An Honor To My Mentor
Being known as the “First Lady of Philippine Music”, Lucrecia “King” Roces Kasilag (1918-2008) has composed works that made incorporated different genres. Even though she is well-known in the music industry, her compositions are somewhat hard to find even in this age of technology, due to most of them not being published. Even the selected piece, entitled “Teacher Dearly Beloved”, a cantata dedicated to Felicing Tirona, does not have any information on the Internet. Because of this, the paper will mainly focus on three things: 1) the characters that played important roles in the creation of Kasilag’s cantata, 2) give an example of a sacred cantata, and 3) give an similar example to that of Kasilag’s.
“Teacher, Dearly Beloved” was published on June 5, 1967 and is described as a ‘cantata for solo, speech, singing and dance choirs, organ, harp, and percussion’. As stated earlier, this composition was dedicated to Felicing Tirona.
Tirona, who was Kasilag’s mentor and acting Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the Philippine Women’s University back in 1947, opened Kasilag’s eyes to a whole new world that is the world of music education. The two have known each other very well. Tirona inspired Kasilag to open her horizons and discover new capabilities, which sums up their relationship with the former giving the latter the nickname “Baby Komposer”, with a K pertaining to Kasilag. Kasilag studied abroad to develop her career in the music industry, everything because of her mentor opening the gates for her. Still, even with numerous opportunities suddenly appearing in front of her, she still chose to answer the call of her ill teacher. Little did she know, the reason as to why she was summoned was to replace her teacher in her role as the Dean, a year after Tirona’s death.
Next, according to Kasilag’s list of compositions, the cantata’s text came from Khalil Gibran’s masterpiece “The Prophet”. Just a quick background, Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931) was an artist first who created numerous paintings and drawings, before co-founding a literary society consisting of Arab and Lebanese backgrounds. The group was known as the Pen-bond Society, or in its local name, Al Rabitat at Quamaliya.
His work “The Prophet”, published in 1923, is a book of poetic essays, divided into chapters dealing with life and the human condition. One of the twenty-six chapters include teaching, which might have been Kasilag’s inspiration and/or source for the text. An excerpt of the chapter (shown below) strongly reinforces the idea of Kasilag dedicating a cantata for her deceased mentor.
These are the only materials that are available to the researcher as far as technological availability is concerned. The book’s adaptation made by Aurora C. Dino and the musical scale of the cantata may have not yet been published.
For the other half of the paper, a sacred cantata that can also be considered as a cantata dedicated to a “teacher” will be examined. Georg Philipp Telemann’s composition Die Liebe gegen meinen Gott (TVWV 1:350) can be considered as one, since the Bible passage where it came from is on Luke 10:23-37, and is commonly known as the parable of the Good Samaritan. First, though, Jesus puts the lawyer in the position to his answer his own question about how to inherit eternal life. The lawyer responds correctly that he must love God with all his being and love his neighbor as himself. The lawyer, in his cunning attempt, presses Jesus even more for explanation on the word, “neighbor.” Jesus thus responds by using the parable. The lawyer would not have expected to hear of a Samaritan man tending to the needs of the injured Israelite. Early Israelites and Samaritans did not associate with one another under any circumstances. Fullydevoted love toward God will result in unhindered love and mercy toward those we encounter each day. The following lines were taken from the gospel reading below:
Now with that being said, after identifying who Kasilag composed the cantata for, her source in terms of text, and being analyzed with a cantata who portrays a similar theme, we may have an idea on how “Teacher, Dearly Beloved” might have looked (or sounded) like. From a student who is taking up a music appreciation class for the first time, I feel that we as members of the academe should do our role in trying to look for the compositions of our artists, so that in that way future generations will get to know them, study more about them, and who knows by doing so we might have a part in cultivating a generation that is culturally aware and musically aligned.
References:
Sims, S. (2015). A Performer’s Guide to Three Selected Sacred Cantatas for Bass Voice by Georg Philipp Telemann. Taken from https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/ttuir/bitstream/handle/2346/66144/Sims_Stephen_DMAProject.pdf?sequence=5
Salido, B. (2002). The Piano Compositional Style Of Lucrecia Roces Kasilag. Taken from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1486549482669975&disposition=inline