The Fugues in the Bachianas Brasileiras by Heitor Villa-Lobos

This text is concerned with Villa-Lobos’s fugues in Bachianas Brasileiras. By acknowledging his reading of D’Indy’s music composition treatise Villa-Lobos also recognizes his knowledge of rules and practices of fugue composition as instructed by D’Indy. Further evidence may be corroborated by Villa-Lobos’s own description of these works in 1947 and published by Villa-Lobos Museum in 1972. In these descriptions the composer refers to fugue d’école and how he adheres or how he transgresses these composition instructions. In all the fugues examined the structural components of a fugue d’école are functional and represent a learned skill by the composer. Villa-Lobos shows us his ability, his craftmanship in fugue composition, and his chronologically distant inheritance of learned style. The amalgamation of these characteristics, stylistic allusions to the music of J. S. Bach, and of Brazilian music moods characterize these “nationalistic neoclassical fugues”.