Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 5, 1887, and died there on November 17, 1959. The Sinfonietta No. 1 is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and strings. Approximate performance time is eighteen minutes.
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazil’s greatest composer of concert music, received initial training and inspiration from his father. Raúl Villa-Lobos worked for the national library and was also an avid amateur musician. In his early years, Heitor Villa-Lobos also learned to play the cello and guitar. His love for the latter instrument led him to explore the world of Rio de Janeiro’s street musicians. Villa-Lobos also made some money by playing cello in theaters, movie houses, and hotels.
As a young man, Villa-Lobos journeyed throughout Brazil, where he immersed himself in the country’s rich and varied folk music tradition. Eventually, Villa-Lobos also traveled extensively in Europe, where he met and befriended many of the greatest classical composers and musicians of his time, including Darius Milhaud, Maurice Ravel, Vincent d’Indy, Manuel de Falla, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Artur Rubenstein. By the mid-1920s, Heitor Villa-Lobos had established himself as one of the young shining lights in concert music.
During the following decade, Villa-Lobos also became active in the cause of national music education in Brazil. In 1931, Villa-Lobos was appointed Superintendent of Musical and Artistic Education for Rio. His work in education extended to people of all ages and backgrounds.
Villa-Lobos was for the most part a self-taught musician. His works offer a striking and original synthesis of the traditions of both the European masters and the folk music of his native land. Perhaps that synthesis is best exemplified by his Nine Bachianas brasileiras (1930-1945), which Villa-Lobos described as an “homage to the great genius of Johann Sebastian Bach,” a man he considered “a kind of universal folkloric source, rich and profound…(a source) linking all peoples.”
The early Sinfonietta No. 1 (1916) presents a different side of Villa-Lobos’s craft. Villa-Lobos dedicated the work “To the Memory of Mozart.” The Sinfonietta No. 1 employs a small orchestral ensemble similar to one of Mozart’s time. Villa-Lobos based his composition on two (unidentified) themes by Mozart. The Sinfonietta offers a nostalgic appreciation of Mozart’s era and musical world. The work is in three movements. Two brief and lively outer movements (Allegro giusto, Andantino) frame the extended slow-tempo movement (Andante non troppo) that is the musical and emotional center of the work.
Program notes by Ken Meltzer
