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Dates: b. 1887 / d. 1959

Nationality: Brazilian

Period: 20th Century

Genre: Suite

Key Musical Elements:

• Timbre

Why is he a Trailblazer?

It took time for classical orchestras to discover the sounds of Brazilian music.

Trailblazer Heitor Villa-Lobos led the way – bringing the instruments, rhythms and melodies of his home, Brazil, into the concert hall and creating a vibrant, exciting new sound.

Listen out for:

Villa-Lobos uses the sounds of the orchestra to create an image of The Little Train. Can you spot some of them? At the beginning notice the rattle as the train pulls put of the station and then the flute creating a whistle like effect. The wind section creates a sense of the train beginning to set off and then the piano creates a sense of movement with the running pattern of notes. What other sounds can you hear that sound like a train? Can you hear the reco-reco – a percussion instrument that you use a beater going up and down to create the sense of wheels clacking on a track. At the end the whole orchestra slows in TEMPO to create the sense of the train stopping.

Fast Facts

• Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. He began to learn the cello at the age of six and, as a teenager, enjoyed playing guitar with the street musicians of Rio.

• During travels around Brazil, including trips through the Amazon, Villa- Lobos discovered the folk music of his home and the tribal songs of its peoples. The melodies and rhythms he heard helped to shape Villa Lobos’s own musical ideas.

• Classical composers like Bach were also very important to Villa-Lobos. The Little Train of the Caipira belongs to the fifth of a series of nine pieces called the ‘Bachianas brasileiras’ that apply the technical ideas of Bach to the Brazilian music Villa-Lobos had come to love.

The Little Train of the Caipira

Villa-Lobos travelled by train on some of his musical adventures through Brazil.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that one of his most famous pieces re-creates the journey of a shuddering, juddering steam train, carrying the ‘caipira’ or ‘people of the countryside’ off to pick berries in the fields.

Villa-Lobos harnesses the musical power of the orchestra to bring the plucky locomotive to life: clarinets and trombones become steam whistles; percussion instruments, like the ganza and reco reco, re-create the clattering, hissing engine; syncopated rhythms propel the wheels; and folk tune-inspired melodies add a distinctive Brazilian flavour.

Resources

Where next?

• Why not meet the mysterious A Bao a Qu and discover how Mason Bates uses percussion in amazing ways to dream up a very different musical journey?

• Or you could listen to Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach – a composer who was a huge inspiration for Villa-Lobos.

• Get creative and upload your responses using the Ten Pieces Uploader!