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Heitor Villa-Lobos

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Heitor Villa-Lobos
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Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 - November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer. He wrote numerous works for orchestra, ensemble, and solo instruments. Typical for his work is the incorporation of Brazilian folk music, but he also used style elements from impressionism, expressionism, baroque, and classicism. Villa-Lobos is the best known classical composer of South America.

Contents

Biography

Heitor Villa-Lobos, was born in Rio de Janeiro. He learned music from his father, who was a widely-read, highly-cultured amateur musician and a librarian. By 1899, when his father died, Villa-Lobos had turned himself into a professional musician. He earned his living as a cafe musician playing the cello.

In 1905 Villa-Lobos made the first of his trips to Brazil's north-eastern states to collect folk music. He made many such trips and Villa-Lobos spun a web of mystery around them. His own testimony of adventures with the cannibal tribes of the North-East is not always trustworthy. Afterwards, he studied at the National Institute of Music in Rio de Janeiro, though his compositional style never conformed to any academic norms. His music remained always personal and idiosyncratic. As Villa-Lobos himself said many years later: "My music is natural, like a waterfall." Also: "One foot in the academy and you are changed for the worst!"

After another ethno-musicological trip to the Amazonian interior in 1912, Villa-Lobos returned to Rio de Janeiro. There, on November 13, 1915, he turned the city on its ear with a concert of his new music, which he introduced to the city of São Paulo at the Week of Modern Art in 1922. By 1923, he had attracted enough official favour to win a government grant to study in Paris. On his return in 1930, Villa-Lobos was made director of music education in Rio de Janeiro.

Thus began Villa-Lobos' second career: pedagogue of music for his country. He designed a complete system of musical instruction for generations of Brazilians, based upon Brazil's rich musical culture and rooted in a deep and always explicit patriotism. He composed choral music for huge choirs of school children, often adaptations of folk material. His legacy in the Brazil of today, even among new generations brought up with the samba-schools or MTV, is a strong feeling of pride and love for their country.

One of his favorite singers was Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão, with whom he had an artistic partnership for 38 years. In 1944, Villa-Lobos made a trip to the United States to conduct his works, to critical and even some popular acclaim. Important new works were commissioned by American orchestras, and he even wrote a movie score for Hollywood, for the 1945 film Green Mansions. The 1940s were a period of success on an international scale. As a composer and conductor of his own music, Villa-Lobos was lionized from Los Angeles to New York to Paris. In spite of his world travels, his home was always in Rio de Janeiro, where he died.

Heitor Villa-Lobos is buried in the Cemitério São João Batista in Rio de Janeiro.

Major works

Villa-Lobos was notoriously prolific, though he probably himself exaggerated the number of works he wrote. Many works are arrangements of earlier pieces. Especially in his final years, Villa-Lobos did a lot of re-composing.

The works below represent his musical legacy. Except for the lost works, they are well represented on the world's recital and concert stages and on CD. Even the Symphonies are now available in an integral recording on the cpo label - see http://www.rdpl.org/villa/stuttgart.html. Exceptions include the Nonetto and the operas.

Villa-Lobos' most popular work is the 5th Bachianas Brasileiras, written for voice and eight cellos, but performed in many other instrumental combinations. Close runner-ups would include the music for solo guitar, including the preludes, etudes and Choros 1. The greatest music is included in the Choros, Bachianas Brasileiras and String Quartet series, while a number of works for solo piano - Choros 5 and Bachianas Brasileiras 4, for example - are highly prized by pianists and audiences alike.

Bachianas Brasileiras

Choros

Concertos

Symphonies

Other Orchestral Works (including Ballet scores)

Chamber Music

String Quartets

Operas

Ballets

Music for Films

Works for Guitar solo

Music for Piano solo

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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