The Villa-Lobos Letters

This book assembles for the first time the complete surviving correspondence of the outstanding Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), one of the most colourful figures in twentieth-century music. Lisa Peppercorn, the leading authority on Villa-Lobos, has collected and annotated his letters and those of his correspondents, illustrating her work profusely with pictures of Villa-Lobos and his friends, the surroundings of his formative years, facsimiles of letters, publications and concert programmes – making this a unique collection of documentary material. The letters cover his sojourns in Paris in the 1920s, his work in Brazil in the thirties (including rather guarded exchanges between the composer and the wife he was about to leave), and correspondence from the height of Villa-Lobos’ fame, both as composer and conductor. The book is completed by a personal reminiscence of the composer by the Canadian poet Ralph Gustafson and a detailed chronology of Villa-Lobos’ life and compositions.