Eliseo Pajaro

Eliseo Morales Pajaro was born in Badoc, in the province of Ilocos Norte, on 21 March 1915, and died in Houston, Texas, on 6 October 1984. He was a central figure in twentieth-century Philippine composition, both through his own output and through his institutional work on behalf of music in his country.

His training combined local teaching with study abroad. He was trained at the Conservatory of the University of the Philippines and then at the Eastman School in the United States, where he obtained his master's degree in 1951 and his doctorate in 1953, studying with teachers such as Barlow, Rogers and Hanson. In 1955 he founded the League of Filipino Composers and the Philippine association of music educators. He taught at the University of the Philippines, where he served as acting director of the conservatory in 1967–1968 and as acting dean in 1968–1969, and he also acted as cultural adviser and executive vice-chairman of a university committee on cultural presentations.

His operas and ballets received official honours: the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1964 for the opera Binhi ng kalayaan, and another in 1970 for the ballet Mir-i-nisa. His harmonic language is based on chords built in fourths and fifths, dissonant counterpoint and polytonality, and many of his scores draw their source material from folk songs.

His legacy lies in having united modern Western technique with Filipino folk material, and in the Himig Pilipino series, which served as educational repertoire for generations of students.