked him why
he didn't study "Oriental"music and he tried to ignore them, but their insinu-
ations could not be undone, though at the time he felt that he "didnot really
know what they were referring to." From 1946-50 he studied piano in San
Figure 1. Two photos of Maceda: 1941 recital photo and 1997.

tF:

CONCERT PIANIST

~al~Sal

o~il~~i:ii
I.........

::i4N

JOSE MACEDA
Diplome do Virtuosite, Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris
 Tenzer:Jose' Maceda 97

Francisco with Debussy specialist Robert Schmitz, and in 1950-51 studied

musicology with Paul Lang at Columbia;there he encountered the work of
Columbia anthropologist FranzBoas, who had died only a few years before,
and also the newest developments in art music composition.
These experiences conditioned his exposure to two sets of seminal
influences that were connected in a hidden way. First, in the late 1940s, he
came to know the avant-gardemusic of Varese, Pierre Schaeffer's musique
concrete, and thereafter, the music of Xenakis. Subsequently, upon return-
ing to the Philippines in 1952, his encounter with the jaw's harp of Mindoro
island led to decades of research in the Philippines and elsewhere, and to
the amassing of a substantial body of artifacts, data, and writings about oth-
erwise unresearched traditionalmusics. He would go on to synthesize these
two sets of influences in his compositional creativity.But how did jaw's harps
intertwine with modem composition, and to what end? In Europe and North
America the works of Varese and Xenakis played a critical role in the musi-
cal debates of the day, but to Maceda their music also had a different set of
potentialities.

The Modernism of Varese and Xenakis

During his postwar student years spent abroad, Maceda's approach to
composition was conditioned by the polemics regarding the total serialism
of Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Milton Babbitt. Maceda was
particularlyattracted to the ideas of Varese and Xenakis, both of whom criti-
cized as overly systematic the way that serialtechniques, in the postwar years,
had come to encompass not only contrapuntaland harmonic parametersbut
also rhythm, dynamics and other aspects as well. They countered that such
systems represented an unproductive and confining substitute for the praxis
of harmonic tonality.4 In 1955, at the height of serialism's Parisianvogue,
Xenakis wrote:
Linearpolyphonydestroysitselfby its verycomplexity;what one hearsin real-
ity is nothingbut a massof notes in variousregisters.The enormouscomplex-
ity preventsthe audiencefromfollowingthe intertwiningof the lines and has
as its macroscopiceffect an irrationalandfortuitousdispersionof soundsover
the whole extent of the sonic spectrum.(Xenakis1971:8)
Similarly,Varese spoke of the prewar twelve-tone approach as a
"hardeningof the arteries,"and... [he] considered it a great tragedythat
Schoenberg,havingfreedmusicfromtonality,subsequentlysoughtrefugein a
system.WelearnfromthisthatVaresesawthewillingnessof composersto adopt
approachesdevisedby othersas tantamountto confessionof a failureof imagi-
nation-but also that inventing a system oneself was hardly any better. (Ber-
nard1987:xvii)'
98 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

Before the war Varese had spoken out prophetically about the "libera-
tion of sound" through orchestral and electroacoustic complexes unencum-
bered by either tonality or serialism (Varese [1967] 1998). Liberation, as
embodied in works like Deserts (1952) and Poeme Electronique (1958, com-
missioned by architect Le Corbusier for the Philips pavilion at the Brussels
World'sFair),constituted for him a fresh metaphor of sound as abstractsculp-
ture, or, as he put it, a growing crystal, paralleling scientific advances.
Throughout his career Xenakis sought comparably impersonal evoca-
tions of nature, and there is an uncanny resemblance between some of his
architecturaldrawings of the period (produced while apprenticing under Le
Corbusier), and the massed patternings of instrumental parts in the scores
for works such as Achorripsis (1956) and Pithoprakta (1952).6 A proto-
theorist of chaos with trainingin mathematics and engineering, Xenakiswas
interested in the laws governing the behavior of masses of indeterminate
events and the way probabilities group natural phenomena into distinct
patterns and shapes. Both he and Varese created sound masses as indepen-
dent, transforming, interacting parameters, in a kind of stratification of un-
diluted acoustical elements. Both imagined musical stasis and motion as a
result of the spatial and timbral, rather than harmonic or melodic, qualities
of these interactions.
By way of illustration, page 41 of the score from Varese's composition
Intigrales (Figure 2) exhibits six aerophone (winds and brass) stratain con-
stant mutation: piccolo I and tenor trombone; piccolo II, Bb clarinet and C
trumpet; oboe and Eb clarinet; bass and contrabass trombone; and French
horn (alone). Each stratumassumes a special rhythmic identity consisting of
almost-but-not-quite-repeatingfigures, fills a distinctive registral space and
colors it with a pungent arrayof dissonant compound intervals, giving the
vivid aural impression of hard, pointy objects (crystals?) in mobile-like mo-
tion around a fixed perspective (the listener's). These textures are punctu-
ated, commented upon, and reinforced by layered percussion, a trademark
of Varese's because of its perceivedly liberating contribution of a noise spec-
trum. The music suggests a kinesthesia of sonic polyhedrons.
Conceived as structured in accord with scientifically defined behaviors
such as "crystallization"and "the calculus of probabilities,"the compositions
of Varese and Xenakis sought to attain a higher form of universality than
Western music had achieved through tonality and its putative heir, serialism.7
Both composers spoke of naturalprocesses rather than musical syntax, and
eschewed the conventional distinction between scientific and artisticmodes
of inquiry. Interest in spatio-mathematicalconceptions and visual-artmove-
ments such as Cubism gave their work an additional synaesthetic aspect.
Like them, Maceda also rejected serialism, understanding the music of
Varese and Xenakisas part of Western music's search for universality.Remark-
 Tenzer: Jose Maceda 99

Figure 2. From Varese Integrales (1926:41).

fr~177,'-yr PI Z
-
.i1
2If3 ~;~
4 ?e (1

ptesF 2

4L

-b.
mil a
cittes "pp .a .
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AL3
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ut
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3tb)
-
- - - . -.. ,
C.rc. _
C. B. - -_ _. _"__ . .
T.ch
c. .._.........--__
4f
Cy.S.
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... . _..... ._

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Ctt.r., . _ . . .
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STr~.
Gr.c.
|.--.-- ... ........f' ---.. ...... .. .

C, f
Gong. i .

'....... .....
. .......

f
..............

T.,C
,i ....,L - - .- , . 1, -

ably, it was these same transcendental ambitions that provoked him to lis-
ten with growing attentiveness to Philippine traditional music, and to hear
it as both culturally embedded and something more than expressions bound
to a particular time and place.
100 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

Maceda's Journey Part Two: Compositions and Research

In the 1950s and '60s Maceda traveled widely, continued to give piano
recitals in the Philippines, and began a long period of fieldwork throughout
that country (Mindoro, Mindanao, Palawan, Luzon and elsewhere) as well
as in Burma, Thailand and Indonesia. In 1968 he spent a year studying
candomblk (among other musics) in Bahia, Brazil,and worked for a time in
Uganda and Ghana. In 1952 he accepted a faculty post at the University of
the Philippines (in Quezon City, a Manila suburb), and began amassing its
archival collection of instruments, recordings and photographs. In 1954 he
married Canadianpianist Madelyn Clifford,who bore them four daughters.
He heard Poeme Electronique at the 1958 Brussels Fair, and worked on
musique concrete with Pierre Schaeffer at the French Radio studios in Paris.
He attended the 1961 East-Westsummit in Tokyo, meeting Xenakis and wit-
nessing the introduction of the music of Berio, Madema and Xenakis to Ja-
pan.8The years 1957-58 and 1961-63 were spent in the U.S.,finishing a Ph.D.
in ethnomusicology with Mantle Hood at UCLAin 1963-the same year that
his first mature composition, Ugma-ugma, was premiered in Los Angeles.
Maceda's fieldwork encompassed a variety of ruraland court traditions,
but in the Philippines-always the linchpin of the researches-court centers
never grew as powerful as they did elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Thus his
interests oriented toward village beliefs, customs and taxonomies, the abun-
dant and comparatively simple musical instrument technologies, their use
in rituals and open-air celebrations, and the varied musical structures and
timbres that he encountered.
But other musical concerns remained lucid and pressing. Varese's sound
liberation beckoned, suggesting a liberation beyond that for which it was
originallyintended. The absence of tonality or twelve-tone rows in works like
Intdgrales appeared to Maceda to unshackle Western music from its moor-
ings in Western culture. He later wrote: "Itis as if an acme of pitch organiza-
tion was asking of itself another mode of conduct, other parameters, which
Vare"sesupplied" (1988). Maceda came to envision the language of Varese
and Xenakis as a vehicle that could be reharnessed to serve a different cul-
ture and way of life. Viewed this way, avant-gardemusic could take on a pro-
gressive social function in the Philippines by articulatingthe repressed voices
and aesthetics of its marginalized peoples in a reinvigorating modem way.
Maceda hoped, in other words, that insofar as Vare'sehad undone the inher-
ent Westemness of the avant-garde,then such music could be in effect a slate
on which Maceda could inscribe traditionalSoutheast Asian values, thereby
disseminatingthem more broadlythan ever before. But he was also faced with
the dilemma of how to transformavant-gardemusic to achieve a compatibility
with its new context. Maceda explained, with reference to Varese and
Xenakis:
 Tenzer.Jose Maceda 101

Whilephysicallaws of matterandgraphicmovementsof gas as appliedto mu-

sic indeed transformedmusical expression [in the West], they seemed to
strengthenratherthanweakenthe validityof temperedtuning...Theideais then
to changethe concept of traditionalorchestraand admitin it a logic or an ar-
rangementof thingsoutsidethe disciplineof temperament.
Thisliberationwould
preparefor musicswith othercategoriesof sounddistribution.(1988)
In our correspondence he elaborated further:
Insteadof densitiesin "clouds"and a trigonometryof lines, other designsin a
swirl of bamboos and gongs depict a tropicalenvironmentof rain, insects,
people, a vehiculartraffic,albeitgeographicallySoutheastAsian,yet worldwide
in occurrence,as "graphicmovementsof gas"and statisticalprobabilitiesare
universal.Thetransformation of these instrumentsfromtheirritualfunctionsin
villageAsiato one of physicaldensitypartakesof an evolutionaryprocessasso-
ciatedwith Europeanharmonicmusic.Thisprogressionled to an identification
of otherparametersof soundnot presentin Vareseor Xenakis.
The articulation of these examples of "other categories of sound distri-
bution" developed out of a series of foundational principles Maceda had dis-
covered through fieldwork. In his 1984 Society for Ethnomusicology Seeger
lecture (Maceda 1986) and elsewhere,9 he related the three irreducible ker-
nels of his research, which by the late 1960s had become essential to his
compositional thought as well. All are facets of the traditional lifeways and
group rituals of Southeast Asian villagers. First among them are the varieties
of musical color produced by the collective playing of large ensembles, in
which many timbrallyrich sounds produced by simple instruments of bam-
boo or bronze combine in the village open air to create ever-changing tex-
tures. Second is the primacy of drone, loosely defined by him as a constant,
recurring, or repeating sound (potentially encompassing ostinato), and the
necessity of such continuity in large-groupmusics, for both musical and so-
cial cohesion; equally significant is the drone's ability to signify continuity
and permanence. Last was the notion of epistemology or classification of
things, which, in his words, is "a source of ideas in Southeast Asian music
composition, on how to combine instruments or relate one sound source to
another" (1997). For Maceda, taxonomic systems embody a worldview, and
a set of connections between physical materials, their uses, belief systems,
and a repository of meanings "distantfrom the patterned dictates of Euro-
pean logic and reason" (1979:160). While most applicable to traditionalvil-
lage musics, these concepts, Macedaindicated, could with some modification
apply as well to more compositionally elaborate ensembles such as the
gamelan or pi-phat (1986:41-44). Together they represented an experien-
tial domain of Southeast Asian music distinct from that of the West:
The music of SoutheastAsiafills time alongnotionsof continuity,infinityand
indefinitenessin a non-secularmetaphysicalworld, and hierarchyin a secular
102 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

world. The musical techniques used in musical forms prefer melodic ambigu-
ity, repetition and diffusion to an identification and isolation of things as these
are brought about by a system of logic known as causality. (1986:46)

But even as he reported these essentials, in his mind's ear Maceda was
still responding as a composer to the stochastic agglomerations of Varese and
Xenakis, understanding them to possess compatible characteristics. With
their shifting sounds and colors, their structural processes that through in-
cremental change and overall continuity suggest drone, and their radical ways
of deploying, or reclassifying, the structures and materials of Western mu-
sic, thus giving them new meaning, these musics became also for him ex-
pressively congruent to Southeast Asian ones. Philosophically underpinning
the similarity lay what he saw as a transcendence of the dualisms of post-
Aristotelian thought through a less self-conscious, ostensibly more natural and
impersonal approach to music, as suggested, in his own manner, by Xenakis
himself: 1
In 1954 I denounced linear thought (polyphony) and demonstrated the contra-
dictions of serial music. In its place I proposed a world of sound masses, vast
groups of sound-events, clouds and galaxies governed by new characteristics
such as density, degree of order, and rate of change, which required definitions
and realizations using probability theory. (1971:182)

Xenakis' conceptualization, with its goal of achieving universality

through replicating natural phenomena via mathematical models, was more
abstract than that of Maceda, with its grounding in traditional rural practices.
Maceda was thus less interested in Xenakis' techniques than in his musical
results, which, to Maceda, could approximate the collective sonic output of
events like Southeast Asian village rituals. It is paradoxical that Maceda could
find the music of the Western avant-garde to be both universal and applicable
to Southeast Asian values; as it were, one man's crystals are another man's
coconuts.
As one technique of grappling with tensions inherent in reconciling these
domains, Maceda juxtaposed large groups of native Philippine instruments
in his first compositions. In these formats he wrote layers of precise and in-
tricate rhythmic patterns to produce timbral fields in which individual ele-
ments combine into regions of drifting colors and drones. A note to a per-
formance of Agungan (1966) explains:

Agungan uses six gong families or qualities of gong sounds to project the vari-
ety of sounds that can be produced within a certainhomogenousness of sounds-
the sounds of gongs. In this artificialorchestra, a musical permutation of sound
events is based on isolated sounds produced by the people who play these in-
struments;however, the organizationof these sounds is not a mere copy of native
musical invention. Ratherit is a result of new concepts seeking to draw out the
physical qualities of non-pitch sounds. Some of these qualities are sound den-
 Tenzer:Jos" Maceda 103

sity(when the peaksof aboutsixtygongsareheardtogetherin mixturesof time

blends,typesof attacks,
delays);color(mixturesof scalestructures,instrumental
effects soundedby malletsof variousmaterials,handslides,dampenings,etc.);
andrhythm(thereis no metricregularityof phrasesanywhere).
In a second phase of works, he assembled participatory,ritualisticevent-
pieces. For Pagsamba of 1968 and Udlot-udlot of 1975 he designed activi-
ties for large auditoriums or outdoor spaces involving groups of hundreds
or more singing or playing gongs, bamboo clappers and buzzers, blurringthe
audience-performer distinction. In such cases a few rhythms or phonemes
would be distributed among the participants, sometimes aleatoricallyby giv-
ing groups of performers freedom to reiterate a few simple designated pat-
terns at will, and at other times with fully worked-out versions scored for fifty
or more performers, aspiring toward a similarsonic result. In 1974 he urban-
ized ritual music in the style of musique concrete, marshalling twenty Ma-
nila radio stations to simultaneously broadcast parts of his Ugnayan. He
prepared a unique set of village music sounds for each station, creating a mix
for the millions that could be experienced communally wherever people
gathered with portable radios and combined the sounds in ways that they
chose. Figure 3 gives a page from Udlot-udlot.
Since the 1980s Maceda has composed intricately scored works for
smaller ensembles, including Western chamber groupings and mixed groups
of Western and Philippine instruments, as well as for enormous Western
orchestral ensembles. The progression from the graphically notated loose-
ness of the second-phase compositions to the complexity of recent ones is
best seen as an aesthetic development rather than a shift. Both idioms draw
on Southeast Asian sounds, but it is the intended performers--mainly un-
trained in the former case and professional in the latter-who have changed
(see appendix for a list of Maceda's works to date).
A 1953 research project jointly conducted by Macedaand anthropologist
HaroldConklin documented music of the Hanun6o of Mindoro,then a forest-
dwelling, un-Christianizedgroup of some six thousand. Something of the in-
ner soundscape Maceda gradually developed for his compositions may be
evoked by comparing the music corresponding to the Varese score presented
above (or that of a Xenakis work such as Achorripsis) with the recording by
Maceda and Conklin of a Hanun6o festivity, kalipay. " This field document is
only one of myriadpossible examples that could be used for these purposes.
I stress that I am only tryingto shed light on the most general kinds of connec-
tions, appropriatelyleaving the rest to imagination. Nor have I made any at-
tempt to visually render this obviously spontaneous and freely coordinated
joyous activity. (In the absence of this recording, readerscould substitute any
similarone depicting a multiplicity of simple, separate and simultaneous mu-
sical activities using comparable instruments in a collective context.)
104 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

Figure 3. From Maceda's Udlot-udlot (1975).

UDLOT-UDLOT (HESITATIONS)
for 6, 60, 600 or more performers Jos6 Maceda (1975)

TIME MIXED INSTRUMENTS TIME

DRONE in in VOICES
min. GroupI Group2 min.
00 SILENCE SILENCE 00
DRONE:Players beat 01 01 SILENCE
a pair of percussion
sticks continuously, 02 0 5&7 5&9 6&8 6&9 02
slowly untilthe end of 03 03
the music. They will 7&9 5&11 7&11 6&1O 5&8 6&11
walk in stylized steps 5
arounda big circle. 05 SILENCE SILENCE 0
06 06
C 2&3 2&4 7&5 5&8 07
J07 2&5 3&4 3&5 .
108 7&9 7&11 5&11 08 SILENCE
MIXED INSTRU-
MENTS: Performers 2&3 2&4
09
remain seated in the 10 5&7 5&9 10
center of the circle. 11 7&9 7&11 5&11 2&5 3&4 3&5
Each player hits, 1
,
pounds, blows his 12 2&3 SILENCE 12
2&4
intrumenttwice: one 213 : 143 'o k
at the end of count- 14 2&5 3&4
& 3&5 6&8 6&9
ing the 1st number, 14
and another at the 15 6&11 6&10 6&12 15 SILENCE
end of counting the SILENCE
2nd number. Each -
SILENCE
playershouldcount 17 176
his numbers at a : ....SLNE
Il:JJ r J i
1
speed differentfrom
one close to him. 19 1 2 3 4 5
IIJ
1 2 3 4 5
1 19 "
20 20
VOICES:Mixedsing- 20 20
erastandandsingto- 21 SILENCE 21
getherin one sector 22 SILENCE 22 SILENCE
of the circle. During 23
23
periods of Silence, 23
change24
theyshould I:5&8
1
5&9 24
places,walktowards 25 6&10 7&10 7&12 25s
another sec:or and 2 11
prepare for their 26 SILENCE 2&3 28
next tun to sing. 27 :
2&4&1. 27
5&7 6&3

28
NO.OF PERFORM- 3&4 3&5 2&5 28
ERS: For 6 players - 29 6&5 7&3 5&4 29 SILENCE
one playsthe Drone,
four play MixedIn- 30SILENCESILENCE 30
struments and one 31 &
5&6 5&4 31
sings for the Voice. -
15r
For 60 performers -32 : 2&3 3&5 32
10 play the Drone, 33 6&4 6&3 74 33
40 play the Mixed In- 3&6
and10 -Pj
struments 2&4 3&4
1 2 3 4 5
34
singVoices;etc. The 35 SILENCE 35 SILENCE
musicmaybe played 36 36
half its length for 20' SILENCE
or 1/4th for 10' 7 2&3 2&4 37'
3&2 42 38
2388&38
A 2&5 3&43&53&
39 3: 4&3 4&5 3&6
139

Kalipay uses stick-beaten gongs (agung), tiny guitar-likekudyapi and

three-stringed fiddles called gitgit (both strung with human hair), together
with hollers, whoops and other miscellaneous sounds. The auralexperience
is enhanced by the listener's shifting perception of the position and balance
 Tenzer:Jose Maceda 105

of these sounds in the recording. Whether this fluidity is due to the unsteadi-
ness of hand-heldmicrophones or the relative movements of participants"on
the ground" is inconsequential, since kalipay is naturally no proscenium
performance but a village activity. What we hear are layers of changing tim-
bres in constant motion, and in discrete registers. One's attention passes from
the fluctuation of rich partials emitted by gongs struck at varying places on
the surfaces, in a frenetic, unsynchronized cluster of simple rhythms, to the
ebb and flow of delicate masses of strummed or bowed strings, and the oc-
casional cacophony of human shouts and ululations as the merrymaking
reaches a critical mass of intensity. And in all of this sound the pitch language
is essentially reduced to one or two tones per participant, so that what one
experiences is an action primarilyof colors. As a creative listening exercise
simulating the kinds of sonic connections Maceda inferred over the years, it
is illuminating to juxtapose recordings of this type of sound-event with mu-
sic of Maceda'savant-gardeinfluences. It becomes effectively possible to hear
Xenakis in the Philippines.
Furtherillustrativeof this aesthetic are Figure4, an excerpt from Maceda's
Suling-suling (1985), a work scored for ten flutes (Southeast Asian bamboo
ones are encouraged in the composer's note to the score), ten bamboo buzz-
ers, and ten flat gongs; and Figure 5, from the 1995 Two Pianos and Four
Winds (clarinet, French horn, bassoon and trombone).12 These pieces, typi-
cal of his post-1980 music, each consist of a single movement of around thirty
minutes. The length and characteristic slow pace make excerpting difficult;
yet in both of these cases, as in a Xenakis score or Le Corbusierdrawing, the
shapes traceable by the eye convey some flavor of the musical result.
In Figure 4 the flutes, divided in two groups, execute a simple hocket
pattern on clustered chords while the percussion groups pyramidin and out,
charting intricate subdivisions of the beat, staggered both internallyand with
respect to one another. Billowing and irregularin comparison to the flutes,
they recall Xenakis'probabilitydistributions.Following soon on this excerpt,
some of the flutes add a simple, sustained melody to the existing texture. A
different outcome is achieved with the chamber ensemble in Figure 5. Here
the polyrhythmic dialogue of the winds is constrained to a quasi-polyphonic
and pentatonic idiom, while the pianos' octaves, poly-pentatonicwhen taken
in toto, ring out in contrasting dynamics and registers, layered and gong-like.
Such a dense texture substitutes harmonic color for the characteristic me-
lodic prominence of Southeast Asianpentatonic heterophony. In both cases
what is highlighted is the mass motion of groups, both sonorous and human.
In his writings and in conversation with him in Manila in July 2000,
Maceda's comments on his compositions disclosed some of the contradic-
tions inherent in their diverse sources of inspiration. Inconsistent from a
certain perspective, his words nonetheless illustrate how categories like
"Europeanmodem" and "SoutheastAsian traditional"can be made to merge
106 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

Figure 4. From Maceda'sSuling-suling (1985:mm. 266-69).

Flute t
I-III t.

2 d ddgo
4 4 0 4 01 0 G4 4 i-I al I i
9A
i l .
-1_.

I0

Bamboo I----.

2 L
I I II
, -----~-._ .,-.
_.:7Jc
- _ ---
',: , ,, q-
8--

F I o'0 Kar.r
I I0I I 9a' ,,
10_y( :-.~ r r 0r
pt ,0 -0 .
. .
Bamboo r
-IsY
buzrI LF L..f 1
L

dupen r7
xl*A immediately withlethand. r7
i
I F
47 A/ - "
0-- i7
10
,,
f-?1
r,7 'o r~ V,

into a permeable and ambiguous musical imaginary. Showing me the com-

plex rhythms and stratified sound layers in the score for an early, conven-
tionally-notated work, Kubing, he was insistent that "this is not Western
music, it is Asian music. I don't know if you can call these structures rhyth-
mic or melodic, these things are intentionally blurred, it is more of an outlay
of sounds according to a certain logic that is Asian."But a moment later, with
 Tenzer:Jose"Maceda 107

Figure 5. From Maceda's Two Pianos and Four Winds(1995:mm. 50-53).

IL
Piano

P P~u pp ~~
1.
--- ~~~~~--"-----
------1-.-- 1?7

I
--------------

J ;~ "
Piantr II4?
- - ,

Clarinc f ,>
-F.----
3A.-. 9P ,
Hom
-nch sf
1
> tf
BassoonIP If --
'>"
I f I
If - . _
-3:3-1 13
>hr r-3.2
TromboneF I MMI t
offf ---I-= f---
the same ardor,he added, "Yes,there is a counterpoint of sounds here, which
could not have been possible for me without my studies of Palestrina or
Xenakis. Yes, this is Western music, Western music played with bamboo
tubes and men's voices." "So,"I asked, "areyou saying that on the one hand
it's Palestrina,and on the other it's a ritualat a village in Mindanao?""Bravo,"
he replied, "yes."

Activism
Apartfrom his varied activities as an ethnomusicologist, Maceda's activ-
ism comprises the social philosophy of his compositions themselves, inno-
vations in concert programming, conceiving and organizing symposia, and
professional community-building.The massive ritual-likeperformance forces
called for in his earlierworks attempted to involve as many Manilansas pos-
sible in contemporary music, as well as to expose them to the Philippine
thought at the music's basis. Ugnayan, the broadcast piece that used radio
stations as if they were musical instruments, was heard-in some form-by
hundreds of thousands if not millions. This and other coordinated public
happenings (together with later government awards and recognition) pro-
mulgated Maceda'sname well beyond musical circles in Manila.His fieldwork
experience distinguished him from most other Asian composers. Toru
Takemitsu in Japan, for example, absorbed Asian musics without fieldwork.
108 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

Although Takemitsu spoke of Japanese principles like ma and incorporated

shamisen, biwa and shakuhachi into his ensembles, their sounds were es-
sentiallyas exotic to him as the gamelanwas to Debussy (Takemitsu1995:56-
67; Corbett2000:178). Maceda'sgoals were in some respects more ambitious,
seeking to build a new basis for contemporary music, from instruments to
techniques to performance. As a thinker and creative musician in this spirit,
one with few peers in his part of the world, he set an important example.13
In a series of writings in the 1960s and '70s Maceda explained Southeast
Asian musical principles and proclaimed them as antidotes to what he saw
as the excessively Westernized and technologized musical culture of the
region (Maceda 1964, 1974, 1979). Some of the prose from these years reso-
nates presciently with James Clifford'sinsistence that "historiesof emergent
differences" give a truer picture of late twentieth-century experience than
do narrativesof a monolithically hegemonic Western modernity (1988:17).
Considering congruences between the Latinatenations Braziland the Phil-
ippines, Maceda observed:
The sense that binds Europeansculturallywith other peoples of different
stocks-the Algeriansandthe French,the Filipinosandthe Spaniards, the Mon-
goliansandthe Russians-maybe takento meanthat"Europeans" with a Greco-
Latinview or a Christiancultureare found not only within the geographical
boundariesof Europe,but also in otherpartsof the world,andamongpeoples
of variedstockslivingunderdifferentphysicalconditions... (1964:223)
A changeof perspectiveanddirectionis evidentlyin the air.Whilenew theo-
riesof changekeepstreamingfromthe Westitself-from Europeandthe United
States-it appearsthatanotherandperhapsrichersourceof ideasis neededand
foundin the verylives of nativepeoples alloverthe world,whose culturepro-
vides fresh groundsfor anotherway of thinking,feeling, and doing things.A
mixtureof Latin,African,andAmerindian culturesin Brazil,as well as the inter-
action of Latinand nativetraitsamonga Malaysianpeople in the Philippines
furnishuniquegroundsfor a meetingandmutualenrichmentof these cultures.
(1964:227)
Such formulations informed the various concerts and symposia that
Maceda organized from the 1960s, in which he engineered clashes of other-
wise remote musical systems. Feeling free to adapt musical modernism to
his own ends, he sought to promote local musical thought in collaboration
with Western interventions, and to assert Southeast Asians' right to adopt
elements of European culture in accordance with their own needs and in-
terests. Rather than viewing the past as a static tradition and the present a
dynamic modernity, Maceda envisioned a new continuity in which the two
invigorated each other.
At the 1961 East-Westsummit in Tokyo he had been struck by the over-
whelmingly European leanings of the contemporary music scene in Japan.
As Maceda saw it, the invitations that organizers extended to European lu-
 Tenzer:Jos" Maceda 109

minaries (Berio, Maderna,Nono) reflected a wish to import their latest ad-

vances and techniques, but no inclination to transcend them with a native
expression or even meet them on equal terms. In response, Macedaorganized
the 1966 UNESCO"Musicsof Asia"festival in Manila.An international col-
lection of scholars and composers attended, including Xenakis, the Dutch
composer Ton de Leeuw, Japanese pianist/composer Yuji Takahashi, musi-
cologists like Tran Van Khe and Mantle Hood, and many others.'4 Maceda's
breakthroughwas to have the musics of the Europeanavant-gardeperformed
at the symposium in direct sequence with a varietyof Asiantraditionalgenres.
He wrote:
The Symposiumdoes not intendto be a whollymusicologicalaffair.Besidesan
objectiveexaminationof music,it triesto introducenew ideasof experimenta-
tion andchangewhich underliethe spiritof musicalcreativityin Europe.Asian
music is also boundto change... how is this change to takeplace?This is of
coursedifficultto foretell-and to control.Howeverby dealingwith avant-garde
music in the discussionsas well as by preparingconcertsin which Asianand
avant-garde musicsareplayedin sequence, the symposiummaysuggestideas
and directionstowardsuch a change.(1971:11-12)
He had already tested the idea at a Manilaconcert hall two years earlier
(Figure 6a), and wrote for the program notes:
InAsia-particularlyin the Philippineswhere LatinandOrientalculturesmerge,
or in Tokyo,where modem Westernand old Japanesetraditionsclash-there
is an audiencemoreculturallypreparedthanthatof New Yorkor Paristo listen
to a mixtureof variousWesternandAsianmusicson the sameprogram.
A musicalre-awakening in Asiaenjoysthe privilegeof beingpartialto a West-
ernculturewhichthe Eastunderstands farbetterthanthe Westunderstands Asia.
(1964)
Fouryears later,while in Brazil,he produced a performancebringingtogether
candomblW,his own music, and that of Xenakis (Figure 6b).
Such symbolic actions stimulated the burgeoning activities of new mu-
sic composers in Asia. The impetus for an Asian Composers' League (ACL)
intensified after the 1966 symposium and developed further during 1968
discussions between the already established League of Filipino Composers
and certain Taiwanese composers, notably Hsu Tsang-Houei (Hsu in Ryker
1990:219). Several gatherings took place in subsequent years under shifting
auspices and with different constellations of delegate countries. Many com-
posers in the region (particularlyJapanese ones) had long been involved with
the ISCM(InternationalSociety of ContemporaryMusic), an organizationthat
provided a model. In existence since 1922, the ISCMheld yearly new music
festivals which, although internationalin intent, remained quite Euro-Ameri-
can in orientation, and were never held outside Europe or North America.
In 1971 the first ACLmeeting was held in Taipei, with founding member-
110 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

Figures 6a (Philamlife Auditorium, Manila 1964) and 6b (Universidade Fed-

eral de Bahia, 1968). Lists of works mounted at concerts organized and pro-
duced by Maceda.
PROGRAM
OFASIAN
CONCERT AND AVANT-GARDE
MUSIC
Philamlife
Auditorium
Novermber27, 1964

I. GONG MUSICFROMMINDANAO
a. Completegongensemble solo
d.Kulintang
b. Agung solo e. Complete
gongensemble
c. Gandingansolo
Soloists: Amal Lumuntud
ontheagungandkulintang
MedandugKamansa
onthegandingan
II. INTEGRALES FORSMALL
ORCHESTRAANDPERCUSSION(1926) Varese
Edgard
INTERMISSION

Ill. SOUTHERN
CHINESE
CLASSICALMUSICENSEMBLE
ofEight
a. "Combination forClassical
Notes," Ensemble
andPercussion
b. "ThePlumFlower,"
suiteforClassical
Ensemble
1. Early
Spring intheSun 4. Pearl-like
Buds
2. SmileintheBreeze 5. Thousand inBloom
Flowers
3. FragranceintheFlowing
Water
IV. UGMA-UGMA (STRUCTURES) FOR ASIAN
INSTRUMENTSAND VOICES Jos6Maceda
Figure6a. Concertprogram,Manila,1964.

Universidade
Federal
daBahia
Cultural
Departamento
SEMINARIOSDEMUSICA
dia14.11.68- 21 hs.
Reltoria

CONCERTO DEMUSICA
DEVANGUARDA
EAFRO-BRASILEIRA
Direclo:
JOSEMACEDA

DAUFBa
SINFONICA
ORQUESTRA
EESTUDANTES
PROFESSORES DOS DEMUSICA
SEMINARIOS
CONJUNTO DEOLGA
DECANDOMBLI DEALAKETU

PROGRAMMA

I. Toques
Cantigas, e Dancas
deCandombl6parao conjunto
do
deOlgaFrancisco
terreiro Regis(OlgadeAlaketu)
II. Jos6Maceda: Estruturas
Ugma-ugma. e vozes
parainstrumentos
III. YannisXenakis: Achorripsis
IV. Jos6Maceda: Musica
Kubing. e vozesdehomens
parapercussio
Figure6b. Concertprogram,Bahia,1968.
 Tenzer:Jose Maceda 111

delegates from Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Republic of China (Tai-
wan), and South Korea in attendance. Later,with meetings held most years,
Thailand,Singapore,Malaysia,Indonesia,Vietnam,Azerbaijan,Israel,Australia
and New Zealandgraduallyentered the fold. The People's Republic of China
began sending representatives in 1981 (Ryker 1990:7). The ISCMheld its first
Asian meeting in Hong Kong in 1988, jointly with the ACL.These events
stimulated a world of contemporary music that remains little known beyond
the region, and which owes much of its vitality and direction to Maceda's
inspiration.
I attended the impressive 1997 ACLconference in Manila,whose theme
was "New Theories of Composition from Music Ensembles in Asia."One of
my compositions was performed and I read a paper about my research on
Balinese music. The six-day series of diverse events brought together nearly
250 composer delegates from twenty-two countries and a planning staff of
eighty. On one evening, a twilight concert of new choral works by compos-
ers from New Zealand, Taiwan, the Philippines and China was followed by
a recital of kontemporer works from the central Javanese music conserva-
tory and dances of the Formosan (aboriginal) Tsou and Ami. Taiwan's China
Found Workshop Ensemble presented screechingly dissonant scores of new
music, performed on Chinese instruments with astonishing extended tech-
niques. A workshop session was shared by a Samulnori troupe and a live
electronics ensemble. A superbly rehearsed orchestral concert with the
Philippine Philharmonicfeatured nine new and innovative works from seven
Asian countries. Seminarsand discussions ranged from theories of composi-
tion to ethnographic studies of Chinese minority traditions. A recurrent,
implicit theme of the conference was that composition, theory and ethno-
musicology should interact symbiotically and are impoverished if remaining
separate.I1

What Has Maceda Achieved?

For many historical and cultural reasons, Philippine musics and their
offshoots have not enjoyed the global appeal of, for example, sub-Saharan
African musics. Accordingly, Maceda's field tapes have not been influential
for popular music, or intersected in any way with the transnational music
industry and its concerns with money and power. His collections archives
at the University of the Philippines, with their trove of unexplored material,
are in disarray and in need of cataloguing. Published versions of his field
recordings are few and rare.16These have attained nothing like the renown
of, for example, Simha Arom's recordings of the Central AfricanAka, with
their secondary circulation of millions of dollars' worth of contemporary
record sales and royalties (see Feld 2000:261)." Similarly,Maceda's compo-
112 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

sitions, because they require large numbers of performers, are costly to

mount, dependent upon government and private subsidy, and yield an in-
consequential or negative financialreturn.Their avant-gardismconsigns them
to limited popularity and appeal. Personally, Maceda has benefited from a
remarkablenumber of internationalgrants, awards and recognitions, and he
is a well-known public figure in Manila,but he lives modestly, in a small on-
campus home.
Minimalas the compromising forces of money and commercial influence
have been, in gathering perspective on Maceda's achievements we may also
consider what role the more difficult-to-assessallures of status and prestige
have played for ethnomusicologists in general, and Maceda in particular.
These are the conventional "innocent"compensations of academia, the flip
sides of knowledge advancement and intellectual influence, in which ethno-
musicologists are entangled. Behind them lie possible moral undercurrents
of exploitation, or the exoticizing of tribalpopulations, whose voices become
mediated or supplanted by urban, academic agendas. On one hand there is
something anachronistic about such a notion in this particularcase, because
when Maceda began his fieldwork a half-century ago there had been liter-
ally no prior work in the region. He was an important part of the eager
ethnomusicological consciousness of the day, and while hindsight may af-
ford a critical judgement, that is only proof of the ethical complexity of field-
work. As we have seen, Macedaworked to bring performers of Mindanaoan
and other traditions to concert stages, and he advocated energetically and
over a long span of time for broader awareness of and empathy for those
music cultures.As a Filipinohimself, he could in many respects relate to those
he studied as compatriots rather than ethnic Others. On the other hand, he
was raised essentially as a Westerner in the Manilaof his youth. An adult life
spent at the University of the Philippines as a professor representing the
music of traditionalor pre-cosmopolitan peoples is different only in degree,
not kind, from that at a comparable (though likely wealthier) Western insti-
tution.
To complement this view of Maceda's ethnomusicology, we may also
ask where he fits along the spectrum of twentieth-century composers, espe-
cially with regard to the practice of cultural appropriation. Western art mu-
sic composers of the era engaged provocatively and consistently with other
traditions, generating a diverse range of reactions and experiences that re-
cent musicology has begun to describe in appropriatedetail (Feliciano 1983,
Bellman 1998, Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000). At one end of this spectrum
of interests and commitments, there are such relatively superficial non-West-
ern engagements as the commentary of Xenakis (cited in endnote 7), Claude
Debussy's paeans to Javanese music, or Messiaen's philological interest in
ancient Hindu rhythms. These stand in contrast to Maceda'sabiding, Bart6k-
 Tenzer:Jos" Maceda 113

like dedication to research and publication, and the careful articulation of

the relationships between his scholarship and his music. Moreover, while
Bart6k lived near to central Europe and operated fully within its geographi-
cal and cultural spheres, Maceda has faced the additional challenge of nur-
turing modernism in isolation from the generating centers of Western cul-
ture.
Maceda did not seek to avoid the challenge by simplifying his music, as
can be seen in the complexity of pieces like his 1992 orchestralDistempera-
ment, involving upwards of three dozen independent instrumental parts in
complex rhythms, dynamics and phrasing. The music, with its technically
demanding instrumentalparts, is notated painstakinglyon small-staved,over-
sized vellum, with lightly ruled vertical lines facilitatingthe proper alignment
of the parts. Yet despite their resemblance on paper to Xenakis' styles of
abstract architectonics, such works attempted to actualize some Southeast
Asian quality, and were animated by Maceda's vision of cultural and social
renewal.
By studying and applying older indigenous musical thought, Macedaand
his younger colleagues sought to engineer a benevolent form of appropria-
tion. Inspired by a new and empowering sense of musical history that ex-
tended much farther back than Spanish conquest, they sought a fusion of
traditional and modern in their music and were unquestionably exhilarated
by the implications of their endeavor. I was struck, when I met for lunch at
the Quezon City campus in July 2000 with a group of music faculty (includ-
ing composers Jonas Baes, Ramon Santos, and Chino Toledo), at how all
evinced an affecting indebtedness and fealty toward Maceda. They said that
his compositions of the '60s and '70s were what had convinced them that a
genuinely Southeast Asian new music was in fact possible, and had inspired
them to produce not only orchestral and chamber works but also event-ori-
ented pieces like Maceda's, which, they felt, collectively effected a degree
of cultural change.
From my perspective their claims were justified if somewhat exagger-
ated by idealism. The composer in me resonated with their enthusiasm, but
the skeptical ethnomusicologist was more equivocal. They may indeed have
reason to feel as they do, given the very fact that they have careers as com-
posers in Southeast Asia. The shape-and to some extent the very exis-
tence-of these careers owes a great deal to Maceda's original posing of the
question about coconuts and rice. But their event-pieces were fleeting, one-
time events, akin to university new music concerts elsewhere. Presented on
the University of the Philippines campus, few performances permeated the
awareness of students beyond Abelardo Hall, the music building.
For its part, the Asian Composers League, an especially important out-
come of their activities, continues to hold its international gatherings, but
114 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

like new music organizations elsewhere, it performs and discusses music for
a specialized audience consisting mainly of its members. New music in the
Philippines, like the traditionalmusics on whose shoulders it now strives to
stand, remains peripheral even within the Western music enclaves that en-
gendered it. This work, like Varese's music, is liberated sound, not cultural
liberation. Indeed, it would be expecting too much to hope for the compo-
sitions of Maceda and his colleagues to do more than embody his concep-
tion of liberation from excessive Westernization.
For myself as a composer and scholar familiarwith Southeast Asian mu-
sics as well as the gamut of contemporary Western composition-ranging
from hermetic modernism to various kinds of minimalism,neotonality, primi-
tivism and cross-culturalhybridization--there remains a provocative and dis-
turbing side of Maceda's venture. I sense an aura around the high modem-
ism of Varese and Xenakis, emanating in part from their rhetoric of autonomy
and universality, that acts as if to shield their music from the possibility of
hybridization.Even in light of Maceda's effort, achievement and optimism, I
remain astonished to think of how radical it was to grasp modernism as be-
ing in dialog with Southeast Asian sounds during the '50s, '60s and '70s. It
was like envisioning a Philippine shaman straightfrom the pages of National
Geographic sitting down as an equal with a Parisianhomme des belles lettres
for a panel discussion on culture and aesthetics. Could the implications not
be complex, contentious, conditional? So little groundwork had been laid.
Even in the contemporaryimagination,the frictionthat we can sense between
modernist universality and Southeast Asian particularitydoes not dissipate.
Yet Macedaenvisioned the coexistence of the two back then, and his idea of
their miscegenation lit in him a hope that seemed to hold the potential to
transformconsciousness in Southeast Asia. But it is no casting of aspersions
upon Maceda to say that what he mainly ended up doing was transforming
other composers, who continue to speak mainly to each other.
Parisiansand shamans. At around the same time as Maceda, Levi-Strauss
(1969:21-30) articulateda less sanguine juxtaposition between serialismand
the BrazilianBororo. He extolled musical experience as a unique force "with
an extraordinary power to act simultaneously on both the mind and the
senses" and held that its qualities are both culturally specific and universal.
But for him serialism risked irrelevance by abandoning "general structures
whose universalityallows the encoding and decoding of individualmessages,"
and relying instead on "anever new internal logic." He wrote in this vein:
It maythereforeturnout that serialmusicbelongsto a universein which the
listenercould not be carriedalongby its impetusbut would be left behind.In
vain he would try to catch up; with every passingday it would appearmore
distant and unattainable.Soon it would be too far away to affect his feelings; only
the idea of it would remain accessible, before eventually fading away into the
 Tenzer:Jos" Maceda 115

darkvaultof silence, where men would recognizeit only in the formof brief
andfugitivescintillations.(1969:26)
Grantingthat neither Maceda, Xenakis, nor Varese were serialists, Levi-
Strauss'words of foreboding nonetheless apply to them because they were
looking, like the serialists, for "ever new internal logic" eschewing musical
"generalstructures."To modernist composers like Varese and Xenakis, uni-
versality-and value-lies in the tones' potential as emancipated sound, its
depiction of nature as an impersonal force. Theirs was a humanist vision,
however debatable and contradictory, of a post-cultural,post-national, post-
ethnic future. In contrast, L&vi-Strauss's anthropological perspective favored
as an a priori good the universal aspects of musical experience, but only if
supported by cultural precepts shared within a society. He could not appre-
ciate (much less endorse) the possibility that a core value of modern music
is its aspirationto transcendculture, to seek the furthermusical consequences
of the Western ideal of the ennobled individual. Maceda was drawn to both
of these perspectives, but he could not fuse autonomous modem sound and
a communitarianSoutheastAsian practice without compromising one or the
other set of values. His activities have led to inspiring rhetoric, original mu-
sic, and the mobilization of new professional communities. But communi-
ties such as the ACLare so indebted to their Western models as to be essen-
tially indistinguishable from them, such that the musical reconciliation they
achieve has not been matched by a social one. With a modernist stance to-
wards the universality of music sound having prevailed, it is fair to conclude
that Western values have also.
One might question whether these dualities and oppositions-between
the modern and the mythical, between new music and old, between the
urban Westernized world and rural Asia, between composition and ethno-
musicology, the avant-gardeand tradition,centers and peripheries, sound and
culture-are in need of reconciliation. Engaged musicians such as readers
of this journal may or may not feel such a need, while the world at large
constantly reconfigures the tensions in the inexorable course of forming
cultural hybrids. Given the presence of so many more economically viable
musical stimuli around us, anomalous hybrids like those created by Maceda
may remain undetected. Perhaps we near a point at which music like
Maceda's, and the issues it raises, appear to us as but traces, reminiscent of
Levi-Strauss'"briefand fugitive scintillations."Might Levi-Straussfind it strik-
ing that his premonitions of avant-gardemusic "fadingaway" into isolation
would be actualized not only by the music's own recondite nature, but also
by the cultural realities of the global economy?
The once fiery polemics about European and American postwar music
have dissipated over time. In its day and milieu that music was of the essence
and crucial for the future. But today the shock of dissonance is easily ignored,
116 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

and, like a candidate running low in the polls, can be shut out of the debates.
Yet for Maceda, absorbed with the paradox of modernism in Southeast Asia,
avant-gardecomposition was not abstract and impersonal, but humane and
transformative.
Once I asked Maceda why, in his opinion, the standard repertories of
Western art music had made such tremendous inroads into urban East and
Southeast Asia. His answer:
Westernmusicis a revelation-to people everywhere.Andthisin turnis bound
to a legacyof humanism,Greco-Roman logic andthought.Butit is the particu-
larityof this music'soriginsthatmakesthe questionof its continuationloom
large.Now is the time to explore otherlogics and musicpotentials.(p.c., July
2000)
Whathe intends with the phrase "questionof its continuation"is precisely
the crisis that modernism has undergone, its regrettableparting of ways with
the sympathies of its public. And when he says that we should "explore other
logics" he means traditional,SoutheastAsian ones steeped in communality. I
think I understand the forces pulling at him. In my long experience investi-
gating Balinese music I encountered a world that fully met my need as a com-
poser for sonic challenge, but also awakened me to the satisfactionsof a mod-
ern-daycollective music that plays a more vital role in its context than Western
new music ever will. Yet the urge to find a common ground can be irresist-
ible (Tenzer 2000:388). Macedadiscovered this for himself in the Philippines,
and sought to embrace what he found in his homeland without sacrificinga
closeness to the profound revelations of Western music. For him the liberat-
ing openness of post-Varesesound was a foothold and an enabling link.

Acknowledgments
This article in its original form was presented as a paper at the Toronto 2000
Musical Intersections conference under the title "JoseMaceda:A Universa-
list's Paradoxes of Southeast Asian Music,"on the joint panel New Histories
of Western Music. I am grateful to my co-presenters that day, Bruno Nettl
and Yayoi Uno, and also to Joseph Lam,for their comments. Thanks also to
Vera Micznik, Marc Perlman, Elaine Barkin, and three anonymous peer re-
viewers for challenging readings of this expanded version.

Notes
1. See Ryker 1990 and Nettl 1985.
2. After knowing his scholarship for some time, I met Maceda in ManilainJanuary 1997 at
the Asian Composers' League conference. Our discussions were intense and lively. His Two
Pianos and Four Winds, performed at the event, made a strong impression on me. I returned
to Manilain July 2000 especially for a week of conversation and study with him. I joined him
 Tenzer:Josd Maceda 117

againlater that year in Californiafor his residency asJean MacDuffVeaux Composer-in-Residence

at Mills College, where he was the focus of concerts and symposia, and a number of his works
were given American premieres. My accounts in this article are based on these several discus-
sions and subsequent email contact, together with Maceda'swritings and those of others about
him. (Feliciano 1983 contains an excellent chapter-length discussion of Maceda'swork in rela-
tion to other Asian composers.) I am deeply grateful to Jose for his warmth, hospitality and
inspiration. His support of my work on this project also included the loan of a priceless pack-
age of personal memorabilia. He read and condones this article, but, naturally, I alone am re-
sponsible for it.
3. Maceda's Music for Five Pianos and Two Pianos and Four Winds are available in Ja-
pan on an ALMRecords CD (ALCD-54).Among the performers are Yuji and Aki Takahashi, in-
ternationally prominent pianists who commissioned the works and have been instrumental in
introducing Maceda's work there. In July 2001 musician/producer John Zorn's Tzadik label in
New York issued Colors Without Rhythm, Suling-Suling and the Catholic mass Pagsamba (TZ
7067). See the list of Maceda's works at the end of this article.
4. Eschewing system, for them, also meant eschewing shared codes of expression. This
perspective had social and political resonance, especially within the new music community.
The zeitgeist of individualismat midcentury rendered collective endeavors suspect because they
all too easily raised the specter of the totalitarianismvanquished in the war. As RichardToop
wrote, "serialism,like any other approach to composition, is only marginallydescribed by the
recitation of its surface mechanics. Its essence lies in the musical, philosophical and aesthetic
ideas and conflicts which it helps to articulate ... The old banality about the 'totalitarian'char-
acter of serialism,ancient or recent, is probably best evaluatedby looking at the composers who
made such accusations, whose works would have been a great deal more acceptable to Goebbels
and Zhdanov than the music they seek to attack"(1993:52-53).
5. He also said, in a 1953 radio interview, that "Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were great
despite their systems," and he wrote, in a 1952 letter to LuigiDallapiccola, that "the intellectu-
alism of the interval [i.e., the serial concept] is a factor which for me has nothing to do with
our age and its new concepts" (in Oullette 1968:173).
6. See also Xenakis'sketches for the Polytopes, a sound-sculptureenvironment he designed
for Montreal in 1971 (Xenakis and Revault D'Allonnes 1975).
7. Xenakis saw unsystematized music sound as ideally governed by "naturalprinciples," a
conviction which elicited from him this rare comment on world traditions, consistent with a
certain orientalism:
The force of a work is in its truth ... All truly creative people escape ... the exaltation of
sentiments ... so as to listen only to the music, to have it within us. That is what confers
its value, its perennity, independently of the sentiments of the time.
It is the same for African,Hindu, Chinese or Egyptianart. Why am I so sensitive to them
without ever having studied them? Because I appreciate them just as I appreciate the curl
of a leaf, the photograph of a galaxy or of a cosmic dust could lighted [sic] by the stars.
For in these sorts of things there exist signs made by mankind. Signs that we must see,
not as representations, but as relations among them, without any romanticism. If these
relations are sufficiently rich, necessary and elegant, then the piece is a work of art.
(1987:48)
See also Xenakis 1971:183, 191-92.
8. Henry Cowell and Colin McPhee also attended this meeting, where Cowell reported that
"the ethnomusicologists wanted to keep everything very pure ... they didn't want anyone to
touch the cultures they were studying"(in Tenzer 1993:410). Maceda confirmed to me that the
composers and ethnomusicologists had little interaction there.
9. Maceda'smost extensive ethnomusicological publications, in additionto the articlescited
here, are his 1963 dissertation, a 1974 Encyclopedia Britannica entry, the Philippines article
in New Grove's Dictionary (1980), and the book Gongs and Bamboo (1998).
118 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2003

10. Maceda often remarked to me that post-Aristoteliandualisms are musically reflected

by tonic/dominant polarities or their substitutes. He defined a kinship between Xenakis and
Philippine musics in terms of the absence of such polarities, "a different kind of logic."
11. Hanun6o Music of the Philippines (1955). Smithsonian Folkways Cassette Series
04466.
12. Referring to the recordings listed in footnote 3 above, Figure 4 can be heard on the
Tzadik CD (track 6) beginning at ca. 18:35 and Figure 5 on the ALMCD (track 2) at 4:18.
13. One true peer in EastAsia, arguably,is Chou Wen-Chung, whose writings from those
years (1968, 1971, 1978) promote a "re-merger"of Western and Asianmusical thought. But Chou
has been only minimally a fieldworking ethnomusicologist. As an influential teacher and com-
poser, he has urged his latter-day students to revere old Chinese musical values, though his
impact for most of his life was felt less in Asia than in New York, through teaching at Columbia
University.
In a New York Times profile of Chinese composers (Ostreich 2001) Chou disparaged the
achievements of his notable disciples such as Tan Dun, whom he taught in China after the cul-
tural revolution. Of him and other students Chou remarks: "Theyreflect the intellectual ambi-
ence in China today. They are not in the habit of going to libraries, doing real research, or
debating issues. I'm disappointed. It's not the kind of situation I wanted. What I'm looking for
is a spiritualdigestion of one's legacies." To which Tan replied: "Ithink Chou Wen-Chungprob-
ably hates me. He thinks we haven't concentrated enough on basic studies. He doesn't under-
stand why we write so much. But I will always be a wild child."
Elsewhere outside the Euro-Americanworld composers have confronted many of the is-
sues Macedadid in distinctiveways, though few were as intensively scholarlyin their approaches.
Blum (2001:198-99) provides a summary of their characteristic dilemmas. Profiles of African
composers include Agawu's publications (1984, 1987) on Ephraim Amu, a Ghanaian, and
Kimberlin's tribute (1999) to Ashenafi Kebede, an Ethiopian who lived in the U.S. The Nige-
rian composer Akin Euba, an activist like Maceda, has long advocated an African art music
through compositions, writings, and conferences.
14. A fuller list of attendees includes musicologists Harold Powers, Robert Garfias,David
Morton, ErnstHeins, BarbaraSmith, NarayanaMenon, Shigeo Kishibe, Rulan Chiao Pian, com-
posers Chou Wen Chung, Eliseo Pajaro,Lucrecia Kasilag,Felipe Padillade Le6n, and perform-
ers Hussein Malik (santur), Prasidh Silapabanleng (ranaad), Ravi Shankar(sitar), Mrs. Shigeo
Kishibe (koto), Amahl Lemuntodon (kulintang), a gangsa topaya and sulibao ensemble from
Luzon, Sun Pei Cheng (pipa and chin), and a nanguan Chinese ensemble.
After the symposium Xenakis (5 September 1966) wrote to Macedafrom Tokyo (author's
translationfrom French): "Iwas very happy to meet you in Manilaand to see the work you are
doing. Your generosity made a strong impression (and your work) and I am persuaded that the
path you are following is a good one indeed. I am of one heart and mind with you" (Maceda,
personal collection).
15. See also Santos 1999.
16. Music of the Kenyah and Modang in East Kalimanta, Indonesia (1979). Quezon City:
Department of Music Research, University of the Philippines.
17. Feld's analysis, although mentioning Stockhausen in passing, does not explore the
recordings' connections to avant-gardemusic, presumably because of their minimal economic
significance (2000:266-67). Particularlyrelevant, however, was the impact of Arom's publica-
tions on Gybrgy Ligeti.

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List of Maceda's Compositions to Date:

1. Ugma-ugma (Structures) for Philippine instruments and voice 1963
2. Agungan for families of gongs 1965
3. Kubing for bamboo instruments and men's voices 1966
4. Pagsamba ritual music for a circular auditorium 1968
5. Cassettes 100 100 participants with cassette recorders play together 1971
6. Ugnayan for 20 radio stations and thousands of people in Manilaand environs 1974
7. Udlot-udlot (Hesitations) for 30 to thousands of performers, mixed instruments
and voices: a ritual music in the open air 1975
8. Ading music for 100 instrumentalists, 100 singers and 600-1000 audience 1978
9. Aroding for 40 mouth harps, 7 men's voices, and 3 tiny flutes 1983
10. Siasid for percussion, 10 blown bamboo flutes, and 5 violins 1983
11. Suling-suling for 10 flutes, 10 bamboo percussions, and 10 flat gongs 1985
12. Strata for 10 buzzers, 10 pairs of sticks, 5 tamtam, 5 flutes, 5 celli, 5 guitars 1988
13. Dissemination for Orchestra 1990
14. Distemperament for Orchestra 1992
15. Music for Five Pianos 1993
16. Two Pianos and Four Winds 1995
17. Music for a Chamber Orchestra 1997
18. Colors Without Rhythm for Orchestra 1998