Feliciano Francisco Feliciano

Francisco Feliciano (19 February 1941 – 19 September 2014) was a Filipino composer and conductor. He was a National Artist of the Philippines for Music.

Feliciano was born in 1941, in Morong, Rizal. After music tuition from his father Maximiano, a brass band leader, pianist and organist, he studied at the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music (BM 1965, MMus 1969), the Hochschule der Künste and Kirchenmusikschule, both in Berlin (1977), and Yale University (MMA 1980, DMA 1984). His teachers included Pajaro, Isang Yun, Heinz Werner Zimmermann and Penderecki. His mature works are strongly influenced by Yun, who introduced him to concepts of East Asian music such as the organic character of single tones and the importance of colour. He applied his close study of the instrumentation techniques of contemporary European music in the orchestral works Fragments (1976), Die Verklärung Christi (1976) and Variationen über ein Gestalt (1977). After returning to the Philippines he composed a number of large-scale theatre works, Yerma (1982), a ballet, La loba negra (1984), a grand opera, and the music dramas Sikhay sa Kabila ng Palaam (1993) and Ashen Wings (1995). The conductor of the Philippine PO from 1981 to 1988, he has been a guest conductor with orchestras including the Moscow State SO, the Chicago SO and the New Zealand SO. He founded and became president of Samba Likhaan (the Asian School of Music Workshop and the Arts), an institution devoted to Christian liturgical practice through the use of Asian arts. His writings on music include Four Asian Contemporary Composers: the Influence of Tradition in their Works (Quezon City, 1983), in which he discusses the music of Chou Wen-chung, Yun, Takemitsu and Maceda.