Heitor Villa-Lobos
Brazilian composer who fused folk and street music with European classical forms across more than 2,000 works.
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via Wikipedia: Heitor Villa-Lobos · see source
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist and classical guitarist, widely regarded as the central creative force in Brazilian art music of the 20th century. He is also one of the best-known South American composers anywhere.
Hugely productive, he left over 2,000 pieces at his death in 1959, spanning orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal music. His style blended Brazilian folk sources with habits drawn from the European classical tradition, a mix heard clearly in the Bachianas Brasileiras and the Chôros. Guitarists still treat his Etudes, written for Andrés Segovia, and his 5 Preludes as core repertoire.
Lore & Background
Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro, the city that shaped his early musical life. His father, Raúl, a civil servant and amateur musician, hosted musical evenings that the boy absorbed from the stairs rather than through formal lessons. He learned cello, clarinet and guitar, and after his father died in 1899 he supported the family by playing in cinema and theatre orchestras.
From around 1905 he travelled into Brazil's interior, soaking up native musical culture, although some of his tales from those years are doubted. He married the pianist Lucília Guimarães on November 12, 1913, and his music began appearing in print that year. Meetings with Darius Milhaud in 1917 and Arthur Rubinstein in 1918 widened his horizons, and in 1923 he left for Paris, where he met figures such as Edgard Varèse, Pablo Picasso and Aaron Copland.
Did You Know?
- He stopped using opus numbers around 1918, seeing them as a constraint.
- A foot infection forced him to wear a single carpet slipper during the 1922 modern art festival in São Paulo.
- He only learned the piano after his wife taught him the basics.
More in Modernist & 20Th-Century Composers
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Heitor Villa-Lobos (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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