Heitor Villa-Lobos: Brazil’s Master of Musical Fusion

Heitor Villa-Lobos did not conclude his secondary studies. In 1904, however, he enrolled at the National Institute of Music to take cello lessons on an evening course, at the same time as playing in the orchestra of a symphonic society, the Francisco Manuel Club. The evening courses comprised part of the project of teachers from the Institute to maintain and expand the public profile of classical music in Rio de Janeiro soon after the proclamation of the Republic. The creation of these courses was justified, in March 1900, by José Rodrigues Barbosa, a music critic and honorary professor of the Institute, in an official missive in...