Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Heitor Villa-Lobos

 

(born March 5, 1887, Rio de Janeiro, Braz. — died Nov. 17, 1959, Rio de Janeiro) Brazilian composer. He was exposed to folk music as a child, and his later extensive ethnomusicological studies (1905 – 12) had great influence on his own works. Self-taught as a composer, he met Darius Milhaud in 1917, and Artur Rubinstein later promoted his music and helped support him. A "week of modern art" in São Paulo (1922) brought his music to national attention, and he was given a grant to go to Paris (1923 – 30), where his music was received enthusiastically. On his return he became a leader in musical education — founding the Ministry of Education conservatory (1942) and the Brazilian Academy of Music (1945) — and Brazil's semiofficial ambassador to the world. His many works include his 9 Bachianas brasileiras for various ensembles and his 14 Chôros, based on a popular form of street music.

For more information on Heitor Villa-Lobos, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics
Music Encyclopedia: Heitor Villa-Lobos
Top

(b Rio de Janeiro, 5 March 1887; d there, 17 Nov 1959)Brazilian composer. His father taught him to play the cello and in his teens he performed with popular musicians in the city. He then travelled widely, returning to Rio in his mid-20s for a few formal lessons. From 1923 to 1930 he was in Paris, where he wrote several works in his Chôros series, giving Brazilian impressions a luxuriant scoring: Messiaen and others were impressed. He returned to Brazil, where he did valuable work in reforming musical education. In 1945 he founded the Brazilian Academy of Music in Rio de Janeiro. Also during this period he produced the cycle of nine Bachianas brasileiras for diverse combinations (1930-45), marrying the spirit of Brazilian folk music with that of Bach; the two for eight cellos (one with soprano) have been especially successful. His gigantic output includes operas, 12 symphonies (1916-57), 17 string quartets (1915-57), numerous songs and much piano music.



Biography: Heitor Villa-Lobos
Top

The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was the most prolific and original of those Brazilians who, during the 20th century, worked toward the development of a national idiom in serious music that incorporated African and Native American motifs.

Heitor Villa-Lobos was fascinated early by the popular music and samba rhythms of his native Rio de Janeiro at a time when gentility forbade such interests. Although his father, a college professor and librarian, had encouraged this interest, Villa-Lobos ran away from home at 16 to escape his widowed mother's attempt to keep him from developing further his musical talents.

Soon Villa-Lobos began drifting. He absorbed the folk music of whatever region he passed through, listening, mimicking, improvising, elaborating, and composing as he went. He traveled along the Amazon in a canoe, listening to the songs of tropical birds and the drums of the Indians. Although he occasionally enrolled for formal schooling, he found such experiences boring; he remained principally self-taught. In his 20s he lived for 3 years in the culturally diverse city of Bahia, where the Afro-Brazilian influence was strongest. Then he returned to Rio de Janeiro, where he studied European music on his own.

Meanwhile, Villa-Lobos experimented continuously and wrote a great deal, always seeking to express Brazilian qualities. His nationalism was reflected in the following incident. In 1923 wealthy friends raised money and sent him to Europe, but when upon his arrival he was asked what he had come to study, he replied, "I am here to demonstrate my own achievements." Indeed, Parisians showed more interest in his works than had Brazilians, perhaps because in Europe they were considered exotic. He remained in Paris for 7 years, composing some of his most important work.

Back in Brazil in the 1930s Villa-Lobos became a music educator, campaigning for the introduction of Brazilian music into the school curriculum and staging performances by massed a cappella choirs extolling nationalistic themes. The semiauthoritarian dictator Getulio Vargas gave him full support in this campaign, and Villa-Lobos's influence can still be seen in musical education in Brazil.

At this time Villa-Lobos composed the nine suites entitled Bachianas brasileiras. These are his best-known works; in all of them he used a contrapuntal and fugal technique superimposed upon typically Brazilian themes, although otherwise they are quite diverse. They are characterized by an impressive range, great power, melodic inventiveness, and controlled structure.

Villa-Lobos composed over 1, 500 works in almost every conceivable genre, including operas, ballets, church Masses, choral pieces, orchestral works, guitar solos, and movie scores. Not all his work is good, but at his best it is superb.

Further Reading

There is no serious book-length study of Villa-Lobos in English, although Vasco Mariz prepared a short summary, Heitor Villa-Lobos: Brazilian Composer (1963), a condensation of the author's biography published in Rio de Janeiro. Villa-Lobos is set in the larger context in Nicolas Slonimsky, Music of Latin America (1945). There is a section on the composer in Joseph Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961).

Additional Sources

Behague, Gerard, Heitor Villa-Lobos: the search for Brazil's musical soul, Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1994.

Peppercorn, L. M. (Lisa Margaret), Villa-Lobos, London; New York: Omnibus; New York: Distributor, Music Sales Corp., 1989.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Heitor Villa-Lobos
Top
Villa-Lobos, Heitor (ā'tôr vē'lä-lô'bôs), 1887-1959, Brazilian composer, educated in Brazil but self-taught in composition. He developed an interest in Brazilian folk music, which became the strongest influence on his works. A series of compositions which he called Chôros, ranging from an instrumental solo to an orchestral work, employ a synthesis of the different modes of Brazilian folk and popular music. Outstanding are Chorôs No. 7 (1924), for strings and woodwinds, No. 10 (1926), for orchestra and chorus, and No. 11 (1928; premiere, 1942), for piano and orchestra. He visited Paris (c.1923-26), conducted various orchestras in Europe, and became well known there; but it was not until his music was played at the New York World's Fair (1939-40) that he became known in the United States. In 1932 he was appointed director of musical education in Brazil. He came to the United States (1944-45) to conduct various orchestras in performances of his works. His compositions, including five symphonies, several operas, concertos, chamber music, and songs, number about 2,000. Although these are of uneven quality, his best works, such as Bachiana's brasileira's No. 1 (1930), written in homage to Bach, display great originality and vitality.
Word Tutor: Villa-Lobos
Top
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: n. - Brazilian composer (1887-1959).

Artist: Heitor Villa-Lobos
Top
  • Period: Modern (1910-1949)
  • Country: Brazil
  • Born: March 05, 1887 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Died: November 17, 1959 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Genres: Ballet, Chamber Music, Choral Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Vocal Music

Biography

The music of Heitor Villa-Lobos is known for its characteristic nationalism, driving rhythms, and original instrumentation. He was trained as an autodidact opposed to academic instruction, his music grew in a completely independent and individual fashion.

Villa-Lobos began studying music at an early age, when his father, a worker at the National Library and an amateur musician, taught him to play cello, viola, and guitar. These early influences later became evident in the orchestration of some of his more prominent works. Although he intended to enter school to study medicine, Villa-Lobos soon found that he preferred spending time with the local popular musicians, becoming familiar with the various musical styles native to Rio de Janeiro's street and night life. Among other skills, he learned to improvise guitar melodies over the "choro," a popular instrumental genre of the time, which lent Villa-Lobos the effortless Latin nationality so strongly present in his music.

From the ages of 18 to 25 he traveled extensively throughout Brazil and the African-influenced Caribbean nations, collecting themes and assessing the major style characteristics of the local musics. It was also during this time that Villa-Lobos composed his first major compositions, most notably his Piano Trio No. 1.

When he returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1912, Villa-Lobos briefly attempted to receive a more formalized education, but his personality and musical practice proved ill-matched with the academic establishment and, although he made important connections with the faculty, he soon left classes. He spent the next ten years composing and playing freelance cello in cafes and cinemas to earn a living. He eventually gained national recognition and a fair sum of government funding with the premiere of his Third Symphony, "A guerra," the first part of a symphonic trilogy commissioned by the Brazilian government to commemorate World War I.

From 1923 to 1930, Villa-Lobos found himself centered in Paris, where he was a huge success, his music being widely published and frequently performed. He eventually returned to Brazil, however, becoming one of the most esteemed artists of the new Nationalist regime, which lasted until 1945. During the 1930s, Villa-Lobos involved himself deeply and enthusiastically with public music education, once again traveling throughout Brazil to offer his services as a teacher and school coordinator. In 1945, his passion reached the ultimate fruition when he founded the Brazilian Academy of Music. He spent the last ten years of his life traveling and conducting, primarily in New York and Paris. ~ Graham Olson, All Music Guide

Discography

Villa-Lobos par lui-même [Box Set]

Buy this CD

Villa-Lobos Performs The Little Train of the Caipira; Bachianas Brasileiras Nos. 4 & 5; Momoprecoce and others

Buy this CD

Villa-Lobos plays Villa-Lobos

Buy this CD
   
Wikipedia: Heitor Villa-Lobos
Top
Heitor Villa-Lobos circa 1922

Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music".[1] Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date.[2] He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas brasileiras ("Brazilian Bach-pieces").

Contents

Biography

Youth and exploration

Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. His father, Raul, was a wealthy, educated man of Spanish extraction, a librarian, an amateur astronomer and musician. In Villa-Lobos's early childhood, Brazil underwent a period of social revolution and modernisation, finally abolishing slavery in 1888 and overthrowing the Empire of Brazil in 1889. The changes in Brazil were reflected in its musical life: previously European music had been the dominant influence, and the courses at the Conservatório de Música were grounded in traditional counterpoint and harmony. Villa-Lobos underwent very little of this formal training. After a few abortive harmony lessons, he learnt music by illicit observation from the top of the stairs of the regular musical evenings at his house arranged by his father. He learned to play the cello, the guitar and the clarinet. When his father died suddenly in 1899 he earned a living for his family by playing in cinema and theatre orchestras in Rio.[3]

Around 1905 Villa-Lobos started explorations of Brazil's "dark interior", absorbing the native Brazilian musical culture. Serious doubt has been cast on some of Villa-Lobos's tales of the decade or so he spent on these expeditions, and about his capture and near escape from cannibals, with some believing them to be fabrications or wildly embellished romanticism.[4] After this period, he gave up any idea of conventional training and instead absorbed the influences of Brazil's indigenous cultures, itself based on Portuguese, African, and American Indian elements. His earliest compositions were the result of improvisations on the guitar from this period.

Villa-Lobos played with many local Brazilian street-music bands; he was also influenced by the cinema and Ernesto Nazareth's improvised tangos and polkas.[5] For a time Villa-Lobos became a cellist in a Rio opera company, and his early compositions include attempts at Grand Opera. Encouraged by Arthur Napoleão, a pianist and music publisher, he decided to compose seriously.[6]

Brazilian influence

In 1912, Villa-Lobos married the pianist Lucília Guimarães, ended his travels, and began his career as a serious musician. His music began to be published in 1913. He introduced some of his compositions in a series of occasional chamber concerts (later also orchestral concerts) from 1915–1921, mainly in Rio de Janeiro's Salão Nobre do Jornal do Comércio.

The music presented at these concerts shows his coming to terms with the conflicting elements in his experience, and overcoming a crisis of identity, as to whether European or Brazilian music would dominate his style. This was decided by 1916, the year in which he composed the symphonic poems Amazonas and Uirapurú (although Amazonas was not performed until 1929, and Uirapurú was first performed in 1935). These works drew from native Brazilian legends and the use of "primitive", folk material.[7]

European influence did still inspire Villa-Lobos. In 1917 Sergei Diaghilev made an impact on tour in Brazil with his Ballets Russes. That year Villa-Lobos also met the French composer Darius Milhaud, who was in Rio as secretary to Paul Claudel at the French Legation. Milhaud brought the music of Debussy, Satie, and possibly Stravinsky; in return Villa-Lobos introduced Milhaud to Brazilian street music. In 1918, he also met the pianist Artur Rubinstein, who became a lifelong friend and champion; this meeting prompted Villa-Lobos to write more piano music.[8]

In about 1918 Villa-Lobos abandoned the use of opus numbers for his compositions as a constraint to his pioneering spirit. With the suite Carnaval das crianças ("Children's carnival") for two pianos of 1919–20, Villa-Lobos liberated his style altogether from European Romanticism.[9] The piece depicts eight characters or scenes from Rio's Lent Carnival.

In February 1922, a festival of modern art took place in São Paulo and Villa-Lobos contributed performances of his own works. The press were unsympathetic and the audience were not appreciative; their mockery was encouraged by Villa-Lobos's being forced by a foot infection to wear one carpet slipper.[10] The festival ended with Villa-Lobos's Quarteto simbólico, composed as an impression of Brazilian urban life.

In July 1922, Rubinstein gave the first performance of A Prole do Bebê. There had recently been an attempted military coup on Copacabana Beach, and places of entertainment had been closed for days; the public possibly wanted something less intellectually demanding, and the piece was booed. Villa-Lobos was philosophical about it, and Rubinstein later reminisced that the composer said, "I am still too good for them." The piece has been called "the first enduring work of Brazilian modernism".[11]

Rubinstein suggested that Villa-Lobos tour abroad, and in 1923 he set out for Paris. His avowed aim was to exhibit his exotic sound world rather than to study. Just before he left he completed his Nonet (for ten players and chorus) which was first performed after his arrival in the French capital. He stayed in Paris in 1923–24 and 1927–30, and there he met such luminaries as Edgard Varèse, Pablo Picasso, Leopold Stokowski and Aaron Copland. Parisian concerts of his music made a strong impression.[12]

In the 1920s, Villa-Lobos also met the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia, who commissioned a guitar study: the composer responded with a set of 12 (Douze Études), each taking a tiny detail or figure from Brazilian chorões (itinerant street musicians) and transforming it into a piece that is not merely didactic. The chorões were also the initial inspiration behind his series of compositions, the Chôros, which were written between 1924–29. The first European performance of Chôros no. 10, in Paris, caused a storm: L. Chevallier wrote of it in Le Monde musicale, "[…it is] an art […] to which we must now give a new name."[13]

Vargas era

In 1930, Villa-Lobos, who was in Brazil to conduct, planned to return to Paris. One of the consequences of the revolution of that year was that money could no longer be taken out of the country, and so he had no means of paying any rents abroad. Thus forced to stay in Brazil, he arranged concerts instead around São Paulo, and composed patriotic and educational music. In 1932, he became director of the Superindendência de Educação Musical e Artistica (SEMA), and his duties included arranging concerts including the Brazilian premieres of Ludwig van Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Johann Sebastian Bach's B Minor Mass as well as Brazilian compositions. His position at SEMA led him to compose mainly patriotic and propagandist works. His series of Bachianas brasileiras were a notable exception. In 1936, Villa-Lobos and his wife separated.

Villa-Lobos's writings of the Vargas era include propaganda for Brazilian nationhood ("brasilidade"),[14] and teaching and theoretical works. His Guia Prático ran to 11 volumes, Solfejos (two volumes, 1942 and 1946) contained vocal exercises, and Canto Orfeônico (1940 and 1950) contained patriotic songs for schools and for civic occasions. His music for the film O Descobrimento do Brasil ("The Discovery of Brazil") of 1936, which included versions of earlier compositions, was arranged into orchestral suites, and includes a depiction of the first mass in Brazil in a setting for double choir.

Villa-Lobos published A Música Nacionalista no Govêrno Getúlio Vargas ca. 1941, in which he characterised the nation as a sacred entity whose symbols (including its flag, motto and national anthem) were inviolable. Villa-Lobos was the chair of a committee whose task was to define a definitive version of the Brazilian national anthem.[15]

After 1937, during the Estado Novo period when Vargas seized power by decree, Villa-Lobos continued producing patriotic works directly accessible to mass audiences. Independence Day on September 7 1939 involved 30 000 children singing the national anthem and items arranged by Villa-Lobos. For the 1943 celebrations he also composed the ballet Dança da terra, which the authorities deemed unsuitable until it was revised. The 1943 celebrations did include Villa-Lobos's hymn Invocação em defesa da pátria shortly after Brazil's declaring war on Germany and its allies.[16]

Villa-Lobos's demagogue status damaged his reputation among certain schools of musicians, among them disciples of new European trends such as serialism— which was effectively off limits in Brazil until the 1960s. This crisis was, in part, due to some Brazilian composers finding it necessary to reconcile Villa-Lobos's own liberation of Brazilian music from European models in the 1920s with a style of music they felt to be more universal.[17]

Composer in demand

Heitor Villa-Lobos at the end of a concert in Tel Aviv, 1952

Vargas fell from power in 1945. Villa-Lobos was able, after the end of the war, to travel abroad again; he returned to Paris, and also made regular visits to the United States as well as travelling to Great Britain, and Israel. He received a huge number of commissions, and fulfilled many of them despite failing health. He composed concertos for piano, cello (the second one in 1953), classical guitar (in 1951 for Segovia, who refused to play it until the composer provided a cadenza in 1956[18]), harp (for Nicanor Zabaleta in 1953) and harmonica (for John Sebastian, Sr. in 1955–6). Other commissions included his Symphony no. 11 (for the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1955), and the opera Yerma (1955–56) based on the play by Federico García Lorca. His prolific output of this period prompted criticisms of note spinning and banality: critical reactions to his Piano Concerto No. 5 included the comments "bankrupt" and "piano tuners' orgy".[19]

His music for the film Green Mansions starring Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins, commissioned by MGM in 1958, earned Villa-Lobos $25,000, and he conducted the soundtrack recording himself.[20] The film was in production for many years. Originally to be directed by Vincente Minnelli, it was taken over by Hepburn's husband Mel Ferrer.[21] MGM decided only to use part of Villa-Lobos's music in the actual film, turning instead to Bronislaw Kaper for the rest of the music.[22] From the score, Villa-Lobos compiled a work for soprano soloist, male chorus, and orchestra, which he titled Forest of the Amazons and recorded it in 1959 in stereo with Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão, an unidentified male chorus, and the Symphony of the Air for United Artists Records. The spectacular recording was issued both on LP and reel-to-reel tape.[23]

In June 1959, Villa-Lobos alienated many of his fellow musicians by expressing disillusionment, saying in an interview that Brazil was "dominated by mediocrity".[24] In November he died in Rio; his state funeral was the final major civic event in that city before the capital transferred to Brasília.[25] He is buried in the Cemitério São João Batista in Rio de Janeiro.

Music

His earliest pieces originated in guitar improvisations, for example Panqueca ("Pancake") of 1900. The concert series of 1915–21 included first performances of pieces demonstrating originality and virtuosic technique. Some of these pieces are early examples of elements of importance throughout his œuvre. His attachment to the Iberian Peninsula is demonstrated in Canção Ibéria of 1914 and in orchestral transcriptions of some of Enrique Granados' piano Goyescas (1918, now lost). Other themes that were to recur in his later work include the anguish and despair of the piece Desesperança— Sonata Phantastica e Capricciosa no. 1 (1915), a violin sonata including "histrionic and violently contrasting emotions",[26] the birds of L'oiseau blessé d'une flèche (1913), the mother-child relationship (not usually a happy one in Villa-Lobos's music) in Les mères of 1914, and the flowers of Suíte floral for piano of 1916–18 which reappeared in Distribuição de flores for flute and guitar of 1937.

Reconciling European tradition and Brazilian influences was also an element that bore fruit more formally later. His earliest published work Pequena suíte for cello and piano of 1913 shows a love for the cello, but is not notably Brazilian, although it contains elements that were to resurface later.[27] His three-movement String Quartet no. 1 (Suíte graciosa) of 1915 (expanded to six movements ca. 1947[28]) is influenced by European opera,[29] while Três danças características (africanas e indígenas) of 1914–16 for piano, later arranged for octet and subsequently orchestrated, is radically influenced by the tribal music of the Caripunas Indians of Mato Grosso.[30]

With his tone poems Amazonas (1916, first performed in Paris in 1929) and Uirapurú (1916, first performed 1935) he created works dominated by indigenous Brazilian influences. The works use Brazilian folk tales and characters, imitations of the sounds of the jungle and its fauna, imitations of the sound of the nose-flute by the violinophone, and not least imitations of the uirapuru itself.[31]

His meeting with Artur Rubinstein in 1918 prompted Villa-Lobos to compose piano music such as Simples coletânea of 1919 — which was possibly influenced by Rubinstein's playing of Ravel and Scriabin on his South American tours — and Bailado infernal of 1920.[8] The latter piece includes the tempi and expression markings "vertiginoso e frenético", "infernal" and "mais vivo ainda" ("faster still").

Carnaval das crianças of 1919–20 saw Villa-Lobos's mature style emerge; unconstrained by the use of traditional formulae or any requirement for dramatic tension, the piece at times imitates a mouth organ, children's dances, a harlequinade, and ends with an impression of the carnival parade. This work was orchestrated in 1929 with new linking passages and a new title, Momoprecoce. Naïveté and innocence is also heard in the piano suites A Prole do Bebê ("The Baby's Family") of 1918–21.

Around this time he also fused urban Brazilian influences and impressions, for example in his Quarteto simbólico of 1921. He included the urban street music of the chorões, who were groups containing flute, clarinet and cavaquinho (a Brazilian guitar), and often also including ophicleide, trombones or percussion. Villa-Lobos occasionally joined such bands. Early works showing this influence were incorporated into the Suíte popular brasileiro of 1908–12 assembled by his publisher, and more mature works include the Sexteto místico (ca. 1955, replacing a lost and probably unfinished one begun in 1917[32]), and Canções típicas brasileiras of 1919. His guitar studies are also influenced by the music of the chorões.[33]

All the elements mentioned so far are fused in Villa-Lobos's Nonet. Subtitled Impressão rápida do todo o Brasil ("A brief impression of the whole of Brazil"), the title of the work denotes it as ostensibly chamber music, but it is scored for flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, celesta, harp, piano, a large percussion battery requiring at least two players, and a mixed chorus.

In Paris, his musical vocabulary established, Villa-Lobos solved the problem of his works' form. It was perceived as an incongruity that his Brazilian impressionism should be expressed in the form of quartets and sonatas. He developed new forms to free his imagination from the constraints of conventional musical development such as that required in sonata form.[34] The multi-sectional poema form may be seen in the Suite for Voice and Violin, which is somewhat like a triptych, and the Poema da criança e sua mama for voice, flute, clarinet, and cello (1923). The extended Rudepoema for piano, written for Rubinstein, is a multi-layered work, often requiring notation on several staves, and is both experimental and demanding. Wright calls it "the most impressive result" of this formal development.[35] The Ciranda, or Cirandinha is a stylised treatment of simple Brazilian folk melodies in a wide variety of moods. A ciranda is a child's singing game, but Villa-Lobos's treatment in the works he gave this title are sophisticated. Another form was the Chôros. Villa-Lobos composed more than a dozen works with this title for various instruments, mostly in the years 1924–1929. He described them as "a new form of musical composition", a transformation of the Brazilian music and sounds "by the personality of the composer".[36]

After the revolution of 1930, Villa-Lobos became something of a demagogue. He composed more backward-looking music such as the Missa São Sebastião of 1937, and published teaching pieces and ideological writings.[37]

He also composed between 1930 and 1945 nine pieces he called Bachianas brasileiras ("Brazilian Bach pieces"). These take the forms and nationalism of the Chôros, and add the composer's love of Bach. Villa-Lobos's use of archaisms was not new (an early example is his Pequena suíte for cello and piano, of 1913). The pieces evolved over the period rather than being conceived as a whole, some of them being revised or added to. They contain some of his most popular music, such as No. 5 for soprano and 8 cellos (1938–1945), and No. 2 for orchestra of 1930 (the Tocata movement of which is O trenzinho do caipira, "The little train of the Caipira"). They also show the composer's love for the tonal qualities of the cello, both No. 1 and No. 5 being scored for no other instruments. In these works the often harsh dissonances of his earlier music are less evident: or, as Simon Wright puts it, they are "sweetened". The transformation of Chôros into Bachianas brasileiras is demonstrated clearly by the comparison of No. 6 for flute and bassoon with the earlier Chôros No. 2 for flute and clarinet. The dissonances of the later piece are more controlled, the forward direction of the music easier to discern. Bachianas brasileiras No. 9 takes the concept so far as to be an abstract Prelude and Fugue, a complete distillation of the composer's national influences.[38] Villa-Lobos eventually recorded all nine of these works for EMI in Paris, mostly with the musicians of the French National Orchestra; these were originally issued on LPs and later reissued on CDs.[39] He also recorded the first section of Bachianas brasileiras No. 5 with Bidu Sayão and a group of cellists for Columbia.[40]

During his period at SEMA, Villa-Lobos composed five string quartets, nos. 5 to 9, which explored avenues opened by his public music that dominated his output. He also wrote more music for Segovia, the Cinq préludes, which also demonstrate a further formalisation of his composition style. After the fall of the Vargas government, Villa-Lobos returned full-time to composition, resuming a prolific rate of completing works. His concertos— particularly those for guitar, harp and harmonica— are examples of his earlier poema form. The harp concerto is a large work, and shows a new propensity to focus on a small detail, then to fade it and bring another detail to the foreground. This technique also occurs in his final opera, Yerma, which contains a series of scenes each of which establishes an atmosphere, similarly to the earlier Momoprecoce.

Villa-Lobos's final major work was the music for the film Green Mansions (though in the end, most of his score was replaced with music by Bronislaw Kaper[41]) and its arrangement as Floresta do Amazonas for orchestra, as well as some short songs issued separately. In 1957, he wrote a 17th String Quartet, whose austerity of technique and emotional intensity "provide a eulogy to his craft".[24] His Benedita Sabedoria, a sequence of a capella chorales written in 1958, is a similarly simple setting of Latin biblical texts. These works lack the pictorialism of his more public music.

Except for the lost works, the Nonetto, the two concerted works for violin and orchestra, Suite for Piano and Orchestra, a number of the symphonic poems, most of his choral music and all of the operas, his music is well represented on the world's recital and concert stages and on CD.

Works

Chôros

  • Introduction aux chôros (Introdução aos chôros): Ouverture, for guitar and orchestra (1929)
  • No. 1 for guitar (1920)
  • No. 2 for flute & clarinet (1921)
  • No. 3 ("Pica-páo") for male chorus &/or wind septet (clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, 3 horns & trombone) (1925)
  • No. 4 for 3 horns & trombone (1926)
  • No. 5 for piano (1926) "Alma brasileira"
  • No. 6 for orchestra (1926)
  • No. 7 ("Settimino") for flute, oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon, violin & cello, with hidden tam-tam (1924)
  • No. 8 for large orchestra & 2 pianos (1925)
  • No. 9 for orchestra (1929)
  • No. 10 ("Rasga o coração") for chorus & orchestra (1925)
  • No. 11 for piano & orchestra (1928)
  • No. 12 for orchestra (1929)
  • No. 13 for 2 orchestras & band (1929) (lost)
  • No. 14 for orchestra, band & chorus (1928) (lost)
  • Chôros bis, for violin & cello (1928)

Bachianas brasileiras

  • No. 1 for orchestra of cellos (1932)
  • No. 2 for chamber orchestra (1933)
  • No. 3 for piano and orchestra (1934)
  • No. 4 for piano (1930–40, orchestrated in 1942)
  • No. 5 for voice and orchestra of cellos (1938/1945)
  • No. 6 for flute and bassoon (1938)
  • No. 7 for orchestra (1942)
  • No. 8 for orchestra (1944)
  • No. 9 for chorus or string orchestra (1944)

Concertos and other works for soloist and orchestra

  • Suite for Piano and Orchestra (1913)
  • Cello Concerto no. 1 (1915)
  • Momoprécoce, fantasy for piano and orchestra (1921)
  • Chôros no. 11 for piano & orchestra (1928)
  • Ciranda das Sete Notas for bassoon and string orchestra (1933)
  • Piano Concerto no. 1 (1945)
  • Fantasy for cello and orchestra (1946)
  • Fantasia for soprano saxophone and string orchestra (1948)
  • Piano Concerto no. 2 (1948)
  • Guitar Concerto (1951)
  • Piano Concerto no. 3 (1952–57)
  • Piano Concerto no. 4 (1952)
  • Harp Concerto (1953)
  • Cello Concerto no. 2 (1953)
  • Piano Concerto no. 5 (1954)
  • Harmonica Concerto (1955)

Symphonies

  • No. 1 O Imprevisto, The Unforeseen (1920)
  • No. 2 Ascensão, The Ascension (1917)
  • No. 3 A Guerra, The War (1919)
  • No. 4 A Vitória, The Victory (1919)
  • No. 5 A Paz, The Peace (1920) (lost)
  • No. 6 Montanhas do Brasil, The Mountains of Brazil (1944)
  • No. 7 (1945)
  • No. 8 (1950)
  • No. 9 (1951)
  • No. 10 Amerindia / Sumé Pater Patrium (1952)
  • No. 11 (1955)
  • No. 12 (1957)

Other orchestral works

  • Amazonas, ballet (1917)
  • Uirapuru, symphonic poem (1917)
  • Erosão (Erosion), symphonic poem (1950)
  • Emperor Jones, a ballet (1956)
  • Mandu-Carará, Profane Cantata (1940)
  • O Martirio dos Insetos (The Martyrdom of the Insects), for violin and orchestra (1925)
  • O Papagaio do Moleque, The Guttersnipe's Kite, a symphonic episode (1932).

Chamber music

  • Distribuição de Flores, [Distribution of Flowers], for flute and guitar (1932).
  • Duo for Oboe and Bassoon (1957)
  • Fantaisie concertante for piano, clarinet and bassoon (1953)
  • Nonetto, Impressão rápida de todo o Brasil, [A Rapid Impression of All of Brazil] (1923)
  • Quartet Impressões da vida mundana [Impressions of Everyday Life], for flute, harp, saxophone, celesta, female voices (1921)
  • Quintette en forme de chôros (1928)
  • Sexteto mistico [Mystical Sextet], for flute, oboe, saxophone, harp, celesta and guitar (1917)
  • Sonate-fantaisie no. 1 for violin and piano, "Désespérance" [Despair] (1913)
  • Sonate-fantaisie no. 2 for violin and piano (1914)
  • Sonata for violin and piano no. 3 (1920)
  • Trio for piano and strings no. 1 (1911)
  • Trio for piano and strings no. 2 (1915)
  • Trio for piano and strings no. 3 (1918)
  • Trio for violin, viola and cello (1945)
  • Trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon (1922)

String quartets

  • No. 1 (1915)
  • No. 2 (1915)
  • No. 3 (1917)
  • No. 4 (1917)
  • No. 5 (1931)
  • No. 6 (1938)
  • No. 7 (1942)
  • No. 8 (1944)
  • No. 9 (1945)
  • No. 10 (1946)
  • No. 11 (1948)
  • No. 12 (1950)
  • No. 13 (1951)
  • No. 14 (1953)
  • No. 15 (1954)
  • No. 16 (1955)
  • No. 17 (1957)
  • No. 18 (unfinished)

Operas/musicals

  • Izaht (1914)
  • Magdalena (1948)
  • Yerma (1955)
  • Daughter of the Clouds (1957)

Ballets

  • Uirapuru (1917)
  • Dança da terra (1939)
  • Ruda (1951)
  • Genesis (1954)
  • Emperor Jones (1956)

Film music

  • Descobrimento do Brasil (1938)
  • Green Mansions (1959) (adapted as the concert work Forests of the Amazon)

Piano solo

  • Ibericarabe (1914)
  • Suite Infantil
  • Suite floral (1918)
  • A Prole do Bebê nº 1 (1918)
  • A Lenda do Caboclo (1920)
  • A Prole do Bebê nº 2 (1922)
  • Sul America (1925)
  • 16 Cirandas (1926)
  • Francette et Pià (1932)
  • Valsa da dor (1932)
  • As Três Marias
  • Ciclo brasileiro (1936–37)
  • Plantio do caboclo, The Peasant's Sowing
  • Impressões seresteiras, The Impressions of a Serenade Musician
  • Festa no sertão, The Fete in the Desert
  • Dança do Índio Branco, The Dance of the White Indian
  • Rudêpoema (1921–26)

Guitar solo

  • Choros No.1 (1920)
  • Suite Populaire Bresilienne (1908-1912), 1.Mazurka-Choro 2.Schottish-Choro 3.Valsa-Choro 4.Gavotta-Choro 5.Chorinho
  • Douze Etudes (1929)
  • Cinq Preludes (1940)

Recordings

Media

Notes

  1. ^ Béhague 2001.
  2. ^ Wright 1992,[page needed].
  3. ^ Wright 1992, 2.
  4. ^ Peppercorn 1972.
  5. ^ Wright 1992, 3.
  6. ^ Wright 1992, 4.
  7. ^ Wright 1992, 13–19.
  8. ^ a b Wright 1992, 24.
  9. ^ Wright, 1992, 28–30.
  10. ^ Wright 1992, 38.
  11. ^ Wright 1992, 31–32.
  12. ^ See, for example, the influence of the brilliance of his orchestral palette on the young Olivier Messiaen, discussed in Griffiths 1985,[page needed].
  13. ^ Le Monde musicale 12 (31 Dec. 1927) quoted in Wright 1992, 77.
  14. ^ For example, Villa-Lobos [?1941]
  15. ^ Wright 1992, 108.
  16. ^ Wright 1992, 115.
  17. ^ Wright 1992, 117–8.
  18. ^ Wright 1992, 123.
  19. ^ The critic of Musical Opinion in 1955, quoted in Wright 1992, 121–22.
  20. ^ Wright 1992, 136.
  21. ^ The MGM Story
  22. ^ Heitor Villa-Lobos website.
  23. ^ United Artists reel-to-reel tape, released 1959.
  24. ^ a b Wright 1992, 139.
  25. ^ Wright 1992, 138.
  26. ^ Wright 1992, 6.
  27. ^ Wright 1992, 8–9.
  28. ^ Peppercorn 1991, 32.
  29. ^ Villa-Lobos in Sua Obra (2), 229, quoted in Wright, 1992, 9.
  30. ^ Wright 1992, 9.
  31. ^ Wright 1992, 13–21.
  32. ^ See Peppercorn 1991, 38–39.
  33. ^ Wright 1992, 59.
  34. ^ Wright 1992, 41ff.
  35. ^ Wright 1992, 48.
  36. ^ Note in the score of Chôros No. 3, quoted in Wright 1992, 62.
  37. ^ Such as Villa-Lobos [1941?].
  38. ^ Wright, 1992, 81–99 discusses the Bachianas brasileiras in some detail
  39. ^ EMI catalogue.
  40. ^ Sony Masterworks catalogue.
  41. ^ Green Mansions film credits.

References and further reading

  • Appleby, David P. 1988. Heitor Villa-Lobos: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-25346-3
  • Béhague, Gerard. 1994. Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil's Musical Soul. Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1994. ISBN 0-292-70823-8
  • Béhague, Gerard. 2001. "Villa-Lobos, Heitor". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
  • Griffiths, Paul. 1985. Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0801418135
  • Peppercorn, Lisa. 1972. "Villa-Lobos's Brazilian Excursions." Musical Times 113, no. 1549 (March): 263–65.
  • Peppercorn, Lisa. 1985. "H. Villa-Lobos in Paris." Latin American music review / Revista de musica Latinoamericana 6, no. 2 (Autumn): 235–48
  • Peppercorn, Lisa M. 1989. Villa-Lobos. Edited by Audrey Sampson. Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers. London and New York: Omnibus. ISBN 0-7119-1689-6
  • Peppercorn, Lisa M. 1991a. Villa-Lobos, the Music: An Analysis of His Style Translated by Stefan De Haan. London: Kahn & Averill; White Plains, NY: Pro/AM Music Resources. ISBN 1-871082-15-3
  • Peppercorn, Lisa M. 1991b. "Villa-Lobos 'ben trovato'." Tempo: A Quarterly Review of Modern Music, no. 177 (June): 32–39.
  • Peppercorn, Lisa M. 1996. The World of Villa-Lobos in Pictures and Documents. Aldershot, Hants, England: Scolar Press; Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishers. ISBN 1-85928-261-X
  • Tarasti, Eero. Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Life and Works Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0013-7
  • Villa-Lobos, Heitor. [1941?]. A música nacionalista no govêrno Getulio Vargas. Rio de Janeiro: D.I.P.
  • Villa-Lobos, Heitor. 1994. The Villa-Lobos Letters. Edited, translated, and annotated by Lisa M. Peppercorn. Musicians in Letters, no. 1. Kingston-upon-Thames: Toccata. ISBN 0-907689-28-0
  • Villa-Lobos, sua obra: Programa de Ação Cultural, 1972. 1974. Second edition. Rio de Janeiro: MEC,DAC, Museu Villa-Lobos.
  • Wright, Simon. 1992. Villa-Lobos. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-315475-7

External links



 
 

 

Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved.
eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial Read more
Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Heitor Villa-Lobos" Read more

 

Mentioned in