Sixty years of ‘Singing from the Heart’

The legacy of the Philippine Madrigal Singers

The Philippine Madrigal Singers continues to celebrate its 60th year. With a mission to serve humanity through music, the group carries on its musical legacy through various performances. Most recently, it concluded its Canadian tour, which took place in April.

As it prepares to end its anniversary in October, what better way to reminisce about its story than by looking into the people who came, sang, and left with their hearts singing?

The Philippine Madrigal Singers was established in 1963 by National Artist for Music Andrea O. Veneracion. During her postgraduate studies in Indiana, she discovered a choir that performed madrigals, a genre popular in the 15th and 16th centuries. Seeing the challenge, she brought it to the Philippines and the University of the Philippines, where she then conceived the UP Madrigal Singers.

The group had an unusual composition of singers. Yes, there were male and female members, but they were arranged in the form of ‘quartets’. Shaped in a semi-circle, the conductor herself sat at the leftmost end. They had to be conscious of one another every time they sang.

Bernadette de Leon, a member in the 1960s, was part of the batch that sang at the Second International Choral Festival in New York. Known for their thunderous, roaring applause, it came too suddenly for the group. It was the week when former US President Dwight Eisenhower passed away. As such, Ma’am OA found it fitting to perform a more somber piece – Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia” – as a tribute. After they sang their ‘Amen,’ silence filled the air, but not for long. Cheers and acclaim soon followed. The rest, as they say, was history.

Robert Delgado, who sang with the group in its famed 1989 batch, remembered juggling his time between studies, the group, and other endeavors. Apart from the usual thrice-a-week, two-hour rehearsals, he also had to be with the Madz for events organized by the CCP, concerts, private engagements, state dinners, and international tours held every year.

Indeed, there was never a year that it wasn’t laid back, as it was always set out to perform and sing.

The Madz is widely known for its wins in various competitions. It was the first choir to win the European Grand Prix twice, in 1997 and 2007. Among them was a piano student who considered himself a ‘diehard fan’ since his early years in UP. He sang with distinguished tenors and became a soloist. He recounts that all of them were trained the same way by Ma’am OA. He was even part of a committee that would select her successor when she retired in 2001. All of them were poised to sit at the end of that circle.

As it turned out, it would be him. Now, Mark Anthony Carpio sits at the end of the semi-circle, still singing with the group as its choirmaster for more than twenty years.

The legacy of the Madz, then and now, remains strong and steadfast in its desire to ‘sing from the heart’. It remains committed to sharing its passion for the greater good through its harmonies. As long as it continues to sing and make music, it will share the vision once dreamed by Ma’am OA, now in full fruition – the vision of a ‘singing Philippines’.