Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
Bachianas brasileiras
It is no overstatement to say Heitor Villa-Lobos put
Brazilian music on the cultural map. Yet the composer
who travelled widely in South America and the
Caribbean, absorbing ethnic idioms at first hand, also
won lasting respect from many European musicians for
his innovative music. Having spent most of the 1920s
based in Paris, Villa-Lobos returned to Brazil in June
1930. Soon after, Getúlio Vargas overthrew the Old
Republic and embarked on a transformation of Brazilian
institutions. Given his credentials as composer and
organizer, it was no surprise when, in 1932, Villa-Lobos
was invited to take charge of music education in Rio de
Janeiro. This led him to eschew the sophisticated idiom
he had cultivated in Paris for one where Brazilian folk
and popular influences were made paramount.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
Bachianas brasileiras. These pieces range from
instrumental and chamber to large orchestral forces, and
are given focus through the Brazilian idioms being
wedded to harmonic and contrapuntal techniques
directly derived from the Baroque era. From his
adolescence Villa-Lobos had been fascinated by Bach,
finding in his work analogies with the traditional music
of Brazil. Thus the present sequence was intended as an
explicit homage to Bach, a factor most evident in the
designation of almost every movement with twin titles
alluding both to the actual movements of Baroque suite
forms and also to specific Brazilian popular styles.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 1 is scored for an
‘orchestra of cellos’, so paying tribute to Bach’s Cello
Suites while allowing Villa-Lobos to exploit the tonal
and textural range of his favourite instrument.
Composed in 1930, what is now its first movement was
added eight years later for performance at the
composer’s own Sociedade Pro Musica concerts. This
Introdução (Embolada) takes a folk-song from North-
Eastern Brazil as inspiration for a driving, toccata-like
movement which potently combines melodic appeal,
harmonic richness and contrapuntal dexterity. The
Prelúdio (Modinha) that follows draws on a type of
popular love-song in music the gentle motion and
stylized, even archaic themes of which evoke the slow
movements of Bach concertos. The Fuga (Conversa)
that concludes the work is inspired by the ‘question and
answer’ routines often improvised by Rio street
musicians during the composer’s childhood.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 2, also written in 1930, is
a suite depicting aspects of Brazil that the composer
would have seen on his travels during the early years of
the twentieth century. Its textural richness belies the
modest orchestra required, as in the Prelúdio, (O Canto
do capadócio), with its affectionate but unsentimental
portrait of the impoverished rural underclass. Aria
(O Canto da nossa terra) is another alternately
expressive and insinuating number of the modinha type,
which the Dança (Lembrança do Sertão) that follows
complements with lively rhythmic motion often reminiscent
of a ‘moto perpetuo’. The Toccata (O trenzinho do Caipira)
has remained one of Villa-Lobos’ most enduring pieces, a
vivid evocation of a steam locomotive moving steadily
through the ‘backlands’ of North-Eastern Brazil, one far
removed from the mechanized precision of Honegger’s
Pacific 231 in its very audible limitations.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 3, completed in 1938,
might be described as a ‘sinfonia concertante’, the piano
oscillating between Romantic display and a Baroquelike
continuo rôle. Both aspects are evident in the
Prelúdio (Ponteio), drawing on the melodic ‘picking’ of
guitar-playing in music that is among the most fullblooded
of the series. The Fantasia (Devaneio) is a
freely-evolving movement of scintillating though never
showy virtuosity, and with passages of respite that
suggest the calm of a Bach chorale-prelude. The Aria
(Modinha) is among the composer’s most affecting, with
the piano’s first entry highly Bachian in its limpid
poignancy, and builds to an emotional apex before a
regretful close. A mood which the Toccata (Picapu)
dispels in its lively demeanour, the call of the
woodpecker adding its inimitable touch to the discourse.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 4, composed for solo
piano in 1939 and orchestrated two years later, again
adopts a suite-like format. The Prelúdio (Introdução) is
a relatively brief entrée, alluding to the ‘Royal Theme’
from The Musical Offering in an elegy which tellingly
contrasts solo and ensemble strings. The Coral (Canto do
Sertão) consists of a plaintively unwinding melody
which is imaginatively embellished, and with the
blacksmith bird’s single-note call ever-present. The Aria
(Cantiga) is an intermezzo whose main theme evolves
along the lines of the ‘tale’ implied but not stated by its
title, while the Dança (Martelo) that concludes the work
brings a more animated mood and sonorous harmonies
in the depths of the orchestra, which the composer
likened to the sound of a cathedral organ, to underpin the
vibrant activity elsewhere.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 5 has long been Villa-
Lobos’s best-known work. Its two movements, written
in 1938 and 1945, are scored for soprano and an eightpart
cello ensemble. Aria (Cantilena) opens with guitarlike
pizzicati, the soprano intoning an insinuating
melody which cellos accompany in unison, before
taking up the melody in their own right. A more
dramatic central section features soprano in lines from a
poem by Ruth Valadares Corréa, before the vocalise
continues in much the same vein. Dança (Martelo),
setting lines by the composer’s contemporary Manoel
Bandeira, is designed to evoke the improvised poetry
contests once common in North-Eastern Brazil, and
features the soprano in an imitation of various species of
birds. The voice’s combination with cellos creates a
sparkling atmosphere as well as formally articulating the
rondo-type movement, which closes with a brief vocal
flourish.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 6, dating from 1938, is
equally unusual in its format and scoring. Employing
only flute and bassoon, the work frequently evokes
Bach’s two-part inventions in its imitative counterpoint,
though the carefully gauged harmonic dissonance could
only be the product of a more recent era. Of the two
movements, Aria (Choro) is inspired by the urban street
musicians that Villa-Lobos encountered in his youth. Its
leisurely and unruffled progress belies its technical
difficulty, in which long-held melodic phrases are freely
juxtaposed with intricate passagework. The Fantasia is
unusual in its having no Brazilian subtitle, though the
nature of the music makes it a natural complement to the
previous movement, not least in an emotional quality
which is poised between the wistfully inward and the
dryly humorous; a link with Bach’s expressive domain,
albeit refracted through the passing of two centuries.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 7, in complete contrast, is
by some distance the longest and weightiest of the
series. Composed in 1942, and dedicated to Gustavo
Capanema, the Brazilian Minister of Education, the
work attempts a synthesis of Bachian and Brazilian traits
and reinforces their equal relevance at a time of
worldwide conflict and cultural collapse. The Prelúdio
(Ponteio) expands the musical procedures of the third
and fourth works in the series to near-symphonic
proportions, though the formal thinking retains its
improvisatory feel. The Giga (Quadrilha Caipira) is an
attractive conflation of a Bachian gigue with the
quadrille then popular across Brazil, with the even
livelier Toccata (Desafio) inspired by the improvised
singing contests that were equally common. The Fuga
(Conversa) returns to more serious issues, reflecting
lessons learnt from the formidable contrapuntal
masterpieces of Bach’s last years.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 8, which followed in
1944, is on almost the same scale, this time suggesting a
‘concerto for orchestra’ for which there is a notable
precedent in the first and most instrumentally diverse of
Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The Prelúdio is of a
more relaxed manner, albeit with sufficient variety of
mood and pacing to prevent too overt a uniformity. The
Aria (Modinha), with its mellifluous writing for lower
woodwind and strings, is one of the composer’s most
appealing such pieces, opening up to reveal a truly
panoramic perspective. In marked contrast is the
Toccata (Catira batida), where Villa-Lobos adds to his
native sources an incisive traditional dance from
Southern Brazil, giving the movement a hectic
excitement and physical abandon. The Fuga that
concludes the work, while less intense than that of the
preceding work, builds intently to a massive and
harmonically ambiguous final chord.
Bachianas brasileiras No. 9, composed in New
York during 1945, is in many respects a summation of the
whole series. Originally written for an unaccompanied
chorus, it sounds equally convincing when played by
string orchestra, and might be thought of as a musical
paradigm for the synthesis that Villa-Lobos had sought
in the previous eight works. Thus the Prelúdio is taken
up with a long-breathed melody, unfolding in expansive
harmonies that could almost be a composite of those
already heard. Only when the Fuga proceeds is the theme
revealed as the subject of the latter movement, which
ranks among the most impressive of the composer’s such
pieces. Although the range of contrapuntal techniques is
applied, the most striking factor is the composer’s blurring
of the distinction between what is Bachian and what is
Brazilian, surely an intentional QED as the work, and the
series as a whole, reaches its affirmative close.
Richard Whitehouse