All Soul’s Day 2020: 60th Death Anniversary of Filipino Nationalist Composer, Julio Nakpil
The Quiapo-born composer was the fourth of twelve children by Juan Nakpil Luna, who himself was an amateur musician, and Juana Garcia Putco. Nakpil was initially taught music by violinist Ramon Valdes and pianist Manuel Mata, two close associates of his family, but shortly after he learned to play salon music on the piano by himself.
Nakpil became a concert pianist and a published composer by his 20’s and even continued writing music on the onset of the Philippine Revolution, as a key member of the Katipunan and a close comrade of Andres Bonifacio.
After the revolution, Nakpil hardly produced any new music but reflected on his amassed works; he would take old works and rewrite and transcribe them into grand orchestral arrangements, as was the case with ¡Salve Patriaǃ, Ob. (29), written in 1903. It was first performed at the Teatro Zorrilla by a 150-piece orchestra for the commemoration of Rizal’s 8th death anniversary and the inauguration of Rizal’s monument in Luneta dated December 30, 1904.
This piece, one of Nakpil’s grandest works and an ode to Jose Rizal, is a march that takes important musical material from Nakpil’s earlier work Marangal na Dalit ng Katagalugan, which was commissioned by Bonifacio and composed around the time Nakpil entered the Katipunan – coincidently on another second of November in 1896.
¡Salve Patriaǃ was the last piece Nakpil would write for a while; it would take some four decades, in fact, for Nakpil to come back to the drawing board with new ideas for his funeral march Deus Omnipotence et Misericors (Requiescat in Pace), Ob. 30, which he wrote after his wife Gregoria de Jesus passed away in 1943.
Dr. Maria Alexandra Iñigo- Chua, PhD, the Director of the Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities (RCCAH) of the University of Sto. Tomas and the project head of the Julio Nakpil Music Project, which began the research, recording and publication of the composer’s works in 2018, writes in the first-volume of the Julio Nakpil Nakpil Music Edition —
“[¡Salve Patriaǃ], full of optimism and enthusiastic jubilance, hails the imaginary vision of a nation free from… injustice and tyranny. It was in [this work] that [Nakpil] found… his redemption and salvation from the political and social ills of the incipient Filipino nation, and… his imagined independent and free country that he so longed and toiled for, but that eluded him in his lifetime.”
Dr. Iñigo-Chua further describes Nakpil as “an organic music intellectual who broke down stereotypes emancipating not only his people but also their music from the bonds of colonialism. His creative genius was no doubt revolutionary and it is in his music that we witness the impulse to give birth to Filipino music”.
Credits:
Photo of Julio Nakpil in front of his piano and music sheet, at age 64, Bahay Nakpil-Bautista Archives
¡Salve Patriaǃ is performed by the UST Symphony Orchestra, Herminigildo Ranera, Conductor
Music sheet, from “Julio Nakpil and the Philippine Revolution” With the Autobiography of Gregoria de Jesus, Edited by Encarnacion Alzona