HE WAS PURE FRENZY ORGANIZING ITSELF INTO RHYTHM...

WHEN IT ALL HAPPENED... 

BRASIL BETWEEN LA SCALA AND THE ARID HINTERLAND

In the late 19^th century, Brazil could hardly be considered a culturally backward country. 

A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

On the  other side of the world, more specifically in Lodz, Poland, Arthur Rubistein is born, on January 28, 1886.  The following year, a child named Heitor Villa-Lobos is born on March 5, on Ipiranga Street, in Rio de Janeiro.

Raul Villa-Lobos is a librarian at the National Library. He is an amateur cello player.  At home he plays classical music with friends.  His son is only six, but he teaches him how to play the cello by using the smaller viola da braccio turned upside down.  Heitor becomes familiar with Bach's The Well-tempered Clavier, the basic principles of the solfeggio, music theory and the clarinet.  In the streets of Rio, groups of amateur musicians (chorões) play the choro on feast nights and during Carnival.  The musical preferences of the young "Tuhu" (flame, in the tupi language), as Heitor has been nicknamed, waver between Bach and the serenades of the chorões.

His father dies in 1899.  Heitor is twelve and wants to learn the guitar as well as the "cavaquinho" (the small, four-stringed Portuguese guitar, called machete) and the trumpet.  But what can one do at twelve to make such dreams come true?  Well, he has his father's books.  He reads them, one by one.  Here he is now learning how to play the guitar by himself.  His mother wants him to become a medical doctor. 

At eighteen he declares his independence!  He joins the chorões, those amateur musicians not seen with good eyes by polite society.  The states up north are calling for him.  He leaves in 1905 for Espirito Santo, Bahia and Pernambuco.  He is now a wandering musician occasionally doubling as a migrant farm worker.

In 1907 he returns to Rio and enrolls in the National Institute of Music.  He studies harmony with Frederico Nascimento who has adopted Schoenberg's teaching methods.  But it doesn't last long...because "he finds it much more enjoyable to take in the folk music drifting under his window than to hear the harangues of some teacher." He takes to the road again.  Now he goes to the states in the North and Northeast.   He also visits the Amazon region - a fact never confirmed.  This visit will have a profound effect on his work. 

In his wanderings, Villa-Lobos gathers more than a thousand music themes, which he will use in the future.  He takes down notes on each piece of folk music he comes across, using a kind of shorthand with symbols representing the unity of time and rhythm.  Then he asks his "informer" to repeat the song several times so that he can write the musical notes over the shorthand symbols.

Finally, he returns to Rio in 1912, having satisfied his curiosity and thirst for adventure.  A surprise awaits him...a Mass is being celebrated in his memory!  His mother had not heard from him in such a long time that she thought he was dead.  Therefore, the Mass.

"I DON'T WRITE DISSONANCES JUST TO BE MODERN"

1915 marks the beginning of Villa-Lobos's official presentation in Rio as a composer.  His music provokes waves of rage in the conservative ranks.  The avant-garde is beginning to make its presence felt.  The cubist painter Anita Malfatti exhibits her work.  Monteiro Lobato (1), the critic, reacts negatively.  The work of the sculptor Vítor Brecheret comes under the same attacks.

Criticism abounds in the newspapers against the modernistic approaches.  The critic Oscar Guanabarino writes in the Jornal do Comércio about Villa-Lobos:  "His great talent is going astray" because he is one of the new iconoclasts who wish to destroy art as it was formed in the old schools. "They think there is a possibility of doing away with what is beautiful so that from its ashes there will rise the dominance of the absurd."

But resistance to Villa-Lobos's music is not limited to these attacks.  In 1918, he is invited by the director of the National Institute of Music to conduct a concert made up exclusively of his works - Symphony No. 1 and Amazonas, which still had the title of Miremis.  Trouble arises immediately.  The musicians, accustomed to the old routine, refuse to play what they consider to be a thing made up of dissonances.

To these harangues, Villa-Lobos replies:  "I don't write dissonances just to be modern.  Not at all.  What I compose is the cosmic consequence of my studies, of the synthesis at which I arrived in order to mirror nature as it exists in Brazil.  I persevered, testing my studies by comparing them with foreign works, searching for a point of support upon which to fasten the personalism and inalterability of my ideas."

Many Brazilian artists and intellectuals participate in this wave of renewal.   Other innovative souls keep arriving in Brazil from Europe.  Dr. Leão Veloso, who had given Villa-Lobos the treatise written by Vincent d'Indy, at the French Consulate, introduces him to the young Darius Milhaud, secretary to Paul Claudel, the writer.  Villa-Lobos shows Milhaud the treasures of Brazilian music.  Many years later, Milhaud composes the famous suite Saudades do Brasil, reminiscing the moments he had spent in that country.  It was also at this time that Villa-Lobos, in a most unusual way, meets Arthur Rubinstein.  The pianist will become his patron and will perform Prole do Bébé, which will launch Villa-Lobos in Europe. 

Young Arthur Rubinstein is on a tour in Rio.  He wants to meet the composer of whom Ernest Ansermet had spoken so highly in Buenos Aires.  He goes to the Odeon, a movie theater where Villa-Lobos is playing in a makeshift orchestra.  The group plays a series of inconsequential melodies and then, suddenly, it lashes into one of the Danças Africanas (African Dances).  During the intermission, Rubinstein goes backstage to pay his compliments, but is rudely rejected by Villa-Lobos who tells him:

"Vous êtes un virtuoso, vous ne pouvez pas comprendre ma musique!..."(You are a virtuoso, you can't understand my music!...)

The following day, around eight in the morning, someone knocks on the door of  Rubinstein's room at the Palace Hotel.  It's Villa-Lobos with about a dozen of his fellow musicians.  He wants the pianist to hear some of his compositions but, he explains, since the musicians work in the afternoon and at night, the audition has to be now, in the morning...

Another interesting incident is described by Vasco Mariz, diplomat and musicologist, in his biographical study on Villa-Lobos.  It seems that Rubinstein is aware of Villa-Lobos's financial difficulties so he proposes to buy some original manuscripts for an unnamed collector.  Villa-Lobos sells, for a good price, the autographed manuscript of the Sonata for the Cello.  Years later, he sees the same manuscripts in Rubinstein's home...

In 1919, Villa-Lobos takes a trip to Argentina where he will participate in a concert made up entirely of his compositions and organized by the Wagnerian Society of Buenos Aires.  His String Quartet No. 2 is very well received by the critics.

"WE REALLY WERE PURE AND FREE"

In February of 1922, a revolution takes place in Brazilian arts and culture.  It occurs in The Municipal Theater of S. Paulo, where a group of young poets, writers, musicians and other artists, led by the brothers Mário and Oswaldo de Andrade, meet to establish the guiding principles of Brazilian modernism.  These principles are:  the right to aesthetic research on a permanent basis, the updating of Brazilian artistic knowledge, the foundation of a national creative conscience.

In reality, the so-called Modern Art Week is a corollary to the heroic period of the Brazilian modernist movement, which had begun a decade earlier with the exhibition of Anita Malfatti's paintings. Mário de Andrade, poet and musicologist, describes the period:

"During that half dozen years we really were pure and free, disinterested, living in a most sublime union, at the same time enlightened and sentimental.  We were quarantined from the surrounding world, ridiculed, avoided, humiliated, cursed, but no one can imagine the naive delirium of greatness and personal conviction with which we reacted.  This state of exaltation in which we lived was beyond control."

Villa-Lobos is invited to participate in the movement but he has no money to travel from Rio to S. Paulo.  Graça Aranha, writer and diplomat, and Ronald de Carvalho, poet and also a diplomat, ask Paulo Prado, one of the organizers of Modern Art Week, to seek contributions from his aristocratic friends and others over whom he has influence.

Villa-Lobos doesn't prepare anything special for presentation in S. Paulo.  He simply puts the finishing touches to Epigramas, a piece for piano and voice, based on a poem by Ronald de Carvalho, and takes a few other pieces never heard before. 

The first session takes place on February 13.  The Municipal Theater of S. Paulo is filled to the rafters with people ready to hiss and boo and enjoy themselves at the expense of these youthful idealists.  Ronald de Carvalho recites The Frogs, a poem by Manuel Bandeira.  Up in the peanut gallery the noise deafens its own makers.  During intermission, Mário de Andrade, standing on the main staircase of the theater, gives a lecture on the fine arts.  He is "surrounded by strangers who jeered and were quite offensive to me."  Whatever the artistic merits of any of the works presented, the reaction is always the same. 

The audience's initial reaction toward Villa-Lobos is more respectful.  But during one of his concerts he is ridiculed several times.  He had sprained an ankle, so that he is forced to limp as he walks out on stage.  He is wearing a tailcoat and slippers.  The crowd watches and claps each time his ailing foot touches the floor...

Modern Art Week will become an event of capital importance.  The Brazilian modernist movement will no longer be a minor subject of discussions among artists; it will become a matter of national debate.  Time will see to it that the heroes of this gathering will be duly acclaimed in the future.  As Vasco Mariz will come to write:  "The same people who jeered and booed them in S. Paulo, today purchase, by the thousands, the books of Bandeira and Andrade, and give standing ovations at Villa-Lobos concerts."

TUHU SETS PARIS ON FIRE

In mid-1923, Villa-Lobos boards a French ship in Rio de Janeiro headed for Europe.  The author of Amazonas arrives in Paris.  But his intention is not to study or improve his talents;  he has come to conquer.  In his baggage he is bringing his quite substantial body of work.  In less than a year, this foreign messenger from a backward, tropical country imposes himself as a leading figure, through his talent and his independent spirit.  He conquers the music stage of the "civilized" world.

Thanks to a group of friends in Paris, Villa-Lobos is able to face the initial expenses of installing himself in the city.  As he says:  "I had so many friends that, bit by bit, they enabled me to go on." He makes his way in the music world.  Rubinstein and the husband of famous singer Vera Janacópulos introduce him to Max Eschig, the well-known publishing house.  And Vera sings his songs.

Villa-Lobos also receives help from other quarters.  Arnaldo Guinle, the business tycoon, and Olivia Penteado, a socialite, are very helpful.  His circle of friendships grows larger.  On Sundays, he gathers many artists around a succulent feijoada, the Brazilian national dish.  Among them are Florent Schmitt, Stokowsky, Varèse, Picasso and Léger.

The wildness of Paris is exacerbated by exoticism.  Heitor's charismatic figure is fodder for the sophisticated Parisian tastes of the 1920s.  With great humor, he ridicules the equatorial romanticism of a worldly city bursting with new ideas:  "When I was in the jungle, I realized the Indians had forgotten their folklore - only the parrots could remember.  It was through them that I managed to pick up a few things."

André Breton publishes his Surrealist Manifesto, together with Aragon.  The recently launched magazine Révolution Surréaliste is directed by Paul Claudel and Anatole France.  Poetry is revolutionized by Eluard.  Picasso imposes his cubism.  Jean Cocteau conducts experiments with new poetical languages in the cinema.  The newspaper Liberté considers Villa-Lobos's compositions as belonging to an advanced modernism practiced by a strong and attractive personality.  From the merger of these two cultures, so different from each other, there arises a body of exceptionally original musical work.

Villa-Lobos returns to Paris in 1927.  At forty, he is a puzzling figure keeping alive the contradictions of a personality larger than life.  There is mystery about him.  The sorcerer manages to cheat death itself.  When his doctor tells him that he has three months left to live, he replies, jokingly: "Sure!  Tell me about it in writing." For ten years, the miracle astonishes everybody.  He, of course, will end up dying of something else. 

As a sensual, openhearted and pugnatious individual, Villa-Lobos displays a truly paradoxical personality, not because he means to impress through calculated acts, but because of his vital exuberance, rejecting anything restrictive or affected.  He is a bon vivant, a passionate smoker of cigars from Bahia, a childish lover of children.  His creative work, in spite of what might be said by some, will impose his basic truth:  "When I tried to improve my education and culture, guided by my own instincts and experience, I found that I could only come to a conclusion of conscious knowledge by field research, by studying pieces that, on the surface, were not at all musical.  Thus, my first book was the map of Brazil.

In 1930, he returns to Brazil.  There is a revolution going on in S. Paulo!  The democratic governor of that state is now presidential candidate but it's Getulio Vargas who actually become president, appointed by a military junta.  In 1937, Vargas will become a dictator.  To an artist's mind something odd happens:  João Gilberto, an amateur pianist and member of the "getulian entourage," will become Rio's Chief of Police.

Villa-Lobos prepares a plan for music education, which receives wide attention.  It takes him two years to receive permission to implement the plan in the state of S. Paulo.

His admiration for Bach is reflected in his Bachianas Brasileiras (the Brazilian Bach suites), composed between 1930 and 1945.  Here, his essentially Brazilian inspiration manifests itself in classical forms and in counterpoint compositions.  Lopes-Graça (2), the pianist and musicologist, describes Villa-Lobos:  "His rebellious temperament made him a self-taught man, an intuitive artist who invents his own instruments of expression, who discovers the aesthetic possibilities of folk music..."

In 1932, he is back in Rio and becomes Director of Musical and Artistic Education for the state of Rio de Janeiro.  He carries out an outstanding plan, which leads to the foundation of the National Conservatory for Choral Music.  All of his energy is concentrated on the creation of school choirs;  this is the most economical means of making good music and of setting up the background for the work of "national construction."

His teaching methods allow children to scream, clap and stamp their feet during rehearsals.  He works hard.  He creates special courses to  improve the teaching of choral music.  To meet the needs of several choral groups, he makes arrangements and composes choral pieces, such as Canto do Pagé and songs inspired in Brazilian folklore, all gathered in the Guia Prático (Practical Guide).

“HE WAS PURE FRENZY ORGANIZING

In November, 1944, at the invitation of the conductor Werner Janssen, Villa-Lobos visits the United States for the first time.  The following year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performs a concert made up entirely of his compositions.  Great names of the music world are in the audience:  Arturo Toscanini, Claudio Arrau, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter and an array of others.

He takes frequent trips to New York and Paris.  He also creates and presides the Brazilian Academy of Music.  Now he is totally dedicated to the Beethoven passion for composing string quartets.

In 1948, he has serious health problems.  He has to go to the United States for an operation on his bladder because of cancer complications.

In 1954 he visits Israel.

The following year, Villa-Lobos returns to Paris to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a program containing only his compositions.  René Dumesnil, music critic for Le Monde, describes the experience:  "A Villa-Lobos concert is always something tasty, explosive and powerful..."

The composer now lives in a quiet street in downtown Rio de Janeiro.

He dies on November 17, 1959.

The poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, still touched by the composer's death, writes:  "No one who saw him that day conducting a chorus of 40,000 teenaged voices in Vasco da Gama stadium can ever forget him. He was pure frenzy organizing itself into rhythm, becoming melody and creating the most generous, the most intense and purifying communion ever imaginable."

(1) V. biography of Monteiro Lobato, on this site.

(2) V. biography of Lopes-Graça, on this site.