String Quartet No. 2 (Villa-Lobos)

Heitor Villa-Lobos

String Quartet No. 2 is the one of a series of seventeen works in the medium by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1915. A performance lasts approximately twenty minutes.

History

Villa-Lobos composed his Second Quartet in 1915, either in Rio de Janeiro or Nova Friburgo. It was first performed on 3 February 1917 by a quartet consisting of Judith Barcellos and Dagmar Noronha Gitahy, violins, Orlando Frederico, viola, and Alfredo Gomes, cello. The published score bears the indication "Op. 56".

Analysis

As in the all of Villa-Lobos's quartets except the first, there are four movements:

  1. Allegro non troppo
  2. Scherzo: Allegro
  3. Andante
  4. Allegro deciso – Presto – Prestissimo final

One writer, however, regards the Prestissimo final as a separate, fifth movement (Farmer 1973, 23, 25–26).

This early quartet in Villa-Lobos's catalogue is composed according to the cyclic principles developed by César Franck and Vincent d'Indy. Franck and Debussy were two of the most important influences on Villa-Lobos's early style, and he had studied d'Indy's 1912 textbook, Cours de Composition Musicale (Salles 2012a, 25).

The composer describes the scherzo as a novelty, played in harmonics, "whose harmonies involve a syncopated melody in a context that suggests small bamboo rustic flutes (a sort of Panpipe played using the nose by the Pareci Indians of Mato Grosso)" (Villa-Lobos 1972, 229).

Discography

In order of date of recordings:

Filmography

References

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