One of the lasting musical achievements of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was his liberation of the guitar from its traditional stylistic boundaries. Whether done consciously or not, his guitar music recorded here, the Douze Études and his five Préludes, marks a turning point in the repertoire and future horizons of the instrument. It was probably little more than the happy conjunction of many disparate elements and influences, rather than a conscious attempt to change the path of history.

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Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro into a large, middle-class family. His father was an amateur musician and it was through him that Heitor began his musical activities, initially as a cellist. Family circumstances, including the premature death of his father, as much as his fascination with Rio’s popular music scene, led him to become involved performing in theatres and restaurants as a cellist and guitarist. He had taught himself guitar by the time this activity began in his teens. It was this experience that directed him towards the incorporation of urban popular styles into his later compositions for the concert hall and gave him a familiarity with the guitar that would give him incomparable guidance in forging his later compositions.

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As a composer, Villa-Lobos was initially self-taught, drawing on diverse experiences from two distinct musical worlds, much more strongly separated by socio-economic class than is the case today. Villa-Lobos is also alleged to have travelled to vatious rural and uncultivated regions of Brazil during the decade before World War I and to have begun his activity of gathering indigenous and folk music in the areas he visited. As his personality as a composer began to take shape, he was assimilating music from the European classical tradition alongside indigenous musical sounds and the emerging urban popular music that superimposed elements from countless imported traditions upon music of European salons.
 

John Grifiths

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