Nuns of St. Scholastica College and five generations of Scholasticans are in a tizzy over the centenary of Sr. Baptista Battig’s arrival from the Benedictine mother house in Tutzing, Germany.
Sr. Battig was a richly gifted pianist who had just given a successful concert when she decided to embrace the religious life. She had studied under Ludwig Deppe, the last living pupil of Liszt, and she came to introduce formal music education in the Philippines.
She taught at first in a rented room in Singalong, using a rented piano while imparting Deppe’s principles: the perfect turn of the wrist; playing with weight exactly on the fingers; producing beauty of tone and properly using the pedal which is “the soul of the piano”; aesthetically interpreting musical compositions.
According to Sr. Battig, a sonorous, singing, penetrating and fuller tone could be evoked by the correct wrist and hand position, the fingers being as curbed as possible so that one played exactly on the fingertips, requiring the slight turning of the hand outwardly, from the wrist, not from the elbow, leaving the wrist free and flexible.
The pedal should bind the tones together, thereby making legato passages a whole entity. Sr. Battig wanted fortissimo passages “full, deep stately or passionate — singing or sighing and vanishing like the dying or setting sun.”
Virtually, all music education here is rooted in the foundations laid down by Sr. Battig. I have an indirect reason for celebrating her centenary: three of my five piano teachers were Battig graduates: Barbara Cuaycong, Blanca Castillo Dinglasan and Marcela Agoncillo whose own graduate, Luz Katigbak, (she later became a Benedictine nun) taught us music history and appreciation, theory and composition. Further, Eugenia Agoncillo, also a Battig graduate and an older sister of Marcela, gave me valuable pointers on music reviewing. Much earlier interns, myself included, would hie to St. Cecilia’s Hall to listen to piano graduation recitals with orchestral accompaniment.
The SSC alumnae find logic in remembering Sr. Battig’s centenary with a tertulia which was still fashionable in her time. Tertulias, soirees held in the spacious, elegant homes of the ilustrados at the close of the Spanish era and briefly thereafter, had songs, instrumental selections, poetry recitations, literary or philosophic discussions followed by a merienda cena.
In Sunday’s tertulia at St. Cecilia’s Hall, former students and faculty members will be performing: soprano Camille Lopez, pianists Greg Zuniega and Marguerite M. Echaus, the latter a distinguished faculty member of the Vancouver Music Academy who is expressly coming to participate, Grace A. Gatchalian and cellist Gerry Graham Gonzales. Filipino folk songs arranged by Augusto Espino will be interpreted by 100 fingers — these belonging to Ramona Balingcos, Renee Camu, Gloria Supato, Rea Jimenez, Ingrid Chua-Lao, Gretchen Arnaldo, Lourdes Guevarra, Simonette Feria and Jaclene Palanca.
Ten nun-pianists headed by dean Sr. Mary Placid and Mother Mary John will play native folk songs arranged by Alejandro Consolacion. Dohnanyi’s Variations on a Nursery Rhyme will be rendered by both young and seasoned pianists: Cora Matco, Jane Banta, Priscilla Sison (president, Alumnae Association), Rosemarie de la Paz, Mae de Vera and yes, five-year old Lorenzo Teves.
One hundred voices, accompanied by the SSC Orchestra under conductor Ma. Lourdes Hermo, will close the concert with Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
The jubilation will culminate in a gala concert on Nov. 25 to mark the feast day of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music. The most outstanding graduates will interpret Western and Filipino composers to demonstrate Sr. Battig’s technique.