Philippine Memories, Vol. 3

Philippine classical music refers to art music cultivated in the Philippines that draws on European concert traditions while engaging with local materials, languages, and instruments. It encompasses sacred and secular works from the Spanish colonial period (polyphony, baroque/galant church music), through late‑Romantic and early modern concert idioms in the American period, to post‑war nationalist, indigenist, and contemporary experimental currents. Alongside orchestral, chamber, operatic, and choral music, it often incorporates Philippine folk melodies, dance rhythms, and, in later decades, indigenous instruments (e.g., kulintang, gangsa) within Western forms.