MANUEL ALVES FILHO

PaPart of the work of Heitor Villa-Lobos, considered one of the greatest Brazilian composers of all time, was placed at the service of politics, more precisely of the Getúlio Vargas government. For 15 years, including during the Estado Novo, the artist used his talent to build a musical education program viscerally linked to the interests of the regime. But it wasn't just about co-optation. Villa-Lobos also took advantage of this connection with power to publicize his music and lay the foundations for the mythification of his name. The little-known facet of the career of the author of “Bachianas Brasileiras” emerges in Analía Cherñavsky’s master’s thesis, defended at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp.

Entitled “A maestro in the office: Music and Politics in the time of Villa-Lobos”, Analía's work provides a detailed review of the composer's role as a public servant. His ability and talent, the research reveals, served a civic-artistic education plan based on principles derived from a strand of musical nationalism affiliated with the modernist movement. The artist's first contact with politics occurred in the early 30s, when he presented a musical education program to the São Paulo State Department of Education.

Two years later, Villa-Lobos was invited by the then Secretary of Education of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Anísio Teixeira, to organize and direct the Superintendency of Musical and Artistic Education (Sema). Its mission: to teach the population how to listen to modern Brazilian music. One of the first initiatives taken by the musician was to introduce orpheonic singing (choral) in all public and private schools, primary and secondary, in the Federal District. The experience soon began to be replicated in other states, catching the attention of Getúlio, who had assumed the Presidency of the Republic for the first time in 1930.

Invited by Getúlio's Minister of Education, Gustavo Capanema, to join the Department, Villa-Lobos extended his experience to the rest of the country, through the creation of the National Conservatory of Orpheonic Singing. Among his duties was the organization of the main national civic events, such as Fatherland Week and Labor Day. For these occasions, as Analía describes in her dissertation, the maestro composed and/or selected works that were an ode to the president and the regime. An example of the exaltation of Getúlio and his government is in the play “O Canto do Page”, whose verses say: Ó Tupan God of Brazil/who the sky fills with sun/with stars, moonlight and hope!/Ó Tupan takes away I miss you!/Anhangá makes me dream/of the Land I lost.

The song was performed by an orpheonic choir led by Villa-Lobos himself to pay homage to the president, when Getúlio went to the stage to give his speech on the occasion of national dates. Regarding this piece, Analía quotes in his study, the historian Arnaldo Contier, retired professor at USP, made the following criticism: “The constant repetition of the same rhythmic structure throughout the performance of this song denoted one of the most striking characteristics of authoritarian speeches. : the repetition of the same idea, always linked to a certain truth or reality. This music recovers the primitive, tribal meaning of music, seeking to transform the code into an element of communion and solidarity among all men around the ideal of the Nation, embodied in the figure of the Chief or the dictator”.
According to the survey carried out by the author of the dissertation, despite Villa-Lobos' dedication to the regime, his connection with Getúlio was marked by some disagreements, both in the educational and musical fields. All, however, were duly overcome due to the importance that the figure of one had for the other. This relationship also deviated from the tradition of co-optation and pure and simple domination exercised by an exceptional government, according to the researcher. “Between Villa-Lobos and Getúlio there was a kind of business relationship or exchange relationship, where both parties acted as partners”, she states.

Researcher Anal�a Cher�avsky: �Between Villa-Lobos and Get�lio there was a kind of business relationship or exchange relationship�

Mythical memory – But what is the reason, after all, for such an important part of the trajectory of one of the greatest Brazilian composers to have been disregarded for a long time by official memory? For Analía, it was a deliberate movement. The researcher observed that the traditional biographies written about the musician were based on a model composed between 1946 and 1948, shortly after the collapse of the Estado Novo. Furthermore, the first works had as their direct or indirect source an autobiography written by Villa-Lobos.

“At that time, marked by international criticism of fascism, after the tragic panel revealed during the Second World War, any type of relationship with a regime considered fascist would seek to be hidden, especially if this relationship was marked by an appointment to a position of trust related to a mission of a strategic nature to maintain power, that is, the control of the urban masses”, states the author of the dissertation. Only a few years later, taking advantage of the revisionist current that dominated the field of human sciences during the 1970s and 1980s, new works emerged that focused on Villa-Lobos' educational work and returned to the question of the connection between his music and politics, an aspect previously denied by his biographers.

Hector Villa-Lobos was born on March 5, 1887, in the Laranjeiras neighborhood, in Rio de Janeiro. Son of Noêmia, a housewife, and Raul, an employee at the National Library, he had his first contact with the world of music through his father, an amateur musician. In the house of the future maestro, as reported in a brief biography prepared by the Villa-Lobos Museum, respected names of the time met to play, on Saturdays, until the early hours of the morning. At the age of six, Villa-Lobos learned to play the cello with his father, on a specially adapted viola.  It was also at this time, thanks to his aunt Fifinha, who introduced him to the Preludes and Fugues of the “Well-Tempered Clavier”, that “Tuhú”, his childhood nickname, became fascinated by the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, the composer who ended up giving him serve as f source of inspiration for the creation of one of his most important cycles, that of the nine “Brazilian Bachianas”. In addition to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Villa-Lobos lived with his family in cities in the interior of the state and also in Minas Gerais. On these trips, he came into contact with music different from what he was used to hearing: country styles, viola players, in short, a part of Brazilian musical folklore that would later become universal through his works. Villa-Lobos' artistic maturity dates back to 1915, when he officially presented himself as a composer, with a series of concerts in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, married to pianist Lucília Guimarães, he made a living playing cello in the orchestras of Rio's theaters and cinemas, at the same time as writing his works. Newspapers published criticisms against the modernity of his music. In this regard, the maestro wrote the following text: “I don’t write dissonant to be modern. In no way. What I write is a cosmic consequence of the studies I carried out, of the synthesis I arrived at to reflect a nature like that of Brazil. When I tried to form my culture, guided by my own instinct and wisdom, I found that I could only reach a conclusion of conscious knowledge by researching, studying works that, at first glance, had nothing musical about them. So, my first book was the map of Brazil, the Brazil that I explored, city by city, state by state, forest by forest, peering into the soul of a land. Then, the character of the men of this land. Then, the natural wonders of this land. I continued, comparing my studies with foreign works, and looked for a point of support to establish the personalism and inalterability of my ideas”.