Villa-lobos: Piano Music, Vol. 5

Description

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) Piano Music, Volume 5   In 1905-1913, driven by his innate curiosity, Heitor Villa-Lobos embarked on a long voyage through the several regions of Brazil, during which he was exposed to a variety of traditional melodies, rhythms, and genres. At that time Villa-Lobos had already developed a deep identification with all things Brazilian, and increasingly began to project his works as a record of Brazil's musical identity. The trips Villa-Lobos took over this eight-year period became an important factor in his musical discovery of Brazil, but he was also motivated by his desire for freedom, his insatiable search for new materials and techniques, and his determination to uncover his own musical personality. In order to finance the first trip he did not hesitate to sell a number of rare books he had inherited from his father. Villa-Lobos's earlier biographers often remarked that, during these trips, he collected more than a thousand themes and melodies, most of them of great musical interest by virtue of their unique and even exotic character. The accuracy of such statements, however, remains debatable, since it is uncertain how much material Villa-Lobos actually compiled from these trips. If a document survives of Villa-Lobos's ethnographic forays, it is the Guia Pratico, a collection of 137 traditional songs, most of them children's rounds that would be instantly recognizable in several regions of Brazil. The collection was assembled for specific didactic purposes and was approved by the National Commission for Didactic Texts of the National Conservatory of Choral Singing. Villa-Lobos had planned five volumes, which would contain pieces for several media: solo piano, two-voice songs, choral songs, and songs with piano accompaniment. A few melodies had been collected by Villa-Lobos himself, but the project depended on the participation of several people connected with SEMA (Superintendency of Artistic and Musical Education), of which Villa-Lobos was the director. Each of the melodies was arranged or contextualized by Villa-Lobos, while the texts of the songs were revised and adapted by the poet Afranio Peixoto. Only the volume mentioned above, however, was published. Later, Villa-Lobos compiled small albums for piano solo, each containing five or six pieces extracted from the original Guia Pratico. He published a total of eleven of these albums, also called Guia Pratico. Ten were published in 1932, and the eleventh in 1949. Nine of these albums are recorded here, and the remaining two will appear in a later recording. The Guia Pratico is one of the most important collections that Villa-Lobos ever produced. First and foremost, it is an extremely rich inventory of Brazil's traditional songs, arranged or adapted by Villa-Lobos in infinitely inventive ways to create a string of highly individual and intensely characterized musical jewels. Villa- Lobos's ability to unveil the hidden meanings of children's round songs,