“Talking about Villa-Lobos is not easy!”
So begins Ermelinda A. Peace her research on the relationship between the great icon
of musical art in Brazil and the MPB - Brazilian popular music.
The existing literature today, specialized or not, about the life and work of H. Villa-Lobos
is simply overwhelming. That's why we have added here only a few notes, referring the curious interested in more details to Internet easily accessible sources (books, articles, monographs, recordings etc.), covering all aspects of his life and of his immense work.
The man and his work
From the hand of his father, “a practical, technical and perfect musician” (HVL’s own words), he met as a little boy many illustrious figures of that time, musicians, writers, critics, anthropologists, and especially the “chorões”, excellent instrumentalists who were dedicated to encouraging the “choro rounds” in middle-class festivals and in most upper-class social meetings of early XX century in Rio de Janeiro, then the nation’s capital.
Note that “choro” (“the true incarnation of the Brazilian soul”, according to VL) enjoyed more prestige than samba, considered by the most educated or pseudo-educated people humble folk music of low social category: for small Heitor (Tuhu, at home) the ideal school instead, where he was getting food for his learning hunger and mastering of instruments and forms. At first cello and clarinet, later came the guitar and the piano.
“When I entered that circle - the 'chorões'- it was not for fun, but to get imbued of that climate”, so he declared to the woman who would later be his second wife D. Arminda (Mindinha).
As his father died, victim of yellow fever, HVL, only 12, soon had to start contributing to the household economy, thereafter in charge of his mother. He played in bars, cabarets, festivals, vaudeville theaters and in the famous Odeon Cinema, where he met the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, who in the 20s would be his great friend and valuable support in Paris.
The mixture of classical structures, already impregnated with elements of local culture, helped to develop in his creative mind
the syncretic facet of what would be the explosive fusion of classical and popular or folk musical production of Villa, as we him affectionately call.
For the undisputed mastery that characterized him from the beginning of his activities as an intrinsically Brazilian composer, and also nationalistic in the aesthetic and civic sense he gave to the word, Villa-Lobos, who did not trust schools (“one foot in the Academy and you immediately get worse”) and therefore refused to submit to academic training, having devoted himself to study scores and manuals of music theory, undertook several trips to the most remote regions of Brazil, the Amazon, the Northeast, looking in the traditions and customs of Indians and inland people, in the tropical exuberance of colors and sounds of nature, the authenticity he aspired to his works.
“My harmony treatise is the map of Brazil.”
Irritated by the prejudices prevailing in Brazilian society, especially in the large urban centers (Rio and São Paulo), and much
more in the artistic circles of the time, unwilling to recognize his work as a modern composer, firmly determined to renew the parameters of musical creation in the country, based for sure in the classical tradition (Bach, Chopin, Debussy and others), but aimed at incorporating the authentic folk elements present in the cultural events of various strata of Brazilian society, as already embodied by countless artists from colonial times and with greater emphasis by the best musicians of the nineteenth century as well as by his contemporaries, Villa-Lobos had no choice but to leave Brazil to go to Paris, the largest cultural center in the 20s, so to demonstrate there his artistic talent showing the sophisticated Parisian public and the “professional colleagues” his latest creations.
It counted therefore on the financial support of patron admiring friends who respected him a lot for his volcanic temper and strong personality.
So he came to Paris, not to learn from the great names representing modernity there, but to present his newest findings, inspired by the exuberance and cultural diversity
of the Brazilian tropics. “You are those who are going to study with me,” he said upon arriving, aware of his value and ability.
The immediate success, artistic and social, of his presence in Paris fully confirmed his aspirations to the international recognition as creative genius and was very important for him to continue to develop and enhance his feverish musical activity, giving rise to a number of high quality works … surprising, provocative, original.
The warm applause of great artists and personalities from European music world gave him courage and strength to continue his prolific work as composer, leader, cultural entrepreneur and educator of the new Brazilian generations, getting to this purpose the government support by Vargas, a fact that earned him harsh criticism and biased accusations by some people who considered him a mere opportunist serving an authoritarian regime.
Heitor Villa-Lobos composed with Bach in mind and Brazil in the heart, on the one hand counterpoint and fugue, classical established structures, and on the other, in a symbiosis frankly brilliant, all the green-yellow range of the dazzling tropical nature and the amazing cultural diversity of their popular, folk, native demonstrations, turned into motives, songs, dances, rhythms and melodies of local inspiration and indigenous or African origin, mixing them with elements of European tradition.
[Copyright © by jrBustamante, 2012]