Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 8

String Quartet No. 8, A. 446 (1944) I. Allegro II. Lento III. Scherzo, vivace IV. Quasi allegro Cuarteto Latinoamericano The String Quartet No. 8 of Heitor Villa-Lobos belongs to the last of three periods in the composer's career of quartet writing, during which the folkloric elements of his earlier quartets and nationalism of his middle quartets fused with a more general rhetoric. Beginning with the Seventh of 1942, this last group creates a synthesis of Villa-Lobos' lifelong preoccupations with popular traditions on the one hand, the currents of the earlier twentieth century French scene on the other, and the European tradition in general. The Eighth was written in 1944 in Rio di Janero, though it didn't receive its premiere until about two years later by the Quarteto Lacovino in the same city. While significantly less complex than its massive predecessor, this substantial four-movement work is nevertheless richly sophisticated. Arnaldo Estrella, in his study of the composer, calls this work "systematically atonal"; and while this phrase should not prompt one to confuse Villa-Lobos with the then-growing European avant-garde (the Brazilian composer had no interest in Schoenbergian twelve-tone techniques), Estrella is technically right. The quartet, while diving into the raw materials of tonality, defies tonality's actual behavior. The opening Allegro perfectly illustrates this "systematic atonality": from its opening cello bars, it slip-slides between quasi-tertian harmonies, always on the cusp of some possible and correct resolution while brilliantly avoiding any actual and detectable tonic. What is perhaps fascinating, and also most clearly indebted to Debussy and the French school, is how Villa-Lobos keeps this steadfast harmonic non-commitment enticing: it works in tandem with a deftly distracted motivic and thematic impulse that also refuses to plant itself in any long-term developmental stream. Tangent becomes a kind of method for keeping things free and within the composer's unburdened, eddying imagination, little cells and gestures abruptly go away and surprisingly return, like objects tumbling around in a drawer. What materializes is a kind of mutable but unturbulent, free fantasia, troping with individuality on a long-cultivated Gallic tradition -- the French answer to the stormier variation of Beethoven and his followers. The following movements continue as tributaries into this fertile technique: the second Lento consolidates itself into strongly charactered episodes of mystery and lyric beauty; the scherzo has a high-time with extended playing techniques and beating folkoric rhythms and the final Quasi Allegro swings from thematic vine to vine, securing its sure integration beneath a surface of delightful diversions. [allmusic.com] Art by Euan Uglow

YouTube Results

Page 1 of 1

11:27

Heitor Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 8, III-IV

13:14

Heitor Villa-Lobos - String Quartet No. 8, I-II