Title of composition: "Theme and Variations for String Quartet".

I composed the first version of this composition in 1978 as my entry to the 1978 CCP Chamber Music Composition Contest. The piece did not earn an award. I just put it to the fact that the composition, being of in atonal/serial  style, is not easy to read and comprehend, even by a seasoned compositional judge. I wrote this piece as my first attempt to write a quartet, something that every serious composer needs to do, to show show that he can write for string quartet, and thus, for orchestra. I could not possibly write in the style of Schubert or Beethoven, which is so conventional, so I opted to adopt the serial style of Schoenberg, Webern, and the neo-classical tendencies of Hindemith. The serial/atonal way of looking at composition is that every note is equally important and there is no need to adopt  conventional cadences (dominant/subdominant/dominant) to establish a particular key. This composition therefore is not in any particular key; it is in all keys. Necessarily, I had to establish a theme. The  principal theme is composed of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, with no note being repeated except as a grace note. The secondary theme, which is connected to the principal theme by an altered-note scale, uses the same notes as the principal theme except that is in inverted form, i.e. a mirror of the principal theme. Although to the lay listener they might not seem to be so, the resulting variations are based on the principal theme in one form or another.It would be too complicated to explain how I arrived at the process of creating these variations,  so I would just ask the listener to listen and respond to this composition as a piece of music. Since the 1970's, I placed the handwritten manuscript of this piece in a safe place (there were no computers or notation programs at my disposal then). In the 1980's, I acquired a Macintosh computer, and actually inputted this score into digital form using a program called "Overture" by Opcode. However, the sound was tinny and very unsatisfactory. Also, there was no way I could make the computer understand an instruction like "pizz" (for "pizzicato" or plucked) or "arco" (bowed). For this, I had to do some serious programming and tweaking as well as connect my computer to midi interfaces and sound boxes that were finicky and temperamental to say the least. I got distracted by something called earning a living (and travelling) in the intervening years, but I always thought I would like to re-score this quartet in a decent and more definitive form and sound.Cut to: the present. How digital technology has changed and improved tremendously.! Using the latest version of the music scoring program Finale (v.2012), which also gives me a whole panoply of high-quality orchestral sounds, I had been able to re-score and re-input the piece and have it sound as close to a being performed by a live ensemble as possible. This I did just by using a simple PC netbook. The built-in sounds are by Garritan and modelled after Stradivarius instruments. One of the delightful aspects of Finale is that you can just type "pizz" (for pizzicato) and the note to which it has been attached while instantly sound "pizz". If the judge in that contest of long ago could have heard this piece while looking at the score, I wonder if he would change his mind. But no matter. Art is forever, and this is basically my response to those who say that you just need to write songs a la Justin Bieber or New Direction. You can decide to be stupid, as an artist, or you can continue to hope that what you are doing, however incomprehensible to many, is worth something now and in the future.

Fantasy on "Bol-anon" for 2 Pianos

I've always liked this  popular Boholano song  composed by Pauline Sevilla and have arranged it for two pianos. The difficulty level is medium to medium high. This piece is suitable for  piano concerts. There is no license fee to perform. However, acknowledgment of  me, Manny Panta,  as arranger is requested and appreciated.

Requiem 2013

This is a musical piece scored for two pianos, orchestra and chorus. It is a requiem for the victims of Supertyphoon Yolanda that struck the Visayas, especially Ormoc City and Tacloban City, on November 5, 2013. Thousands of people died in the ensuing storm surge. This composition  takes its words from the opening hymn of the Latin Mass for the Dead. It is my way of memorializing the  victims of this natural calamity.