Jose Canseco, Jr. was born on June 1, 1839, in Manila, Philippines. He was the older of two sons of Jose Canseco, Sr. and Cecilia del Pozo Rivera. Jose, together with his younger brother Mariano, sung in San Augustin Church at a young age.
Jose Canseco in his adolescence was brought up north to the Ilocos region to the Augustinian fathers who asked him to marry a girl who had been disgraced. The young Canseco escaped instead and joined the Spanish Army Regiment No. 8 band. However, upon the petition of his mother, he was honorably discharged from that organization as he joined it without parental consent.
After discharging from the Spanish Army Regiment No. 8 band, Jose Canseco became a tenor in the Manila Cathedral under the directorship of Blas Echegoyen. The earthquake of June 1863 buried him and other companions under the ruins for four days but he miraculously escaped uninjured. Not much is known about his activities from the time of that calamitous earthquake until 1882 when his composition entitled Sta. Teresa Doctora, Sed Mi Protectora was submitted to the Santa Teresa centennial celebration contest. Before this event, he had assisted and sometimes conducted orchestras for foreign opera troupes that visited the Islands. In 1882 he became conductor of the orchestra organized by Pedro Gruet. In 1886 he helped Raymundo Fermin, the blind flute player, organize an orchestra in Pandakan whose members were all women. In the same year, he assisted Ladislaw Bonus Santos to form an opera company composed of local singers in the same district.
Canseco became the stage director and supervised the making of the costumes. Thus an all-Filipino cast successfully staged parts of La Traviata and Rigoletto and whole operas like Lucrezia Borgia and Linda di Chamounix in the cockpit of Pandakan. Later hearing of this local achievement, the company was honored by an invitation from the governor and captain-general to perform in the city of Manila and this was done.
Canseco left the company in 1889 for the north becoming the director of the Narvacan band. Returning in 1891 to Manila, he was persuaded to take the government competitive examination for bandmasters. He passed the tests which were rigid and colorful. Thus he got appointed as bandmaster of Regiment No. 71 of the Spanish Army in the Islands, succeeding Lazaro Concepcion. Zamboanga was his first assignment. In that Spanish outpost, he devised and perfected a musical apparatus which he originally called "miratonos" but renamed "tonopsis mecanica" by Fr. Sauret, S.J., when it was presented to the Exposicion Regional de Filipinas in 1895. The value of the invention was not then appreciated in the exposition but in the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, it received a gold medal. By this device, musical transcription and harmonization were facilitated and made easy for students and musicians.
In May 1896, he was transferred to Iligan, and the Revolution overtook him there. Charged with complicity he was nearly shot together with Rosalio Silos. After his release from imprisonment, he moved to Cagayan de Misamis about the end of 1898. In that province, he was commissioned to deliver money to the Revolutionary government in Malolos to augment the funds of the Revolution in Luzon but he did not succeed in this mission because he failed to cross the lines to Malolos. From May to November 1900, he sojourned in Cebu, teaching music the while. Then he went to Manila and taught and solfeggio in the Liceo de Manila and in the Colegio Porvenir. He also taught harmony and composition at home. His pupils included Felipe Marin, Leon Ignacio, Julio Paz, Silvestre Tapales, Santiago Cruz, Alfredo Roa, and others.
Of his religious compositions, the following are remembered: Salve a la Sma. Virgen, Letania a la Sma. Virgen, Liberame (responso), Plegaria a la Dolorosa, and two hymns to Nuestra Senora de Guia, the patron saint of Ermita. His secular pieces include La Despedida, a song with words by Lorenzo Guerrero and dedicated to Juanita Marco, La Ausencia, dedicated to the girl later to become his second wife, and Flor de Maria in three parts - Venid y Vamos Todos, Traed a Maria, and El Pescador. To the above compositions his son, Jose Canseco, added La Huerfana, dedicated to Clara Guerrero, a polonaise Josefina, dedicated to his daughter, and paso-dobles Valeroso and Themis y Marta, the latter being dedicated to General Eulogio Despojol. He also wrote the musical scores to a Spanish zarzuela, La Muerte de Lucrezia by Ronderos. None of his works were ever printed, however, and remain to this day unedited. He composed several marches which were played by his band and collected some seventy-two native folk-songs and airs from the north and the south which to this day were never located.
Jose Canseco, Jr. was known and recognized as a gifted musician and bandmaster. He ventured into composition, creating marches and sacred hymns, and completed the musical scores for the Spanish Zarzwela, La Muerte de Lucrezia by Ronderos. His composition entitled Sta. Teresa Doctora, Sed Mi Protectora was submitted to the Santa Teresa centennial celebration contest where Canseco received a gold medal.
Jose Canseco was married twice. The marriage with Engracia San Juan produced two children, Apolonia and Nicolas. After the death of his first wife, Canseco married again in 1881. The marriage with Francisca Espiritu produced nine children.
Jose Canseco, Sr. was a sea captain, having gone to Spain on several voyages by way of the Cape of Good Hope. After this ship was wrecked off that coast he found his way back and settled in Manila and became a confidential person in Malacanang Palace when Don Narciso Claveria was the governor and captain-general.
