Heitor Villa-Lobos

Heitor Villa-Lobos was one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century, with more than 2,000 works to his name. Yet only a very small portion of his music is regularly performed: pieces for guitar, such as Five Preludes (1940), and for piano, but primarily his Bachianas Brasileiras series (1930–45), in which he imagined a fusion of Bach with the music of his native Brazil. Like the country itself, his music offers a vast hinterland that has been little explored.

Much of Villa-Lobos’s music draws on the popular and traditional musical styles of Brazil, where he is revered as one of the nation’s greatest composers. His first compositional efforts combine aspects of those styles (especially rhythmic ones) with the classical forms and genres he encountered as a boy. In his later 30s and early 40s, he made two long visits to Paris that greatly broadened his outlook.

Early Years: Learning Music Brazilian-Style

Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro, where his father was a civil servant with cultivated interests. Concerts at home gave the young Villa-Lobos an appetite for music and proficiency on several instruments. When he was 12, however, his father died, and Villa-Lobos had to use his musical skills to earn money for the family. There was no possibility of professional training. Instead, at the age of 18, he traveled into Brazil’s interior, picking up musical influences and traditions as he went: Portuguese, African, and Indigenous American.

In 1913, he settled down in Rio, married the pianist Lucília Guimarães, and began to have his music published. His first contact with newer European music came four years later, when Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes visited Rio, and composer Darius Milhaud arrived for a stint at the French Embassy. The following year, the pianist Arthur Rubinstein was in the city and began a lasting association with Villa-Lobos; he premiered the first of the composer’s two suites titled A Prole do Bebê (The Baby’s Family) in 1922 and kept its very fast “O Polichinelo” (Pulcinella) movement in his repertory for decades. At Rubinstein’s suggestion, the composer decided to spend a year in Paris.

Villa-Lobos: “O Polichinelo” from A Prole do Bebê for Piano

Middle Period: Paris–Rio

Villa-Lobos arrived in Paris in July 1923 and soon completed a work to showcase his talents: the Nonet. Subtitled “Quick impression of the whole of Brazil,” the piece (curiously scored for ten players and chorus) was also designed to reveal the exotic world from which he came. Syncopated dance rhythms alternate with passages suggesting a walk through a jungle of dusky colors and bird calls. Brazilian percussion instruments are featured alongside intermittent choral eruptions.

With the Nonet, Villa-Lobos found the elements of his rhapsodic and florid mature style, which he developed in a sequence of Chôros—pieces named for a tradition of improvisation by street musicians and scored for various instrumentations, from solo instrument to orchestra with chorus. Largely composed while he was back in Rio, these works were intended to cause a sensation during his second Paris visit (1926–30), and they succeeded in doing so. A concert he conducted in December 1927 ended with Chôros No. 10 for chorus and orchestra—a riotous expansion of the style used in the Nonet.

While in Paris, Villa-Lobos was befriended by Edgard Varèse, and Olivier Messiaen was among the young composers impressed by his music. Although Villa-Lobos foresaw another period in Paris, travel outside Brazil was impossible under the nationalist dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas (1930–45). Adapting himself to the circumstances, he accepted the role of director at the Superintendency of Musical and Artistic Education in 1932 and produced patriotic works and teaching materials, including a Guia prático for piano (1932–49) drawing on traditional Brazilian melodies and dances. At the same time, he worked on the Bachianas Brasileiras, which are scored for a range of forces, from solo piano in No. 4 (1930–41) to full orchestra in Nos. 7 and 8 (1942 and 1944 respectively). Unlike the Chôros, each is in several movements which are often modeled on Baroque forms. By far the most popular movement in the whole series—and indeed in Villa-Lobos’s output altogether—is the “Ária” from No. 5, for soprano and eight cellos (1938).

Villa-Lobos: Bachianas brasileiras No. 5 for Soprano and Eight Cellos

Late Period: The Composer Unbounded

Villa-Lobos was free to make visits abroad again after Vargas fell from power in 1945. He went back to Paris and also visited the United States, Britain, and Israel. Most of the time, though, he was in Rio, producing pieces even faster than before: six of his 12 symphonies date from this final decade and a half, along with nine of his 17 string quartets. There were also five piano concertos, concertos for guitar (1951), harp (1953), and cello (1953) , various symphonic poems, ballets, a musical comedy, and an opera.

Legacy 

Villa-Lobos belonged to the same generation as many early 20th-century modernist composers, but carved a unique path for himself. His music grew from what he had experienced in Brazil in his youth, European music of the late 19th century, and the popular and Indigenous musical traditions he encountered on his travels. The Brazilian style of his music, while grounded in an internationally familiar language, made him the first Latin American composer to gain acclaim worldwide.

As a conductor he made several recordings in the 1950s, including the complete Bachianas Brasileiras, with No. 4 orchestrated and No. 5 featuring soprano Victoria de Los Ángeles. He died in Rio on November 17, 1959.

Watching and Listening

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Digital Archive has two of Villa-Lobos’s most appealing short piano pieces, beautifully played by Gilles Vonsattel: “A maré encheu” (The Tide Is Coming in) from the Guia prático, and “O Polichinelo.” Also listen to the gorgeous aria from Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.

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