String Quartet No. 17 (Villa-Lobos)

Villa-Lobos in June 1952

String Quartet No. 17 is the last of seventeen quartets by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1957. A performance lasts approximately twenty minutes.

History

The Budapest Quartet, who premiered Villa-Lobos's Quartet No. 17

Villa-Lobos composed his Seventeenth Quartet in Rio de Janeiro in 1957. It was first performed by the Budapest String Quartet on 16 October 1959, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., exactly one month before the composer's death. Villa-Lobos was too ill to attend (Wright 1992, 139–40). He had given a copy of the score to the violinist Mariuccia Iacovino in Paris, before returning to Rio, mortally ill. He repeatedly asked her to arrange a reading of it, but adverse circumstances prevented this, and he died without knowing the premiere had already taken place (Estrella 1972).

Analysis

The quartet consists of the traditional four movements:

  1. Allegro non troppo
  2. Lento
  3. Scherzo (Allegro vivace)
  4. Allegro vivace (con fuoco)

The first movement is in ternary, ABA form, rather than the expected sonata-allegro form, and has a long concluding coda of thirty-seven measures (Farmer 1973, 79).

The second movement is also in ternary form and has the character of the improvised instrumental serenade called a choro (Farmer 1973, 91–92).

The third movement is a traditional scherzo with trio, followed by a concluding coda (Farmer 1973, 96).

The finale breaks with traditional forms, offering instead a succession of three unrelated sections, a transition, and a recapitulation of the first half of section one, and an extended coda (Farmer 1973, 100–101).

Discography

Chronological, by date of recording.

Filmography

References

Further reading

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