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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 So 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 Gtulio 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 (193745), 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
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 190122 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 Danas
caractersticas africanas (191415), the Prole do beb nos.1 and 2
(1918, 1921) and the Carnaval das crianas brasileiras (191920)
but also chamber music such as the Sexteto mstico (1917), the
woodwind Trio (1921), the first four string quartets the song cycle
Epigramas irnicos e sentimentais (19213), 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 beb 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
Educational: Guia prtico, 137 children's songs, 1932; Distribuio de flores, girl's
vv, , vn/gui, 1937; Solfejos, 2 vols., 1939, 1945; Canto orfenico, 2 vols., 1940,
1950; a few other pieces
orchestral
with soloists: Vc Conc. no.1, 1913; Suite, pf, orch, 1913; Chros no.8, 2 pf, orch,
1925; Chros no.11, pf, orch, 1928; introduction to the Chros, 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, 19527; Pf Conc. no.4, 1952; Vc Conc. no.2, 1953; Hp Conc., 1953;
Pf Conc. no.5, 1954; Harmonica Conc., 19556
Other: Elgie, 1915; Myremis, sym. poem, 1916; Naufrgio de Klenicos, sym.
poem, 1916; Sinfonietta no.1, 1916; Sym. no.1 O imprevisto, 1916; Tdio de
Alvorada, sym. poem, 1916; Amazonas, sym. poem, 1917 [from ballet]; Sym. no.2
Asceno, 1917; Uirapuru, tone poem, 1917; Dana frentica, 1919; Sym. no.3 A
guerra, 1919; Sym. no.4 A vitria, 1919; Sym. no.5 A Paz, 1920, lost; Dana dos
mosquitos, 1922; Fantasia de movimentos mistos, 1922; Verde Velhice,
divertimento, 1922; Chros no.6, 1926
Chros no.9, 1929; Chros no.12, 1929; Chros no.13, 2 orchs, band, 1929;
Bachianas brasileiras no.2 (O trenzinho do Caipira), 1930; Bachianas brasileiras
no.4, pf/orch, 193036; Caixinha de boas festas, 1932 [from ballet]; O papagaio do
Moleque, episdio sinfnico, 1932; Descobrimento do Brasil, 4 suites, no.4 with
chorus, 1937 [from film score]; Saudade da juventude, suite, 1940
Bachianas 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; Eroso (Origem do rio Amazonas), 1950;
Sym. no.8, 1950; Sym. no.9, 1952; Dawn in a Tropical Forest, ov., 1953; Odissia
de uma raa, 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, 1959
8 religious/solemn marches, 190552
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, 1957
Other works for 3 or more insts: Pf Trio no.1, 1911; Trio, fl, vc, pf, 1913; Pf Trio no.2,
1915; Sexteto mstico, fl, ob, sax, hp, cel, gui, 1917; Pf Trio no.3, 1918; Trio, ob, cl,
bn, 1921; Chros no.7 (Settiminio), fl, ob, cl, sax, bn, gong, vn, vc, 1924; Chros
no.4, 3 hn, trbn, 1926; Qt, fl, ob, cl, bn, 1928; Quinteto em forma de chros, 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; Divagao, vc, pf, drum ad lib, 1946; Fantasia
concertante, cl, bn, pf, 1953; Qnt, fl, vn, va, vc, hp, 1957
Works 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; Elgie, vn/vc, pf, 1916; Sonata no.2, vc, pf, 1916; Sonata
no.3, vn, pf, 1920; Sonata no.4, vn, pf, 1923; Chros no.2, fl, cl, 1924, Martrio 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, 1957
Gui: Suite popular brasileira, 190812; Chros no.1, 1920; 12 Etudes, 1929; 5
Preludes, 1940
solo vocal
for 1v, pf unless otherwise stated
Villa-Lobos, Heitor
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general studies
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