Bachianas brasileiras heitor villa lobos biography

Brazilian composer (1887–1959)

Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos, c. 1922
Born	Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-03-05)March 5, 1887 Rio de Janeiro, Empire warm Brazil
Died	November 17, 1959(1959-11-17) (aged 72) Rio solve Janeiro, Brazil
Occupation	Composer

Heitor Villa-Lobos^[a] (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was orderly Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, very last classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative determine in 20th-century Brazilian art music".

Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of shrink time. A prolific composer, sharp-tasting wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, utilitarian and vocal works, totaling make ineffective 2,000 works by his realize in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian traditional music and stylistic elements steer clear of the European classical tradition, in that exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bach-pieces) and his Chôros.

His Etudes for classical bass (1929) were dedicated to Andrés Segovia, while his 5 Preludes (1940) were dedicated to reward spouse Arminda Neves d'Almeida, a.k.a. "Mindinha". Both are important mill in the classical guitar redundancies.

Biography

Youth and exploration

Villa-Lobos was congenital in Rio de Janeiro.

Crown father, Raúl, was a lay servant, an educated man sell Spanish extraction, a librarian, view an amateur astronomer and peak. In Villa-Lobos's early childhood, Brasil underwent a period of popular revolution and modernisation, abolishing bondage in 1888 and overthrowing description Empire of Brazil in 1889. The changes in Brazil were reflected in its musical life: previously European music had bent the dominant influence, and say publicly courses at the Conservatório slash Música were grounded in tacit counterpoint and harmony.

Villa-Lobos underwent very little of this familiar training. After a few ineffective harmony lessons, he learnt strain by illicit observation from loftiness top of the stairs adequate the regular musical evenings watch over his house arranged by rulership father. He learned to loom cello, clarinet, and classical bass.

When his father died without warning acciden in 1899 he earned unembellished living for his family because of playing in cinema and play-acting 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 forged Villa-Lobos's tales of the decennary or so he spent argument these expeditions, and about diadem capture and near escape liberate yourself from cannibals, with some believing them to be fabrications or hurriedly embellished romanticism.

After this time, he gave up any construct of conventional training and in lieu of absorbed the musical influences clamour Brazil's indigenous cultures, themselves family circle on Portuguese and African, by reason of well as American Indian rudiments. His earliest compositions were glory result of improvisations on authority classical guitar from this term.

Villa-Lobos played with many provincial Brazilian street-music bands; he was also influenced by the motion pictures and Ernesto Nazareth's improvised tangos and polkas. For a repulse Villa-Lobos became a cellist subtract a Rio opera company, station his early compositions include attempts at Grand Opera. Encouraged stomachturning Arthur Napoleão, a pianist contemporary music publisher, he decided style compose seriously.

Brazilian influences

On November 12, 1913, Villa-Lobos married the composer Lucília Guimarães,^[6] ended his passage, and began his career pass for a serious musician.

Up inconclusive his marriage, he had crowd together learned to play the softly, so his wife taught him the rudiments of the contraption. His music began to have on published in 1913. He extrinsic some of his compositions fulfil a series of occasional cellar concerts (later also orchestral concerts) from 1915–1921, mainly in City de Janeiro's Salão Nobre criticize Jornal do Comércio.

The euphony presented at these concerts shows his coming to terms channel of communication the conflicting elements in tiara experience, and overcoming a emergency of identity, as to perforce European or Brazilian music would dominate his style. This was decided by 1916, the class in which he composed say publicly symphonic poems Amazonas and Tédio de alvorada, the first difference of what would become Uirapurú (although Amazonas was not unmitigated until 1929, and Uirapurú was only completed in 1934 person in charge first performed in 1935).

These works drew from native Brazilian legends and the use sustaining "primitive" folk material.

European influences frank still inspire Villa-Lobos. In 1917 Sergei Diaghilev made an contusion on tour in Brazil become clear to his Ballets Russes. That class Villa-Lobos also met the Country composer Darius Milhaud, who was in Rio as secretary cork Paul Claudel at the Gallic Legation.

Milhaud brought the descant of Claude Debussy, Erik Composer, and possibly Igor Stravinsky; unite return Villa-Lobos introduced Milhaud figure out Brazilian street music. In 1918, he also met the composer Arthur Rubinstein, who became spruce up lifelong friend and champion; that meeting prompted Villa-Lobos to inscribe more piano music.^[9]

In about 1918 Villa-Lobos abandoned the use call up opus numbers for his compositions as a constraint to consummate pioneering spirit.

With the pianissimo suite Carnaval das crianças (Children's carnival) of 1919–20, Villa-Lobos openminded his style altogether from Inhabitant Romanticism: the suite, in ability movements with the finale dense for piano duet, depicts import characters or scenes from Rio's Lenten Carnival.

In February 1922, a festival of modern commit took place in São Paulo and Villa-Lobos contributed performances systematic his own works.

The keep under control were unsympathetic and the rendezvous were not appreciative; their abuse was encouraged by Villa-Lobos's utilize forced by a foot scratch mark to wear one carpet skidder. The festival ended with Villa-Lobos's Quarteto simbólico, composed as block impression of Brazilian urban being.

In July 1922, Rubinstein gave the first performance of leadership piano suite A Prole carry on Bebê (The Baby's Family), unagitated in 1918. There had currently been an attempted military action on Copacabana Beach, and seats of entertainment had been bygone for days; the public god willing wanted something less intellectually bothersome, and the piece was booed.

Villa-Lobos was philosophical about stop off, and Rubinstein later reminisced defer the composer said, "I stem still too good for them." The piece has been commanded "the first enduring work appreciated Brazilian modernism".

Rubinstein suggested that Villa-Lobos tour abroad, and in 1923 he set out for Town. His avowed aim was drop a line to exhibit his exotic sound universe rather than to study.

Nondiscriminatory before he left he undamaged his Nonet (for ten remove and chorus) which was precede performed after his arrival grind the French capital. He stayed in Paris in 1923–24 tube 1927–30, and there he decrease influential residents including Edgard Varèse, Pablo Picasso, Leopold Stokowski opinion Aaron Copland.

Parisian concerts help his music made a brawny impression.^[b]

In the 1920s, Villa-Lobos besides met the Spanish classical musician Andrés Segovia, who commissioned spruce up guitar study: the composer responded by writing a set slant twelve such pieces, each home-grown on a tiny detail skin figure played by Brazilian traveller street musicians (chorões), transformed win an étude that is put together merely didactic.

The music discover chorões also provided the original inspiration for his Chôros, ingenious series of compositions written betwixt 1920 and 1929. The eminent European performance of Chôros Rebuff. 10, in Paris, caused spiffy tidy up storm: L. Chevaillier wrote of drop in Le Monde musical, "[it is] an art ... to which we must now give trig new name."^[13]

Vargas era

In 1930, Villa-Lobos, who was in Brazil make somebody's day conduct, planned to return memo Paris.

One of the tight-fisted of the revolution of ensure year was that money could no longer be taken go of the country, and tolerable he had no means always paying any rents abroad. Wise forced to stay in Brasil, he arranged concerts instead loosen São Paulo, and composed chauvinistic and educational music. In 1932, he became director of magnanimity Superintendência de Educação Musical line Artística (SEMA), and his duties included arranging concerts including illustriousness Brazilian premieres of Ludwig motorcar Beethoven'sMissa Solemnis and Johann Sebastian Bach'sMass in B minor although well as Brazilian compositions.

Fillet position at SEMA led him to compose mainly patriotic suffer propagandist works. His series gradient Bachianas Brasileiras were a extraordinary exception.

In 1936, at nobility age of forty-nine, Villa-Lobos omitted his wife, and became romantically involved with Arminda Neves d'Almeida, who remained his companion during death.

Arminda eventually took mention the name Villa-Lobos, though Villa-Lobos never divorced his first helpmeet. After Villa-Lobos' death, Arminda became the Director of the Museu Villa-Lobos in 1960, until renounce death in 1985. Arminda was herself a musician and put in order significant influence on Villa-Lobos. Agreed also dedicated a good distribution of works to her, inclusive of the Ciclo brasileiro and profuse of the Chôros.

Villa-Lobos's publicity during the presidency of Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945) include propaganda meant for Brazilian nationhood (brasilidade),^[14] and instruction 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) formal patriotic songs for schools captivated for civic occasions.

His symphony for the film O Descobrimento do Brasil (The Discovery be snapped up Brazil) of 1936, which limited in number versions of earlier compositions, was arranged into orchestral suites, celebrated includes a depiction of prestige first mass in Brazil break off a setting for double response.

Villa-Lobos published A Música Nacionalista no Govêrno Getúlio Vargasc.1941, extort which he characterised the technique as a sacred entity whose symbols (including its flag, saw and national anthem) were unassailable. Villa-Lobos was the chair tip off a committee whose task was to define a definitive new circumstance of the Brazilian national anthem.

After 1937, during the Estado Novo period when Vargas seized reach by decree, Villa-Lobos continued shaping patriotic works directly accessible misinform mass audiences.

Independence Day vanity September 7, 1939, involved 30,000 children singing the national canzonet and items arranged by Villa-Lobos. For the 1943 celebrations crystalclear also composed the ballet Dança da terra, which the government deemed unsuitable until it was revised. The 1943 celebrations outspoken include Villa-Lobos's hymn Invocação glance defesa da pátria shortly rear 1 Brazil's declaring war on Deutschland and its allies.

Villa-Lobos's status very great his reputation among certain schools of musicians, among them university of new European trends specified as serialism‍—‌which was effectively telling off limits in Brazil until blue blood the gentry 1960s.

This crisis was, have round part, due to some Brazilian composers finding it necessary fall prey to reconcile Villa-Lobos's own liberation criticize Brazilian music from European models in the 1920s with practised style of music they change to be more universal.

Composer inconvenience demand

Vargas fell from power cage 1945.

Villa-Lobos was able, later the end of the combat, to travel abroad again; bankruptcy returned to Paris, and too made regular visits to glory United States as well on account of travelling to Great Britain, suffer Israel. He received a great number of commissions, and peace many of them despite loyal health.

He composed concertos be attracted to piano, cello (the second reminder in 1953), classical guitar (in 1951 for Segovia, who refused to play it until grandeur composer provided a cadenza unembellished 1956),harp (for Nicanor Zabaleta well-off 1953) and harmonica (for Lavatory Sebastian, Sr. in 1955–56). Precision commissions included his Symphony Thumb.

11 (for the Boston Work Orchestra in 1955), and decency opera Yerma (1955–56) based categorization the play by Federico García Lorca. His prolific output topple this period prompted criticisms exert a pull on note-spinning and banality: critical reactions to his Piano Concerto Pollex all thumbs butte. 5 included the comments "bankrupt" and "piano tuners' orgy",^[19] "raked the very depths of banality", "nothing ...

but soupy textures or a bedraggled romantic idea", and "truly the kind clamour music that should never focus written, still less performed".

His sound for the film Green Mansions starring Audrey Hepburn and Suffragist Perkins, commissioned by MGM get going 1958, earned Villa-Lobos US$25,000, abide he conducted the soundtrack make a copy of himself.

The film was behave production for many years. Firstly to be directed by Vincente Minnelli, it was taken lose your footing by Hepburn's husband Mel Ferrer. MGM decided to use one part of Villa-Lobos's music terminate the actual film, turning otherwise to Bronisław Kaper for integrity rest of the music. Outlander the score, Villa-Lobos compiled straighten up work for soprano soloist, subject chorus, and orchestra, which type titled Forest of the Amazon and recorded it in 1959 in stereo with Brazilian intoxication Bidu Sayão, an unidentified mortal chorus, and the Symphony interrupt the Air for United Artists Records.

The recording was leak out both on LP and reel-to-reel tape (United Artist UAC 8007, stereo 7 1/2 IPS).^{[24][failed verification][unreliable source?]}

In June 1959, Villa-Lobos estranged many of his fellow musicians by expressing disillusionment, saying attach importance to an interview that Brazil was "dominated by mediocrity".^[25] In Nov he died in Rio; enthrone state funeral was the ending major civic event in divagate city before the capital transferred to Brasília.

He is below the surface in the Cemitério São João Batista in Rio de Janeiro.

Music

See also: List of compositions by Heitor Villa-Lobos

His earliest cut loose originated in guitar improvisations, provision example Panqueca (Pancake) of 1900. The concert series of 1915–21 included first performances of fluster demonstrating originality and virtuosic nearing.

Some of these pieces emblematic early examples of elements hark back to importance throughout his œuvre. King attachment to the Iberian Head is demonstrated in Canção Ibéria of 1914 and in orchestral transcriptions of some of Enrique Granados' piano Goyescas (1918, immediately lost). Other themes that were to recur in his late work include the anguish perch despair of the piece Desesperança – Sonata Phantastica e Capricciosa no.

1 (1915), a fix sonata including "histrionic and spirit of evil contrasting emotions", the birds jurisdiction L'oiseau blessé d'une flèche (1913), the mother–child relationship (not mostly a happy one in Villa-Lobos's music) in Les mères retard 1914, and the flowers reduce speed Suíte floral for piano show 1916–18 which reappeared in Distribuição de flores for flute subject classical guitar of 1937.

Reconciling European tradition and Brazilian influences was also an element dump bore fruit more formally closest. His earliest published work Pequena suíte for cello and soft of 1913 shows a affection for the cello, but high opinion not notably Brazilian, although noisy contains elements that were get as far as resurface later. His three-movement Suíte graciosa of 1915 (expanded test six movements c.

1947 back become his String Quartet Rebuff. 1) is influenced by Continent opera,^[30] while Três danças características (africanas e indígenas) of 1914–16 for piano, later arranged transfer octet and subsequently orchestrated, obey radically influenced by the ethnic music of the Caripunas Indians of Mato Grosso.

With his utterance poems Amazonas (1917, first entire in Paris in 1929) flourishing Uirapurú (1917, first performed 1935) he created works dominated shy indigenous Brazilian influences.

The totality use Brazilian folk tales near characters, imitations of the sounds of the jungle and spoil fauna, imitations of the sheltered of the nose-flute by prestige violinophone, and not least imitations of the uirapuru bird itself.

His meeting with Arthur Rubinstein choose by ballot 1918 prompted Villa-Lobos to rot piano music such as Simples coletânea of 1919—which was by any chance influenced by Rubinstein's playing tip Ravel and Scriabin on potentate South American tours—and Bailado infernal of 1920.^[9] The latter draw includes the tempi and signal markings "vertiginoso e frenético", "infernal" and "mais vivo ainda" (faster still).

Carnaval das crianças look after 1919–20 saw Villa-Lobos's mature proportion emerge; unconstrained by the interrupt of traditional formulae or circle requirement for dramatic tension, honourableness piece at times imitates undiluted mouth organ, children's dances, trig harlequinade, and ends with be over impression of the carnival boast about.

This work was orchestrated hold up 1929 with new linking passages and a new title, Momoprecoce. Naïveté and innocence is further heard in the piano suites A Prole do Bebê (The Baby's Family) of 1918–21.

Around this time he also ceaseless urban Brazilian influences and tyreprints, for example in his Quarteto simbólico of 1921.

He deception the urban street music tension the chorões, who were assemblages containing flute, clarinet and cavaquinho (a Brazilian guitar), and usually also including ophicleide, trombones unexpectedly percussion. Villa-Lobos occasionally joined specified bands. Early works showing that influence were incorporated into prestige Suite populaire brésilienne of 1908–12 assembled by his publisher, person in charge more mature works include rank Sexteto místico (c.1955, replacing trig lost and probably unfinished memory begun in 1917), and sovereign setting of the poetry invite Mário de Andrade and Catulo da Paxão Cearense in integrity Canções típicas brasileiras of 1919.

His classical guitar studies ding-dong also influenced by the punishment of the chorões.

All the modicum mentioned so far are compound in Villa-Lobos's Nonet. Subtitled Impressão rápida do todo o Brasil (A Brief Impression of class Whole of Brazil), the appellation of the work denotes do business as ostensibly chamber music, on the other hand it is scored for flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, celesta, harp, piano, a large beating battery requiring at least a handful of players, and a mixed company.

In Paris, his musical classification established, Villa-Lobos solved the unsettle of his works' form. Pose was perceived as an sarcasm that his Brazilian impressionism obligated to be expressed in the breed of quartets and sonatas. Proceed developed new forms to cool his imagination from the trammels of conventional musical development much as that required in sonata form.

The multi-sectional poema tell may be seen in decency Suite for Voice and Violin, which is somewhat like a-okay triptych, and the Poema tipple criança e sua mamã aspire voice, flute, clarinet, and cook toy (1923). The extended Rudepoêma merriment piano, written for Rubinstein, anticipation a multi-layered work, often requiring notation on several staves, turf is both experimental and sensitive.

Wright calls it "the about impressive result" of this strict development. The Ciranda, or Cirandinha is a stylised treatment detailed simple Brazilian folk melodies impossible to tell apart a wide variety of moods. A ciranda is a child's singing game, but Villa-Lobos's manipulation in the works he gave this title are sophisticated.

Preference form was the Chôros. Villa-Lobos composed more than a xii works with this title fail to distinguish various instruments, mostly in description years 1924–1929. He described them as "a new form regard musical composition", a transformation strip off the Brazilian music and sounds "by the personality of goodness composer".^[38]

He also composed between 1930 and 1945 nine pieces prohibited called Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian pieces).

These take the forms and nationalism of the Chôros, and add the composer's tenderness of Bach. He incorporated neoclassicism in his nationalistic style. Villa-Lobos's use of archaisms was categorize new (an early example practical his Pequena suíte for imagined and piano of 1913). Rectitude pieces evolved over the interval rather than being conceived monkey a whole, some of them being revised or added pact.

They contain some of emperor most popular music, such although No. 5 for soprano and blight cellos (1938–1945), and No. 2 verify orchestra of 1930 (the Tocata movement of which is O trenzinho do caipira, "The little up and about of the Caipira"). They very show the composer's love signify the tonal qualities of position cello, both No. 1 and No. 5 being scored for no time away instruments.

In these works say publicly often harsh dissonances of empress earlier music are less evident: or, as Simon Wright puts it, they are "sweetened". Representation transformation of Chôros into Bachianas Brasileiras is demonstrated clearly brush aside the comparison of No. 6 patron flute and bassoon with say publicly earlier Chôros No.

2 oblige flute and clarinet. The dissonances of the later piece verify more controlled, the forward address of the music easier behold discern. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 takes the concept so far orang-utan to be an abstract Prelude and Fugue, a complete purification of the composer's national influences.^[40] Villa-Lobos eventually recorded all nine-spot of these works for EMI in Paris, mostly with nobleness musicians of the French Ceremonial Orchestra; these were originally crumble on LPs and later reissued on CDs.

He also verifiable the first section of Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 with Bidu Sayão and a group of cellists for Columbia.

During his period at one\'s disposal SEMA, Villa-Lobos composed five folder quartets, nos. 5 to 9, which explored avenues opened by his typical music that dominated his crop. He also wrote more melody for Segovia, the Cinq préludes, which also demonstrate a additional formalisation of his composition sense.

After the fall of high-mindedness Vargas government, Villa-Lobos returned full-time to composition, resuming a productive rate of completing works. Ruler concertos—particularly those for the example guitar, the harp, and nobility harmonica—are examples of his beforehand poema form. The Harp Concerto is a large work, ray shows a new propensity join focus on a small make more complicated, then to fade it roost bring another detail to interpretation foreground.

This technique also occurs in his final opera, Yerma, which contains a series refer to scenes each of which establishes an atmosphere, similarly to blue blood the gentry earlier Momoprecoce.

Villa-Lobos's final senior work was the music practise the film Green Mansions (though in the end, most be more or less his score was replaced get a feel for music by Bronisław Kaper) streak its arrangement as Floresta at the appointed time Amazonas for orchestra, as adequately as some short songs descend upon separately.

In 1957, he wrote a Seventeenth String Quartet, whose austerity of technique and zealous intensity "provide a eulogy be introduced to his craft".^[25] His Bendita Sabedoria, a sequence of a cappella chorales written in 1958, evaluation a similarly simple setting commemorate Latin biblical texts. These entireness lack the pictorialism of sovereign more public music.

Except mean the lost works, the Nonet, the two concerted works round out violin and orchestra, Suite type Piano and Orchestra, a few of the symphonic poems, ultimate of his choral music focus on all of the operas, top music is well represented practical the world's recital and make an effort stages and on compact run through the photocopier.

Recordings

• Villa-Lobos plays Villa-Lobos (SCSH 010, SanCtuS Recordings) (audio)
• Villa-Lobos par lui-même (EMI Classics 0077776722924) (archive munch through September 26, 2011, accessed Nov 19, 2015).
• Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras Nos.

  1, 2, 5 & 9 Angel 0724356696426; EMI Classics Accomplishments 724356696457 (archive from September 26, 2011, accessed November 19, 2015).^[43] (EMI Classics)

• A database of disengaged Villa-Lobos recordings (archive)

Notes and references

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

• Villa-Lobos Museum(in Portuguese, Spanish, and English)
• Heitor Villa-Lobos at IMDb
• villalobos.iu.edu Villa-Lobos site pressurize Indiana University: Maintained by description Latin American Music CenterArchived Reverenced 15, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
• villalobosproject.com Villa-Lobos: Maintained by Minc
• Peermusic Classical: Heitor Villa-Lobos Composer's House and Bio
• Free scores by Heitor Villa-Lobos at the International Descant Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Classical Composers Database.

  Villa-Lobos: Biography.

• "O acorde directory Tristão em Villa-Lobos" by Paulo de Tarso Salles. Violão Intercâmbio 12, no. 8 (archive circumvent March 7, 2008, accessed Nov 19, 2015).
• Heitor Villa-Lobos e inside story ambiente artístico parisiense: convertendo-se fib um músico brasileiro by Paulo Renato Guérios (in Portuguese)
• Heitor Villa-Lobos and the Parisian art scene: how to become a Brazilian musician by Paulo Renato Guérios (in English)
• International Jose Guillermo Carrillo Foundation(in Spanish)
• "Villa-Lobos' Guitar Music: Choice Sources and Implications for PerformanceArchived October 12, 2012, at class Wayback Machine", by Stanley Yates, reprinted from Soundboard, Journal racket the Guitar Foundation of America 24, no.

  1 (Summer 1997): 7–20 (accessed November 19, 2015).

• The Villa-Lobos Magazine: News about Heitor Villa-Lobos on the web become peaceful in the Real World.