HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of an intellectual who taught him to play the cello. After his death the young Heitor learned to play the guitar, an instrument associated with the lower ranks of society. In 1906 he embarked on a legendary trip to the North of his country; he travelled across the coast as far as Manaus, in the Amazon, meeting the humble people and intuitively absorbing their habits and rich musical folklore; later in his life he would exaggerate facts from this trip, inspired by the scientific expeditions that were taking place at the same time. Back to Rio in 1910, he married a pianist and tried (unsuccessfully) to catch up with his musical education as a ‘serious’ composer, while working as a free-lance musician, playing at the opera house at night and in cafes during the day. His earliest known guitar works, which now comprise the Suite populaire brésilienne, belong to this period.
Villa-Lobos was already in his thirties when he was ‘discovered’ by the pianist Artur Rubinstein, then a frequent visitor to South America. He added many of the Brazilian's pieces to his repertoire and prepared the ground for his first trip to Europe. Sponsored by magnates, Villa-Lobos lived in Paris from 1923 to 1930, where, through his natural charisma, he became one of the most respected composers, a friend of the major artists of the time and a darling of the press. Encouraged by the good reception to his exoticism, he felt liberated from the petit-bourgeois taste that had informed his earlier work and created an enormous number of experimental pieces. Around 1929, at one stroke he revolutionized the history of the guitar with the composition of the 12 Études.
