Heitor Villa-Lobos

Villa-Lobos was essentially a self-taught musician who was opposed to academic instruction. Nevertheless, he was an extraordinarily prolific composer whose catalog includes more than 2000 compositions. Although his output is uneven in quality, there are some common characteristics in much of his music. For instance, Villa-Lobos was fond of long melodic lines and his harmonic language often includes seventh chords and progressions of ninth and augmented chords. His orchestration is typically very lush, and in general his music tends to be unstructured. In addition to an enormous contribution in the area of didactic music, Villa-Lobos is principally known for his series of fourteen “Chôros,” which were composed between 1920 and 1929, as well as his “Bachianas brasileiras,” which are a synthesis of Brazilian folk music and Bachian counterpoint. Almost in anticipation of the developments of the 1960s, Villa-Lobos created a graphic method of composition. As an example, his 1939 “New York Skyline” was composed by using a photograph of New York as a guide for the melodic line. His last creative phase, which began around 1945, is characterized by a growing concern for instrumental virtuosity. During this period he wrote many concertos commissioned by virtuoso performers.

Maestro Villa-Lobos’s Compositions