Exploring VillaLobos of Brazil

Dear Music Pals, Except for some classical guitar work, I haven’t really thought any extra about classical music since I expanded my horizons with it some years ago in one fell swoop, when I might have emailed you about acquiring eg “the darkest pieces of classical music”, actually a 9-CD set of compilation albums of bits of classical music from here and there – and very good too.

Except that the past few weeks I’ve decided to collect more of the work (he wrote 2000 pieces in total, died 1959 when I was aged 11) by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Go google on wikipedia for Heitor Villa-Lobos, very illuminating.

I find online that Amazon in Australia has none of him. CD Universe hasd some of him, and some of that is imported from Amazon in USA. My bookseller, who also does music CDs, has looked in UK for me and says that pickings are slim. Villa-Lobos is a bit famous, actually, but whether he is or not seems neither here nor there, there could be more of him available online than is, ok. So for the time being I’ll just pursue his symphonies.

And why pursue Villa-Lobos anyway? Well, he’s Brazilian, so he isn’t English, or Australian, or US, or European or Russian. Or Italian. He’s Brazilian, and I know little of Brazilian music. (It’s said that Brazil got musically exploratory when it shrugged off European royalty and government style.) So soon I’ll have Symphonies by Villa-Lobos Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11.

Think he wrote about 13 symphonies. He is, for one thing, very melodic, and I enjoy melody. Well worth following up.

Author: Dan Byrnes

Dan Byrnes is an Australian poet, writer, historian, a one-time journalist in Tamworth NSW Australia (or, Country Music Capital, Australia). Born in Sydney in 1948, meaning in late 2018 he is aged 70! He is deeply interested in modern Australian history (since 1788), literature, poetry and music. He had a normal high school education plus several stints at university, ending with a double major in History/Psychology, then with an Honours degree in History. Of late, and as he gets older - in 2019 he will be 71 - he spends time compiling and recompiling old work, adding to this blog, and wondering deeply with the history of Australia since 1788, a relatively new country, which received up to 162,000 convicts from Britain, why there is such apathy to maritime history in general and in particular, such apathy to the question: who owned/insured the convict ships? View all posts by Dan Byrnes