Special isssue

In 1878, Dr. Heinrich Rothdauscher, a German pharmacist working in Vigan, made a short expedition to the Cordilleras. He published his experiences as a memoir in 1932 (Lebenserinnerungen eines Deutschen Apothekers). Although Rothdauscher, who described himself as having a highly developed musical sense, did not dwell at length upon matters of music, some of his observations are pertinent to understanding the phenomenon of late nineteenth century Western contact with Philippine indigenous and syncretic musical traditions. More importantly, his vivid descriptions of Philippine colonial soundscapes in cities and remote tribal settlements are uniquely intriguing and unusually vivid. His observations are all the more interesting since these were made at the time of the invention of the phonograph in 1877 by the American Thomas Edison. Rothdauscher describes what may be the last moments in which certain types of Philippine music and their corresponding soundscapes were at at the very threshold of the era of the commodification of sound.