Latinoamerican
Musicians and creators
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was a Brazilian composer,
considered the best figure in XX century at Brazilian art, and has become one
of the best-known South American composers of all time.
Villa-lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. His father
Raul was a librarian and amateur musician, who gave him his first musical
lessons. In Villa-lobos´s early childhood, Brazil was in a period of social
revolution and modernisation, abolishing slavery in 1888 and overthrowing the
Empire of Brazil in 1889. All this changes were reflected in nacionalism
musical movements, who changed the European style of musical education, for a
more traditional folk one. In this way, Villa-lobos received learnings in
traditional harmony and counterpoint at the “Music Conservatory” of Rio, but
only a few abortive ones, instead he learnt music by observation of the musical
events who his father organized, with a free practice of the cello, guitar and
clarinet. In 1905 he travelled to the Amazonas to know the native Brazilian musical
culture. Then he began studies in the Music Nacional Institute, with a permanent
criticism view to the academy, always sharing with popular music bands and
cultures.
The legacy of Villalobos is based in the fact that he
influenced to many composers to create with an open perspective of music, not a
elitist one, instead showing a way of relationship with different styles: folk,
popular, jazz, classic. He showed that in all his compositions, a mixture of
colours, with a free spirit. All that facts, the free way to live the music
mixed with the focus of academic one, is what I love from this man and figure.
