Villa-Lobos, Heitor(b Rio de Janeiro, 5 March 1887; d Rio de Janeiro, 17 Nov 1959). Brazilian composer. Heitor Villa-Lobos stands as the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music. This significance stems not only from his international recognition, but from his achievement in creating unique compositional styles in which contemporary European techniques and reinterpreted elements of national music are combined. His highly successful career stood as a model for subsequent generations of Brazilian composers.

1. Youth and early career.2. The ‘Week of Modern Art’ and Paris.3. The Estado Novo and the campaign for music education.4. International acclaim.5. Works.6. Personality and style.WORKSBIBLIOGRAPHY

GERARD BÉHAGUE

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

1. Youth and early career.

He was raised in a middle-class family; his father, Raúl Villa-Lobos, was an employee of the National Library and an amateur musician. Although he rejected early on many values and conventions of the period, particularly formal schooling, he later recognized the severe discipline imposed by his father on his music education as beneficial. Villa-Lobos recalled in a 1957 interview

With him I always attended rehearsals, concerts and operas … I also learned how to play the clarinet, and I was required to identify the genre, style, character and origin of compositions, in addition to recognizing quickly the name of a note, of sounds or noises… Watch out, when I didn't get it right.

He also learnt the cello from his father and it became a favourite instrument. However, despite being exposed to classical music, it was his native city's popular idioms of the turn of the century that captivated him and exerted a lasting influence on his work. Indeed, he learnt to play the guitar – the epitome of popular culture and subject to disapproval by polite society – on his own and away from home.

Only after the premature death of his father in 1899 was Villa-Lobos able to immerse himself fully, at first as a guitarist, in the life of Rio's street musicians. The music of the chorões especially fascinated him, and the impressions of this vigorous experience were of such importance that he later gave the generic designation of choros to his portrayal, in the 1920s, of a variety of Brazilian

musical styles. Villa-Lobos completed his schooling at the monastery of S Bento in Rio, following which, to please his mother, he enrolled in a preparatory course for the entrance examination to the School of Medicine. However, in 1903, unable to maintain any interest in the classes, he left his mother's house and went to live with his aunt Zizinha (Leopoldina do Amaral). In his later teenage years he earned a living mainly by playing the cello in the Teatro Recreio, in hotels, and in the Odeon cinema, where he met some of the most celebrated personalities of popular music of the time, including Ernesto Nazareth, Eduardo das Neves and Anacleto de Medeiros.

Villa-Lobos's early years remain poorly documented and contemporary reports are not always reliable. In particular, his various trips between 1905 and 1913 to the northern and north-eastern states, the Amazon, and central and southern Brazil have been subject to varying theories as to whether or not they constituted field research into Brazil's folk and traditional music. He himself never discussed the specific motivation behind these travels, though he did later emphasize his yearning for freedom, his fondness for new discoveries, and a search for his own musical identity as a Brazilian. The music itself, perhaps, provides the best clues to this period, once Villa-Lobos's reworking of his sources is taken into account. He undoubtedly learnt dozens of popular tunes and songs, which he brought into play in many of his works; but if he truly collected more than 1000 themes ‘of value’, as suggested by Mariz (1949), nowhere did he record this collection systematically or publish it. This further corresponds to his dislike of formality or method. Villa-Lobos certainly assembled, arranged and adapted 137 folksong melodies in his didactic Guia prático of 1932, but most are commonly known and not of the regional, ‘exotic’ variety that his accounts suggest he heard.

Back in Rio, he met the pianist Lucília Guimarães whom he married in 1913. Throughout the 1910s and 20s she gave the premières of several of his piano pieces, playing a significant role in the first public concerts of his music in 1915 and during the ‘Week of Modern Art’ in 1922. They separated in 1936 but she remained loyal to him throughout her life. Compositionally, the period 1912–17 was one of intense activity and marked the maturation of Villa-Lobos's creative personality. By 1917 he had produced some 100 works, including his first guitar pieces (e.g. the Suite popular brasileira), four string quartets and other chamber music, two symphonies, and the ballets Amazonas and Uirapuru. The first official concert fully dedicated to his work took place on 13 November 1915 and established him at once as an enfant terrible of new Brazilian art music, thanks to the strongly negative reactions from the critics, in particular Vicenzo Cernicchiaro and the fearful Oscar Guanabarino, who was a ferocious detractor of Villa-Lobos and modern music in general. The works performed at the concert (such as the First Piano Trio, op.25, and the Sonata fantasia no.2, op.29) while still far from the truly modern idiom of

his music of the late 1910s and 20s, challenged in no uncertain terms the then current state of composition in Brazil. Between 1917 and 1919 additional major concerts of his music were organized, presenting some of his main orchestral works of the period. These concerts helped to establish Villa-Lobos in a very short time as the controversial, anti-establishment figure par excellence. Such recognition probably gained him an invitation to participate in the ‘Week of Modern Art.’

Essentially a self-taught composer and an eager and curious listener, Villa-Lobos assimilated spontaneously, if at times reluctantly, a number of important influences, especially at first some of the techniques of Impressionism concerning harmonic practices and orchestration. His friendship with Milhaud (who lived in Rio from 1917 to 1918) and Artur Rubinstein (whom he met in 1918) probably also resulted in his acquaintance with the latest French music and Stravinsky. However, by 1918 Villa-Lobos was already well advanced in his own innovative experiments in rhythm and harmony. During the next few years Rubinstein promoted Villa-Lobos and his music throughout the world.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

2. The ‘Week of Modern Art’ and Paris.

The development of Modernism in Brazil took place in the 1920s, and to mark the centenary of independence a number of literary figures, artists and intellectuals organized the ‘Week of Modern Art’ in São Paulo during 11–18 February 1922. Villa-Lobos was invited as the representative of modern music in Brazil, and several of his chamber works were performed, most notably the Danças características africanas in a special version for five strings, flute, clarinet and piano. For Villa-Lobos the Modernist aesthetic called for a break with European Romantic tonality and a strong determination to renew and legitimize a distinctly Brazilian musical vocabulary. The event aroused polemic and discussion and brought further attention to Villa-Lobos. The progressive literary figures of the time in their praise of the composer's creativity contributed to the construction of Villa-Lobos as a quasi-mythical character, whose music appeared as a potential source of synthesis in a newly confident country. Most reactions were subsequently summed up in Ensaio sôbre a música brasileira (1928), a manifesto of musical nationalism by Mário de Andrade.

Subsidized by several wealthy friends and a government stipend, Villa-Lobos left for Europe in 1923, where he travelled to a number of cities and settled in Paris. His main reason for going was self-publicity, not study, and in Paris he met with enormous success with concerts of major works in 1924, 1927 and 1930, and won the support of such figures as Rubinstein, Florent Schmitt and the music critics Prunières, Le Flem and Klingsor. He met, too, many other composers, including Ravel, d'Indy, de Falla, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Varèse, and his music began to be published by

Max Eschig. By 1930, when he returned home for good (he had been back to conduct several concerts in Brazil and Argentina), he had attained recognition in Paris unequalled by any other Latin American composer. His European experience also contributed to furthering his belief in the freedom to innovate.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

3. The Estado Novo and the campaign for music education.

In 1930 Villa-Lobos was in São Paulo for concert engagements. While there he presented to the State Secretariat for Education a plan to address the precarious condition of musical education in schools. In the same year a new government under Gétulio Vargas came to power, and its strong backing of Villa-Lobos's project led him to dedicate many of his following years to a nationwide campaign, as well as, from 1931, to taking specific charge of the Superintendency of Musical and Artistic Education for Rio. He was subsequently extolled as the patriach of musical learning, but also, after the inception of the ‘Estado Novo’ (1937–45), decried as the supporter of a dictatorship whose nationalist ideology was often connected to the contemporaneous fascist regimes in Europe. Villa-Lobos's programme included not only initial music instruction in primary and technical schools but also education on a mass popular scale through choral, or ‘Orpheonic’ (originally a cappella) singing, of Brazilian music in particular. Such ‘civic exhortations’ involved on one occasion in 1935 some 30,000 voices and 1000 band musicians, and in 1940, and again in 1943, nearer 40,000 singers. The regime's patriotism undoubtedly boosted Villa-Lobos's own, but whether he truly shared its far-right leanings has been a matter of considerable debate. That he was initially concerned more with his individual career is undisputed. But at the same time his music and education policy was intentionally taken up as instruments of ideology, and he himself saw the mass gatherings as a powerful tool for inculcating a nationalist fervour. In 1942 the government founded a National Conservatory of Orpheonic Singing, with Villa-Lobos its director. By the time of his retirement in 1957, the impact of the institition had been extensive.

Politics notwithstanding, Villa-Lobos's work in music education only enhanced his reputation as a composer in Brazil, where his own compositions had not had as much exposure as in Europe. He became an ‘official’ composer, and though this change in status in no way affected his prolific creativity, nor an essentially free approach, his manner became less experimental than in the 1920s. During this period he also began to conduct in earnest, not only in Brazil but also in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. On the occasion of his participation in the 1936 Music Education Congress in Prague, he conducted several of his own pieces for a Berlin radio station. In the same year he separated from his wife and began his life with Arminda Neves d'Almeida, who not only devoted herself to him for the next 23 years, but continued to work assiduously until her

death in 1985 to promote his works in her capacity as director of the Villa-Lobos Museum, founded in 1960.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

4. International acclaim.

From the time of his first visit to the USA, Villa-Lobos's career took an upward turn internationally. During 1944–5 he conducted his works with the Janssen SO in Los Angeles, the Boston SO and, at the request of Stokowski, the New York SO. He also organized a concert of his chamber music in New York, in which city he met, among others, Toscanini, Copland, Ormandy, Menuhin, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. His music came to be held in very high regard. Back in Brazil in 1945, he had time to help found the Brazilian Academy of Music, which was to be so important in the development of musical professionalism in the country. Two years later he was away again, this time conducting in Rome, Lisbon and Paris, and then going on to New York, where he gave the première of his Bachianas brasileiras no.3 with the pianist José Viera Brandão and the Columbia SO; it was broadcast across the CBS network. In mid-1948 he returned once more to New York, but this time for treatment of cancer of the bladder at Memorial Hospital.

Although the last decade of Villa-Lobos's life was marked by a gradual deterioration in health, he remained for the most part remarkably active: in 1949 he made a series of tours in Europe, the USA and Japan; concerts in Paris in 1951 and 1955 were especially well received; in 1952 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées with the Orchestre National de France he gave first performances of his early Symphony no.4 (‘A vitória’) of 1919 and the four suites Descobrimento do Brasil of 1937. During his final seven years, Paris became his home once again, from where he responded to numerous engagements and commissions, particularly from the USA, including works for the Boston SO and the Philadelphia Orchestra. On the eve of his 70th birthday a New York Times editorial (4 March 1957) praised his distinguished service, while in Brazil, 1957 was declared ‘Villa-Lobos year’ by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The following year Villa-Lobos was still active, working on the film score of Green Mansions, whose concert version he retitled as Floresta do Amazonas, and conducting in Europe and New York. In December 1958 his sacred work Bendita sabedoria for mixed chorus was first performed at New York University, on the occasion of his award of an honorary doctorate. However, by the time he returned to Rio de Janeiro in July 1959 his health had worsened considerably. Although he continued to preside over the Brazilian Academy of Music, he died a few months later. His funeral was attended by many dignitaries, including the country's president.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

5. Works.

Villa-Lobos was unquestionably a strongly nationalist composer, though over six decades of extraordinarily prolific work his nationalism took on many faces. His identification with folk and popular music was of the utmost significance to him, but it would be simplistic to classify his works merely in terms of its presence or absence; or indeed to try to view such references as separate from his numerous and varied experiments in style and language, even within a single work.

The period 1901–22 covers Villa-Lobos's initial search for stylistic definition. The 50 or so works written during these years include some of his famous early piano pieces – such as the Danças características africanas (1914–15), the Prole do bebê nos.1 and 2 (1918, 1921) and the Carnaval das crianças brasileiras (1919–20) – but also chamber music such as the Sexteto místico (1917), the woodwind Trio (1921), the first four string quartets the song cycle Epigramas irônicos e sentimentais (1921–3), the first five symphonies and the ballets Uirapuru (1917) and Amazonas (1917). Despite the strongly post-Romantic, French Impressionist character of several of these works, particularly in the harmonies and tone-colouring, the home-grown is evident too, for example in the ‘Chorinho’ from the Suite popular brasileira.

The substantial and attractive Uirapuru is a particularly revealing example of Villa-Lobos's struggle to establish the elements which contributed to his own identity as an original national composer, while still dependent on the French models of the time. Both a ballet and tone poem, it is based on a legend involving an enchanted bird from the Amazon, considered by Indian worshippers to be the king of love. As a ballet it displays many of the ingredients of similar works of the 1910s (such as Stravinsky's The Firebird), in its mixture of the romantic, fantastic and primitivist. As a tone poem it exemplifies the ideal genre for Villa-Lobos, who revealed throughout his career a frequent use of extra-musical associations or programmatic concepts as a means of designing the formal structure of his works.

Although Villa-Lobos was not himself a very accomplished pianist, his contribution to 20th-century piano literature is remarkable for its range of expression, the techniques used and the sheer quantity of different works. Of the earlier works the Prole do bebê no.2 stands out: the nine movements which comprise the piece portray toy animals, but are in essence a set of ‘transcendental studies’ (Souza Lima, 1969). ‘O boisinho de chumbo’ (‘The Little Lead Ox’), for example, calls for fast scale passages in different intervals, diatonic and chromatic glissando figurations, large intervallic skips and the use of extreme ranges of the keyboard, rhythmic layering and accentuation of some complexity and up to three simultaneous dynamic planes. The final grandiose section (ex.1), with its

massive chordal blocks across the registers, clearly depicts the eponymous ox. However, despite an at times violent and atonal harmonic vocabulary, the melodic invention, associated with Brazilian children's tunes, is quite tonal. Some original folksongs are quoted with few alterations, for instance Fui no tororó in the second part of ‘A baratinha de papel’ (‘The Paper Bug’) (ex.2), which at the start also exhibits a typical habanera ostinato pattern and a theme whose flexible contour and rhythm underlines the Brazilian spirit. The ostinato reveals an ingenious treatment in the alternation of black and white keys: in the first group of semiquavers the first, third and fourth notes are on white keys, with the second note on a black key; in the second group, the second and third notes are now white, and the first and fourth black.

In 1923 Villa-Lobos wrote one of his most characteristic works, the Noneto, given its première in Paris in 1924. Subtitled ‘Impressão rápida de todo o Brasil’, the piece represented a new synthesis of national musical expression. Closer to choro than many other works of the 1920s which bear the title, the Noneto comprises a comprehensive anthology of the most common but also most original and appealing rhythms of urban popular music (ex.3). The atmosphere is added to by the rhapsodic and improvisational manner of the melodies, whose richly contrapuntal working is reminiscent of other choro composers such as Pixunguinha, Donga and Benedito. The employment of the saxophone, flute, harp (in place of guitar) and cavanquinho in the ensemble also points to choro, as well as to Impressionist sources. The Chôros themselves are still generally considered the compositions with which Villa-Lobos most clearly established his aesthetic – a daring balance of the vernacular and the Modernist – becoming in the process Brazil's foremost nationalist musical voice. For a variety of instrumentations, from solo guitar, solo piano and chamber ensembles to orchestra and chorus, including one work for two orchestras and band (no.13), the Chôros represent Villa-Lobos's most extensive vehicle in his crusade to communicate the tropically fertile, exotic nature of the music of his country.

Although the model of the choro is closely followed in Chôros no.1 for guitar, it is in Chôros no.5 (‘Alma brasileira’) for piano that Villa-Lobos best portrays the serenade-like aspect of the style; the strongly expressive lyricism in the piece may also be related to the love song genre of modinha. In sharp contrast Chôros no.8 conveys a carnival celebration in Rio de Janeiro, by means of highly infectious rhythmic and timbral play and a large number of thematic ideas drawn from choro, children's songs and other popular types. The work also contains aspects of Villa-Lobos's earlier interest in evoking the dances of South American Indians. It was well-received at its Paris première and performed frequently

subsequently. Of all the pieces in the series, Chôros no.10 (‘Rasga o coração’) is generally considered his masterpiece. The subtitle comes from a modinha by the poet Catulo da Paixão Cearense, which had previously been adapted by Anacleto de Medeiros to his piano schottische Yara; passages of this piece are quoted in the second part of the Villa-Lobos, which describes a tremendous crescendo of primitive energy. The work's two main themes take on the form of bewitching, vigorous ostinatos; powerful onomatopoeic effects are produced by the complex counterpoint of nonsense syllables, echoing the phonetic sounds of aboriginal languages; polytonal and tone cluster features become more prominent, and, in combination with cross-rhythmic groupings, multiple syncopations and polyrhythm, create textures of quite a high complexity. The virtuoso orchestration also reveals a sophistication unknown until then in Brazil.

Of the major piano works composed in the 1920s, Rudepoema and the series of Cirandas occupy a special place. Rudepoema was dedicated to Rubinstein and is a portrait of the pianist, who gave its first performance in Paris in 1927. The technical and aesthetic complexity of the work arises from its great diversity of moods, probably the result of Villa Lobos's interpretation of Rubinstein's personality. The overall character is still decidedly experimental, especially in the treatment of rhythm and tone colour. By contrast, each piece of the Cirandas (1926), children's round-dances, is built on a traditional folk tune.

During the period of the Vargas regime Villa-Lobos composed the nine Bachianas brasileiras, described by him as a ‘homage the great genius of Johann Sebastian Bach … [who I] consider a kind of universal folkloric source, rich and profound … [a source] linking all peoples’. These works were not intended, however, as stylized renditions of the music of Bach but as an attempt to adapt freely to Brazilian music a number of Baroque harmonic and contrapuntal procedures. The Bachianas are formally conceived as suites, in the Baroque sense of a sequence of two, three or four dance movements. With the exceptions of the second movement of no.6, the outer movements of no.8 and those of no.9, each movement has two titles – one formal à la Bach, such as prelude, introduction, aria, fantasia, toccata, fugue, the other nationalistic, such as embolada, modinha, ponteio, desafioand choro. These national elements tend to be conveyed primarily by rhythmic structures, but also at times by melodic type and treatment, and by timbral associations.

Bachianas brasileiras no.1 (1930) for a minimum of eight solo cellos typifies the unique stylistic blend of European Baroque and Brazilian folk; while in no.2 (‘O trenzinho do Caipira’) a toccata-like last movement graphically depicts the gradual increase and subsequent decrease in speed of a locomotive in the Caipira region of the state of São Paulo. No.4, originally for piano solo, is perhaps the most Bachian of the set in its techniques; it includes a

chorale prelude as its second movement. Nevertheless, a Brazilian tropicalism still prevails, mainly through free improvisation-like passages. A further important trait of the Bachianas, solo songs, guitar pieces and chamber music of the 1940s and 50s is the increase in a Puccini-like lyricism, in opposition to a melodic invention based upon short, rhythmic motifs. Cantabile outpourings of the modinha type abound, but none as emotionally expressive and powerfully engaging as the soprano line of the ‘Aria-Cantilena’ from the Bachianas brasileiras no.5, Villa-Lobos's deservedly best-known work (ex.4).

Besides the improvisatory character of the soprano's long, arching phrases, which suggests something unending and are reminiscent of the serenading chorão, the specifically Brazilian quality is also underlined by the treatment of the cello ensemble accompaniment, a kind of amplified version of a guitar technique known as ponteio (picked). The doubling of the soprano line an octave below by the first cellos not only adds volume, but also creates a unique blend of colouristic depth.

Among his numerous chamber works, the 17 string quartets preoccupied Villa-Lobos throughout his career; they are broadly representative of his changes in style and technique, though often remain overlooked. His principal pieces for guitar have achieved a much wider appeal. The virtuoso 12 études, completed in 1929, are especially challenging for performers, while also evoking Brazilian popular culture; the five preludes (completed in 1940) and a concerto (first performed by Segovia in 1956) reveal, on the other hand, a more Romantic character, while remaining highly sophisticated and idiomatic additions to the repertory.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

6. Personality and style.

Villa-Lobos is often reported to have said that music creation constituted for him a biological necessity. While this may explain in part his enormous output – ‘the fruits of an extensive, generous and warm land’, as he described it – it also reveals the instinctive bent of his own personality which felt and understood the many facets of the landscape and people of so large and diversified country as Brazil. It also accounts for the composer's aversion to preconceived compositional plans and the resulting natural, if uneven, flow of his music as well as his seemingly spontaneous, improvisation-like language. Although matching the basic premises of the nationalist aesthetic agenda of his era, his own nationalism was kaleidoscopic to correspond to his numerous creative sources, many of which sublimated the simple incorporation of indigenous musics. In effect, he created his own individual symbols of identity and made them acceptable as uniquely national. As widely different in sound structure or style as many of his works may be, his express intent was directed towards the best representation of

what he perceived as powerfully suggestive of the wide continuum of the multiple and varied Brailian cultural traditions. Although his music is not a comprehensive synthesis of the plurality of Brazilian oral music traditions, more than any other composer of his generation he defined the exuberant stylistic eclecticism that has continued to characterize Brazilian art music.

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

WORKS

dramatic

Femina (op), c1908Aglai (op, 2), 1909Elisa (op, 1), 1910Untitled ‘comédia lírica’ (3, O.F. Machado), 1911Izath (op, 4, A. Júnior, Villa-Lobos), 1912–14, concert perf., Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 6 April 1940; staged Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 13 Dec 1958Amazonas (ballet), 1917, Paris, 30 May 1929Uirapuru (ballet), 1917, Buenos Aires, Colón, 25 May 1935Jesus (op, 3, G. de Andrade), 1918, MS frag.Zoé (op, 3, R. Viana), 1920, MS frag. [perc part]3 Malazarte (op, 3, G. Aranha), 1921Possessão (ballet), 1929, Oslo, 1929Caixinha de boas festas (children's ballet), 1932, Rio de Janeiro, 23 Nov 1932Pedra Bonita (ballet), 1933, Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 1933Descobrimento do Brasil (film score, dir. H. Mauro), 1937Rudá (ballet), 1951, Paris, 30 Aug 1954A menina das nuvens (aventura musical, 3, L. Benedetti), 1952–8, Rio de Janeiro, Municipal, 29 Nov 1960Gênesis (ballet), 1954, Rio de Janeiro, 21 Nov 1969Yerma (op, 4, after F.G. Lorca), 1955–6, Santa Fe, 12 Aug 1971Emperor Jones (ballet, after E. O'Neill), 1956, Ellenville, 12 July 1956Green Mansions (film score, after W.H. Hudson), 1958Perpetual (op, 1, E. Terry), inc.Amerindia (op, after D. Vasconellos), inc.

vocal-orchestral

Vidapura (Missa oratória), chorus, orch, 1919; Chôros no.10, chorus, orch, 1926; Chôros no.14, chorus, band, orch, 1928; Suite sugestiva (O. de Andrade, R. Chalput, M. Bandeira), 1v, orch, 1929; Mandu-çarará, chorus incl. children's vv, orch, 1940; Invocação em defesa da pátria (M. Bandeira, Villa-Lobos), 1v, chorus, orch, 1943; Sym. no.10 ‘Sumé pater patrium’, T, Bar, B, chorus, orch, 1952; Mag alleluia, 1v, chorus, orch, 1958; see also orchestral [Descobrimento do Brasil, 1937] and solo vocal [orchd songs]

choral

Qt (Impressões da vida mundana), female vv, fl, sax, hp, cel, 1921; Noneto (Impressão rápida de todo o Brasil), chorus, fl, ob, cl, sax, bn, hp, perc, 1923; Chôros no.3 (Picapau), male vv, cl, sax, bn, 3 hn, 1925; Missa São Sebastião, 3vv, 1937; Bachianas brasileiras no.9, chorus/str orch, 1945;

Bendita sabedoria (Lat. Bible), 6vv, 1958; other works incl. 35 sacred a cappella pieces, 1905–52Educational: Guia prático, 137 children's songs, 1932; Distribuição de flores, girl's vv, fl, vn/gui, 1937; Solfejos, 2 vols., 1939, 1945; Canto orfeônico, 2 vols., 1940, 1950; a few other pieces

orchestral

with soloists: Vc Conc. no.1, 1913; Suite, pf, orch, 1913; Chôros no.8, 2 pf, orch, 1925; Chôros no.11, pf, orch, 1928; introduction to the Chôros, gui, orch, 1929; Momoprecoce fantasy, pf, orch, 1929; Ciranda das sete notas, fantasy, bn, orch, 1933; Bachianas brasileiras no.3, pf, orch, 1938; Pf Conc. no.1, 1945; Fantasia, vc, orch, 1945; Pf Conc. no.2, 1948; Fantasia, sax, chbr orch, 1948; Gui Conc., 1951; Pf Conc. no.3, 1952–7; Pf Conc. no.4, 1952; Vc Conc. no.2, 1953; Hp Conc., 1953; Pf Conc. no.5, 1954; Harmonica Conc., 1955–6Other: Elégie, 1915; Myremis, sym. poem, 1916; Naufrágio de Kleônicos, sym. poem, 1916; Sinfonietta no.1, 1916; Sym. no.1 ‘O imprevisto’, 1916; Tédio de Alvorada, sym. poem, 1916; Amazonas, sym. poem, 1917 [from ballet]; Sym. no.2 ‘Ascenção’, 1917; Uirapuru, tone poem, 1917; Dança frenética, 1919; Sym. no.3 ‘A guerra’, 1919; Sym. no.4 ‘A vitória’, 1919; Sym. no.5 ‘A Paz’, 1920, lost; Dança dos mosquitos, 1922; Fantasia de movimentos mistos, 1922; Verde Velhice, divertimento, 1922; Chôros no.6, 1926Chôros no.9, 1929; Chôros no.12, 1929; Chôros no.13, 2 orchs, band, 1929; Bachianas brasileiras no.2 (O trenzinho do Caipira), 1930; Bachianas brasileiras no.4, pf/orch, 1930–36; Caixinha de boas festas, 1932 [from ballet]; O papagaio do Moleque, episódio sinfônico, 1932; Descobrimento do Brasil, 4 suites, no.4 with chorus, 1937 [from film score]; Saudade da juventude, suite, 1940Bachianas brasileiras no.7, 1942; Bachianas brasileiras no.8, 1944; Sym. no.6, 1944; Bachianas brasileiras no.9, chorus/str orch, 1945; Madona, sym. poem, 1945; Sym. no.7, 1945; Sinfonietta no.2, 1947; Erosão (Origem do rio Amazonas), 1950; Sym. no.8, 1950; Sym. no.9, 1952; Dawn in a Tropical Forest, ov., 1953; Odisséia de uma raça, 1953; Sym. no.11, 1955; Sym. no.12, 1957; Fantasia, wind, 1958; Fantasia concertante, at least 32 vc, 1958; Conc. grosso, wind, 1959; 2 suites, chbr orch, 19598 religious/solemn marches, 1905–52

chamber

Str qts: no.1, 1915; no.2, 1915; no.3, 1916; no.4, 1917; no.5, 1931; no.6, 1938; no.7, 1941; no.8, 1944; no.9, 1945; no.10, 1946; no.11, 1947; no.12, 1950; no.13, 1951; no.14, 1953; no.15, 1954; no.16, 1955; no.17, 1957Other works for 3 or more insts: Pf Trio no.1, 1911; Trio, fl, vc, pf, 1913; Pf Trio no.2, 1915; Sexteto místico, fl, ob, sax, hp, cel, gui, 1917; Pf Trio no.3, 1918; Trio, ob, cl, bn, 1921; Chôros no.7 (Settiminio), fl, ob, cl, sax, bn, gong, vn, vc, 1924; Chôros no.4, 3 hn, trbn, 1926; Qt, fl, ob, cl, bn, 1928; Quinteto em forma de chôros, fl, ob, cl, eng hn/hn, bn, 1928; Bachianas brasileiras no.1, at least 8 vc, 1930; Corrupio, bn, str qnt, 1933; Pf Trio no.4, 1945; Divagação, vc, pf, drum ad lib, 1946; Fantasia concertante, cl, bn, pf, 1953; Qnt, fl, vn, va, vc, hp, 1957Works for 2 insts: Pequena suite, vc, pf, 1913; Prelude, vc, pf, 1913;

Sonhar, vn/vc, pf, 1914; Berceuse, vn/vc, pf, 1915; Capriccio, vn/vc, pf, 1915; Improviso, vn, pf, 1915; Sonata no.1 (Fantasia), vn, pf, 1915; Sonata no.2 (Fantasia), vn, pf, 1915; Sonata no.1, vc, pf, 1915; Elégie, vn/vc, pf, 1916; Sonata no.2, vc, pf, 1916; Sonata no.3, vn, pf, 1920; Sonata no.4, vn, pf, 1923; Chôros no.2, fl, cl, 1924, Martírio dos insetos, vn, pf, 1925; 2 choros bis, vn, vc, 1928; Bachianas brasileiras no.6, fl, bn, 1938; Duo, vn, vc, 1946; Assobio a Jato, fl, vc, 1950; Duo, ob, bn, 1957Gui: Suite popular brasileira, 1908–12; Chôros no.1, 1920; 12 Etudes, 1929; 5 Preludes, 1940

solo vocal

for 1v, pf unless otherwise stated

Miniaturas (B. Lopes, S. Romero, A. Barreto, A. Guimarães, L. Guimarães Filho, A.M.C. de Oliveira), 6 songs, 1912–17; 3 canções indígenas (M. de Andrade, Brazilian Indian), 1930; Canções típicas brasileiras, 13 folksong arrs., 1919–35; Historietas (Ribeiro Couto, R. de Carvalho, M. Bandeira, A. Samain), 6 songs, 1920; Epigramas irônicos e sentimentais (Carvalho), 8 songs, 1921–3, orchd; Poème de l’enfant et de sa mère (Villa-Lobos), 1v, fl, cl, vc, 1923; Suite, 1v, vn, 1923; Serestas (A. Moreyra, Bandeira, O. Mariano, D. Milano, Carvalho, C. Drummond de Andrade, A. Renault, D. Nasser, Ribeiro Couto, P. Vasconcellos), 14 songs, 1923–43, 12 orchd3 poemas indígenas (Brazilian Indian, M. de Andrade), 1926, orchd; 2 vocalises-études, 1929; Modinhas e canções, series 1 (Gil Vicente, V. Corrêa, S. Salema, trad.), 7 songs, 1933–43; Modinhas e canções, series 2, 6 children's songs, 1943, orchd; Poema do Itabira (Drummond de Andrade), 1943, orchd; Canções de cordialidade (Bandeira), 5 songs, 1945, orchd, arr. chorus; Bachianas brasileiras no.5, S, at least 8 vc, 1938–45; Samba clássico (Villa-Lobos), ode, 1950, orchd60 other songs, 1899–1958; sacred songs

piano

Brinquedo de Roda, 6 pieces, 1912; Petizada, 6 pieces, 1912; Suite infantil no.1, 1912; Suite infantil no.2, 1913; Danças características africanas, 1914–15; Suite floral, 3 pieces, 1917–18; Simples coletânea, 3 pieces, 1917–19; Prole do bebê no.1, 8 pieces, 1918; Histórias da Carochinha, 4 pieces, 1919; Carnaval das crianças brasileiras, 8 pieces, 1919–20; 2 dances, 1920 [from op Zoé]; Lenda do Caboclo, 1920; A Fiandeira, 1921Prole do bebê no.2, 10 pieces, 1921; Rudepoema, 1921–6; Chôros no.5 (Alma brasileira), 1925; Cirandinhas, 12 pieces, 1925; Cirandas, 16 pieces, 1926; Saudades das selvas brasileiras, 1927; Francette et Piá, 10 pieces, no.10 duet, 1929; Bachianas brasileiras no.4, pf/orch, 1930–36; Caixinha de música quebrada, 1931; Ciclo brasileiro, 4 pieces, 1936; Poema singelo, 1938; New York Sky Line Melody, 1939; As tres Marias, 1939; Hommage à Chopin, 1949MSS in Museu Villa-Lobos, Rio de Janeiro

Principal publishers: Associated, Consolidated, Eschig, Napoleão, Peters, Ricordi, Robbins, Southern, Tonos, Vitale

Villa-Lobos, Heitor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

general studies

D. Milhaud: ‘Brésil’, ReM, i (1920), 60–61 S. Demarquez: ‘Villas-Lobos’, ReM, x/10–11 (1928–9), 1–22 M. Pedroza: ‘Villa-Lobos et son peuple: le point de vue brésilien’,

ReM, x/10–11 (1928–9), 23–8 F.C. Lange: ‘Villa-Lobos, un pedagogo creador’, Boletín latino-

americano de música, i (1935), 189–96 Música viva, i (1940–41) [Villa-Lobos issue] J.C. de Andrade Muricy: ‘Villa-Lobos’, Bulletin of the Pan

American Union, lxxix (1945), 1–10 O. Lorenzo Fernândez: ‘A contribuição harmônica de Villa-Lobos

para a música brasileira’, Boletín latino-americano de música, vi (1946), 283–300

L.M. Peppercorn: ‘The History of Villa-Lobos' Birth Date’, MMR, lxxviii (1948), 153–5

V. Mariz: Heitor Villa-Lobos, compositor brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1949, 11/1989)

D. Milhaud: Notes sans musique (Paris, 1949; enlarged 3/1973 as Ma vie heureuse; Eng. trans., 1952/R)

C. Paula Barros: O romance de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1951) A. Segovia: ‘I Meet Villa-Lobos’, Guitar Review, no.22 (1958), 22–

3 A.M. de Giacomo: Villa-Lobos, alma sonora do Brasil (São Paulo,

1959, 6/1972) C. Maul: A glória escandalosa de Heitor Vila Lóbos (Rio de

Janeiro, 1960) M. Romero: ‘Heitor Villa-Lobos’, Inter-American Music Bulletin,

no.15 (1960), 4–5 C.S. Smith: ‘Heitor Villa-Lobos (1889–1959)’, Inter-American

Music Bulletin, no.15 (1960), 1–4 J.C. de Andrade Muricy: Villa-Lobos: uma interpretação (Rio de

Janeiro, 1961) J.A. Orrego-Salas: ‘Heitor Villa-Lobos: figura, obra y estilo’, RMC,

no.93 (1965), 25–62; Eng. trans. in Inter-American Music Bulletin, no.52 (1996) [whole issue]

Presença de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro,1965–81) M. Beaufils: Villa-Lobos, musicien et poète du Brésil (Paris, 1967,

2/1988) R.T. de Lima: ‘Villa-Lobos: refrações e prospecção’, Revista do

Arquivo municipal [São Paulo], no.176 (1969), 221–36 H. Menegale: Villa-Lobos e a educação (Rio de Janeiro, 1969) E.N. França: Villa-Lobos: síntese crítica e biográfica (Rio de

Janeiro, 1970, 2/1973) Villa-Lobos: visto da platéia e na intimidade, 1912–1935 (Rio de

Janeiro, 1972) L.M. Peppercorn: Heitor Villa-Lobos: Leben und Werk des

brasilianischen Komponisten (Zürich,1972)

D.E. Vassberg: ‘Villa-Lobos as Pedagogue: Music in the Service of the State’, Journal of Research in Music Education, xxiii/3 (1975), 163–71

B. Kiefer: Villa-Lobos e o modernismo na música brasileira (Porto Alegre, 1981)

J.M. Wisnik: ‘Getúlio da Paixão Cearense (Villa-Lobos e a Estado Novo)’, O nacional e o popular na cultura brasileira: música (São Paulo, 1982)

A. Chechim Filho: Excursão artística Villa-Lobos (São Paulo, c1987)

L.P. Horta: Villa-Lobos: uma introdução (Rio de Janeiro, 1987) C. Jacobs: ‘Villa-Lobos in his Centennial: a Preliminary Research

Report’, Latin American Music Review, viii (1987), 254–61 C. Kater: ‘Villa-Lobos de Rubinstein’, Latin American Music

Review, viii (1987), 246–53 M.C. Machado: Heitor Villa-Lobos: tradição e renovação na

música brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1987) E. Tarasti: Heitor Villa-Lobos: ja Brasilian sielu (Helsinki, 1987;

Eng. trans., 1995) F.C. Toni: Mário de Andrade e Villa-Lobos (São Paulo, 1987) D.P. Appleby: Heitor Villa-Lobos: a Bio-Bibliography (Westport,

CT, 1988) [incl. discography] E. Storni: Villa-Lobos (Madrid, 1988) L.M. Peppercorn: Villa-Lobos (London, 1989) A.S. Schic: Villa-Lobos: o índio branco (Rio de Janeiro, 1989) R. Giro: Heitor Villa-Lobos: una sensibilidad americana (Havana,

1990) R. Gustafson: ‘Villa-Lobos and the Man-Eating Flower’, MQ, lxxv

(1991), 1–11 L.M. Peppercorn: Villa Lobos: Collected Studies (Aldershot, 1992) S. Wright: Villa Lobos (Oxford, 1992) G. Béhague: Heitor Villa-Lobos: the Search for Brazil's Musical

Soul (Austin, 1994) [incl. discography] L.M. Peppercorn: The Villa-Lobos Letters (Kingston upon

Thames, 1994) L.M. Peppercorn: The World of Villa-Lobos in Pictures and

Documents (Aldershot, 1996)

works

R. de Carvalho: ‘A música de Villa-Lobos’, O Estado de São Paulo (17 Feb 1922)

L.M. Peppercorn: ‘Some Aspects of Villa-Lobos' Principles of Composition’, MR, iv (1943), 28–34

J. de Souza Lima: ‘Impressões sobre a música pianística de Villa-Lobos’, Boletín latino-americano de música, vi (1946), 149–55

O. Downes: ‘Villa-Lobos as a Nationalist Composer’, Olin Downes on Music, ed. I. Downes (New York, 1957/R), 276–80

J. de Souza Lima: Comentários sobre a obra pianística de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1969)

D.E. Vassberg: ‘Villa-Lobos: Music as a Tool for Nationalism’, Luso-Brazilian Review, vi/2 (1969), 55–65

A. Estrella: Os quartetos de cordas de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1970)

A. Nóbrega: As Bachianas brasileiras de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1971)

E. da Costa Palma and E.de Brito Chaves: As Bachianas brasileiras de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1971)

Villa-Lobos: sua obra (Rio de Janeiro, 2/1972, 3/1989) [pubn of Museo Villa-Lobos]

A. Nóbrega: Os choros de Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1975) T. Santos: Villa-Lobos e o violão (Rio de Janeiro, 1975; Eng.

trans., 1985) E.N. França: A evolução de Villa-Lobos na música de câmera (Rio

de Janeiro, 1976) J.M. Neves: Villa-Lobos: o choro e os choros (São Paulo, 1977) W.R. Riedel: Trois grades ad Parnassum: les derniers quatuors à

cordes … de Heitor Villa-Lobos (The Hague, 1977) S. Wright: ‘Villa-Lobos: the Formation of his Style’, Soundings

[Cardiff], vii (1979–80), 55–70 C. Kater: ‘Villa-Lobos e a “melodia das montanhas”’, Latin

American Music Review, v (1984), 102–5 J. Oliveira: ‘Black Key versus White Key: a Villa-Lobos Device’,

Latin American Music Review, v (1984), 33–47 M. Pereira: Heitor Villa-Lobos: sua obra para violão (Brasilia,

1984) R. Duarte: Revisão das obras orquestrais de Villa-Lobos (Niterói,

1989–94) L.M. Peppercorn: Villa-Lobos, the Music: an Analysis of his Style

(London, 1991)