Heitor Villa-Lobos is widely popular Brazilian composer. Villa-Lobos’ life experiences influenced him and his compositions, in turn, ring unique for many listeners in Latin America and beyond.
Villa-Lobos learned much about the classical music world, having been introduced to the cello at a young age. His mother’s influence led him to enroll in medical school, but his passion for music led him to explore the terrains of areas within Brazil with which he was less familiar. Villa-Lobos studied the native Brazilian melodies and eventually composed Danças Caracteristicas Africanas, three short pieces for solo piano. Danças was a success at the 1922 Brazilian Week of Modern Art, and Villa-Lobos eventually moved to Paris.
Villa-Lobos found inspiration in many places, and his short Bach-inspired compositions, Bachianas brasileiras, show the fusion between the traditional and vernacular. The operatic sound of the female vocalist is European in its style. The strings provide the traditional European flavor. The depth of singer Anna Maria Bondi’s tone is made even more agonizingly beautiful by the Brazilian “sound” which I can hear in the choice of percussion – a more dance-like plucking from the string section.
Villa-Lobos was important in the world of Latin Music as well as around the world because of his retention of the indigenous Brazilian sounds within his compositions. He is internationally recognized because of his innovations in working with Brazilian sounds and fusing them with the less vernacular, more traditional European classical styles.
Works Cited
Hess, Dr. Carol. "The Many Voices of Latin American Concert Music."Connect4Education.com. Web.
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