Heitor Villa-Lobos
composer
Heitor Villa-Lobos is one of the most renowned Brazilian composers of the 20th century and made a significant contribution to the development of his country’s distinctive art music. He left behind over 1000 works in a wide variety of genres and instrumentations – from symphonies, tone poems and ballets to an extensive chamber music oeuvre and short pieces for piano, voice, and guitar.
Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1887 and was taught the cello by his father who, as a writer and amateur musician, encouraged his son’s interest in music by regularly attending concerts and operas. After the early death of his father, Villa-Lobos earned his living as a cellist in local theatres and cinemas, while also increasingly turning to the instruments of urban popular music (guitar, saxophone and clarinet). He was particularly impressed by the music of the “chorões”, the travelling musicians, whose instrumental genre “chôro” he adopted in his compositions in the 1920s. After further instrumental and music theory lessons, he abandoned his medical studies to devote himself entirely to music. He developed a style that was characterised by the folklore of his homeland – indigenous peoples and the former African slaves of the Portuguese landowners. In 1917, Heitor Villa-Lobos met the French composer Darius Milhaud, who was working as a diplomat in Rio de Janeiro and introduced him to the contemporary musical trends in France. A year later, he met the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who became a great champion of his music. In 1922, Villa-Lobos was hailed as the leading representative of Brazilian Modernism and national music at the [Semana de Arte Moderna]. After an extended stay in Paris, he made his international breakthrough at the end of the 1920s. This was followed by concert tours to Europe and the USA, where Villa-Lobos enjoyed his greatest successes. In July 1959, the composer was awarded the Carlos Gomes Medal for services to Brazilian music. Four months later, he died of cancer in Rio de Janeiro.
