Search - Heitor Villa-Lobos, Joseph Bacon :: Guitar Music of Villa-Lobos

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS (1887-1959), the greatest of Brazilian composers, was a man of instinct, vigor and passion; the antithesis of the academic composer who writes for the eye and brain, not the ear and heart. His innovations in the techniques of guitar composition are unparalleled. His own considerable ability as a guitarist as well as his fertile imagination led to the invention of many brilliant and telling effects. And the sheer beauty and vigor of the music place these pieces at the forefront of modern guitar music. Three distinct periods of Villa-Lobos? life are represented on this record. The Valsa-Chôro, Schottisch- Chôro and Chôros #1 date from 1912 when he was a young man playing his guitar in the street bands. The Etudes were written in 1929 when Villa-Lobos was in Paris for an extended visit. Here he met Segovia and he wrote a series of twelve etudes for the great guitarist. In character they range from dry "finger studies" to rhapsodic and savage fantasies. Out of these I have chosen four for this recording. In 1940 he was well-known and successful. An audacious project of his was a series of mammoth concerts; in one of these he conducted a choir of 40,000 voices! He had founded choral societies all over Brazil and his own conservatory of music in Rio. He found time to write a set of six preludes for the guitar, one of which unfortunately was lost. On this record we hear the five survivors and they are wonderful examples of his mature style. JOSEPH BACON is a native of San Francisco, son of the American composer Ernst Bacon. He studied guitar with Segovia, Ida Presti, Alexander Lagoya and Julian Bream. His background also includes degrees from Stanford and Harvard Universities, exhibitions of his own paintings and sculpture, and an extended study of Indian music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. He is a self-taught lutenist and an authority on the musical literature for the lute. He has taught on the faculties of the University of Oregon, Mills College in Oakland, California State College at Hayward, and Music and Arts Institute in San Francisco, and has performed in London, New York, Sand Francisco and many other cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe.