Analysing Heitor Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras Nr.

2 under
the perspective of music topics, rhetoricity and narrativity ∗
Acácio T. C. Piedade

Introduction

Heitor Villa Lobos's music has recently been object of new insights that have been
renewing the musicological perspectives on his work, bringing up aspects that had not been
previously considered 1. At the same time, Villa Lobos’ musical language, which mixes
national/regional Brazilian styles, multiple musical identities, Indigenous references,
modernism, quotation, pitch-sets and symmetrical structures, is a challenge to the
musicologists and it encourages the development and application of new investigative
methods and theories. In this direction, the theory of topics has been one of these new
perspectives, and I think it has generated interesting insights for the comprehension of both
Villa Lobos’ music and of other analytical approaches to his music. In this article I will
analyse Villa Lobos’ music using some of this theories, as I’ve done elsewhere (Piedade
2013), to comment and to make an interpretation of the Prelude to the Bachianas Brasileiras
Nr. 2. I will use three perspectives here: Rhetoric, with the concepts of topics and rhetoricity,
intertextuality and music narrativity. I start by raising some theoretical considerations and
then, after a brief contextualization, I will analyse the work, trying to connect theory and
analysis at the conclusion.

Some theoretical points

I will review here some of the concepts I've been working with, which I think are
interesting to the investigation of Brazilian music in rhetorical terms. I interpret this music
according to music hermeneutics, so my approach is not a formalist one, for I share with
many other researchers the claim that the sense of music can be investigated by means of the
dialogue and integration between musical analysis and socio-historic-cultural
                                                                                                               
∗ Paper presented in the Topical Encounters and Rhetorics of Identity in Latin American Art Music (organized
by Melanie Plesch - The Balzan Programme in Musicology) at the University of Oxford in February 2015.
1
For example Salles (2009). Recent international conferences on this composer include two editions of the
Simpósio Villa-Lobos at São Paulo, Brazil (Salles & Oliveira 2012).
contextualization. If there is a new track to follow, it should be in this interplay of structure
and meaning. 2
I think of musicality not as the talent for music but as a set of musical and symbolic
elements that are deeply interconnected in the constitution of a socio musical system that
provides the basis of a particular musical world, this world being produced, reproduced and
shared by a particular community. So musicality refers also to a kind of musical identity, and
as well as the latter, it is a contrastive concept: a musicality can only be formed insofar as it
considers a confronting one. So when one talks about Brazilian musicality in a generic sense,
this idea invokes other musical imaginary National identities, like Argentinean or North
American, which is necessary for the invention of the very Brazilian musicality. The
contrastive fabric of musicalities goes further inside a National musicality because of its
different regional genres and styles. A regional musicality opposes to the one of another
region, meanwhile both take part of the National musicality, whenever this fabrication is
needed. 3  
There are already various definitions of musical topics4 but I’m using here a rather
different concept: I don’t relate topics to styles or genres but to musicalities. According to this
approach, topics are conventional and consensual musical structures, or commonplaces of the
musical discourse, that are founded in a particular musicality, where they keep some historical
stability so that it allows this musicality’s community to recognize and interpret them. Outside
the socio cultural limits of this musicality where it originates, a topic may not have the
conventional effect. In fact, it may have either no meaning at all or produce a re-signification,
which may attribute to the topic new meanings that were not previously intended. A
musicality is consistent by means of the commonplaces that reside in it, and topics attain their
power and effect in musicality. When topics appear in the very repertoire where they
originated, say for example samba topics in samba music, in this case they are not salient for
the audience, because they appear as constituents of the genre, exactly in the right place
where they conventionally should be. This is isotopy, the characteristic that renders
                                                                                                               
2
It is actually really not new. This claim was already postulated at least by pioneers such Meyer (1956) and it
was present in formulations of the early semiotics of music (Nattiez 1975). Maybe what is more recent is a
rhetorical approach that mixes topics, hermeneutics, semiotics and reception (McKay 2007, Kramer 2011).
3
As musicality can be viewed as a kind of musical identity, the anthropological concept of identity can be
useful. For Oliveira (2006), identity is founded in face to alterity: it only makes sense to speak about something
as "ours" and to feel akin with other members of my group in this claim if “we” are face to a thing that belongs
to another group: otherness that constitutes identity. The contrastive mechanism works on multiple levels, so that
a musicality is a point of convergence of different musical identities that are crossing it diagonally. It is the
world of practice and the ways of life that dictate the strength and persistence of a musicality, for it is a
historically moving ground.
4
See Agawu (1991); see also Mirka (2014).
acceptability and stability of conventional meaning in a chain of musical ideas. The topics
that constitute the isotopic chain are low rhetoricity topics. Any conventional element of a
genre or style can be viewed as a low rhetoricity topic concerning a musicality. The criteria
for becoming a topic or not is the fact that its performance enacts and discloses in the
audience meanings that exceed their very phenomena and that are linked to its origin, these
meanings that were naturalized by musicality5. When, on the contrary, topics are dislocated or
put in unusual moments or in different repertoires, they provoke a surprising effect caused by
a rupture of isotopy: this is allotopy 6. These topics have high rhetoricity. Allotopy produces
in the audience the need for an interpretation of the new meanings that are being generated. In
sum, topics that appear as expected in the isotopic chain have low rhetoricity, whereas topics
that break this homogeneous familiar field have high rhetoricity, producing new meanings.
Finally, rhetoricity is the actual level of rhetorical effect that is intended and employed by the
composer to be reproduced in the audience. Low rhetoricity topics may not be consciously
perceived as such, since they appear without any surprise as obvious elements of the genre,
they follow the expected sequence of events, but high rhetoricity topics are intended to
produce a shift from the isotopic chain and call the attention of the audience.
Certain characteristics of genres or styles or even simple musical clichés and formulae
that ground some musical practices may crystallize in topics that navigate different
repertoires, provided that there is a musicality that allows for its comprehensibility. Low
rhetoricity topics are generally naturalized, that is, taken as natural. They may not be named
or even perceived as such, since they simply don’t appear: what is apparent is the coherency
of the genre or style; there should be no surprise on that. For example, a saxophone
improvisation in a jazz standard, or a final cadence in a classical piano concerto, fanfare
topics in Mozart, all these facts are conventional and expected low rhetoricity topics. If
instead these same elements are dislocated to appear in unexpected places of the discourse, of
if they are borrowed and employed in other musical texts, they appeal for a new reading, they
become high rhetoricity topics. That being said, it becomes clear that a topic is not only its
general structure but also the use of this structure in a particular musicality. 7
Now, what about intertextuality? In fact, topics are actually a special kind of intertext,
especially high rhetorical topics. They are segments of genres, styles, gestures, formulae of a
                                                                                                               
5
This is the case, for example, of most of the classical music topics according to Ratner (1980).
6
I take these concepts from Dubois (1970) and the so-called Groupe µ.
7
See Piedade (2012).
musicality, that is, texts that appear in various other texts   8. The use of topics as rhetorical
phenomena concerns a kind of extended intertextuality since it’s not only a question of
quotation or allusion but it concerns the very constitution and consistency of musical texts in
rhetorical terms for a particular musicality.
Topics and other kinds of intertexts my also be used to create a musical plot to be
followed by the audience9. This could be investigated through a theory of musical narrativity.
In this sense, the analysis presupposes that all this rhetorical machinery is serving a kind of
underground script of musical meanings that characterizes as narrative. As some of the
researchers of musical narrativity say, it tells a story. 10  
So, summing up, I view musical topics as commonsense structures that refer to a
certain musicality, that is, a community of musicians and listeners that share a musical-
symbolical world, therefore it is only there that they are meaningful tools. Besides that, I think
a topic is not the musical structure itself, but it is the structure in the place it is located. If a
topic appears in its conventional moment, it has low rhetoricity, it may not even be perceived,
but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t signify. A composer may want to change or displace this same
structure in order to get certain effects, and in this case the topics acquire higher rhetoricity.
Intertexts usually are highly rhetorical because this is a whole structure from other place or
musicality that is brought to a new place. In this sense, on way or another topics with high
rhetoricity are always intertexts. But we can also claim that intertextuality is the basic ground
for rhetoricity and for topic theory, because topics are never alone: they originate in various
different texts in a communicative world. Finally, in terms of narrativity, topics and other
intertexts may be used to constitute a musical story to be told.
To decide what is a topic or not, or whether it has low or high rhetoricity, as well as to
undercover a musical plot in a piece of music, all this is an hermeneutic task and therefore it
depends on the research and experience of musicality, intersubjectivity and
contextualization11. I’ve being trying to research Brazilian music of the nationalistic period
with these presumptions and I will now present some topics I’ve been working with.

                                                                                                               
8
Musical intertexts may be defined as musical structures that journey from one piece to another echoing a
original arche-text (Genette 1982). Klein (2007) investigates intertextuality in Western Art music but it does it
not in terms of rhetorics and topics.
9
Agawu (1991).
10
See Almén (2008); Klein & Reyland (2013).
Topics in Brazilian musical nationalism

In my research on Brazilian Art music of the nationalistic school, particularly on the

music of Villa Lobos, I’ve proposed some sets of topics that I find relevant12. They serve as
sources of a generic musical identity understood as Brazilian musicality. This musicality have
been fabricated since the beginning of the XXth century with the end of Brazilian romanticism
and establishment of modernism in the capital and big cities, responding to the need of
independent National artistic languages. The use of these topics was a powerful tool to
nationalistic composers to fertilize their music with musical-symbolical material that create
and promote a National music. The topics could convey meanings from various inner
musicalities of Brazil as imagined at that time. Also the coherence of this Brazilian musicality
was mirrored and anchored in alterity, in this case it was other Latin American National
musicalities, like Argentinean, and many others from North American and European musical
traditions, many of them were elected to a dialogue when called to appear as topics in
Brazilian music. I’ve been working with sets of topics that I call brejeiro, época de ouro,
caipira, nordestina, afro-brasileira, indígena and sons da floresta. In this article I will focus
on the first three of them, since they appear in the work I will comment. However there is also
a topic from the last type, “forest sounds”, as it will be explained below.
Brejeiro topics have a technical nature; they have to do with changes in the musical
structure. It is a style in which musical figures are transformed by intentional subversions of
their normal condition. In the spirit of joke and challenge, like a very specific deceit, the
soloist-trickster elegantly and maliciously performs asymmetrical rhythmic patterns or sliding
inexact melodies, like if it is mocking of the predictability. These kind of scherzando gestures
are present in Choro music since its very beginning, when the flutist as virtuoso soloist used
to change some phrases in order to challenge the accompanists to follow the tempo. Brejeiro
manifests also in Capoeira dance with its dual condition: it was created by black slaves to
practice fight techniques while deceiving their masters as if they were only dancing. Brejeiro
is epitomized also by the figure of the malandro, the rascal, scoundrel, clever rogue from the
world of samba from the beginning of the century in Rio, who lived a bohemian and petty
crime life, the malandragem. The malandro is a seductive man, a Don Juan that has subtle
smooth body moves, loose as if to deceive and escape persecution from the police. The
subtitle of the Prelude of the Bachianas Nr 2 is called O Canto do Capadócio, which means
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
11
Kramer (2011).
12
Piedade (2013).
the song of the rascal13. So, some characteristics of this style are malicious rhythmically
shifting phrases, change of accent, chromatic slides in note attacks, glissandi, effects that may
cause the impression of mistake, but they are not.
Época de Ouro (“golden age”) is a musical evocation of the XIXth Century Brazil, the
time of ancient waltzes and other genres like Seresta and Modinha. This mythical old time is
thought as a time when life was full of lyricism, simplicity, and freshness. Therefore,
nostalgia is a very important pathos in the Época de ouro topics. There are some evocations
of Portuguese Fado and also embellished flourishing melodies with many arabesques as well
as rhythmic patterns of old dances like Maxixe and Polka. Not less important, there are
references of the Choro music, a very important popular music genre in Brazil. All these
elements work together in a musical text to recreate a kind of deeply true Brazil, a land whose
myth of origin tells that the real "authentic" and "pure" Brazilian musicality is lost in the
ashes of the past, but it can be re-enacted by music. Época-de-ouro topics are widely found in
the music of nationalist composers. Sometimes they appear very directly, as in the Valsas de
Esquina by Francisco Mignone, and sometimes they are more transfigured.
The evocation of the Caipira universe retains a crucial aspect of the inner side of
Brazil, particularly the countryside of Southeastern region. The figure of the Caipira was
considered by intellectuals and artists from the beginning of the XXth century firstly as a rude
ignorant that should be educated, a kind of personification of the underdevelopment. But two
decades later, with a Herderian influence on modernist thinkers, the Caipira was accepted as
“authentic” Brazilian peasant and one started praising his way of life, its sincerity and
simplicity. Villa Lobos strongly elicit this universe in his Trenzinho do Caipira
("Countryman's little train"), which is the forth movement of the Bachianas Nr 2, as well in
many other pieces. He often uses orchestral emulation of techniques of the typical country
guitar called viola caipira, always in very simple harmonic progressions (I-V7), and long
stepwise melodies, sometimes embellished by parallel thirds and sixths.

                                                                                                               
13
I’ve already commented that the score provides translations in five languages and in all of them the meaning
of capadócio appears as countryman, though the term was used in Portuguese at that time to mean rascal
(Piedade 2013).
Bachianas Brasileiras Nr. 2

The Bachianas Brasileiras is a cycle of nine compositions for different musical

formations composed between 1930 and 1945. During this period, Villa Lobos returned from
France to Brazil and was engaged in the political agenda of the dictatorial regime of President
Getúlio Vargas. He was considered a Brazilian National musical symbol. This phase of his
work is marked by a more neoclassical style after the earlier avant-garde adventures, as one
can see by the title of this series, which refers to the music of J. S. Bach. At the same time, he
continued aiming to develop a National music, so the general intent of the Bachianas
Brasileiras is to mix the Bachian style with the Brazilian musicality. The primitivism of
earlier phases is abandoned in favour of a neoclassical style, what also marks the change from
the first Brazilian musical modernism, in the 20s, with its Anthropophagite Manifesto from
1928, to the second, namely the Nationalistic one from the 30s. Now the esthetical
experiences and avant-garde reaction against tonal romanticism are left behind and the focus
on the development of a National music is at the core.
The Bachianas Brasileiras Nr. 2 was written for orchestra in 1930 and has four
movements. The second and third movements are respectively called Aria: o Canto da Nossa
Terra (“Aria: the Song of our Land”) and Dansa: Lembrança do Sertão (“Dance:
Remembrance of the Countryside”), and the first movement, which will also be analyzed
here, is called Prelúdio: o Canto do Capadócio (“Prelude: the song of the countryman”). It is
noticeable that according with these titles all four movements of this work are meant to depict
Brazilian countryside, though in the music distinct sets of topics and intertexts are put into
dialogue. So here is the object of this article:

Heitor Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Nr. 2, for orchestra (1930)

I – Prelúdio: o canto do capadócio (“Prelude: the song of the countryman”)
II - Aria: o canto da nossa terra (“Aria: the song of our land”)
III - Dansa: lembrança do sertão (“Dance: memory of the desert”)
IV - Toccata: o trenzinho do caipira (“The little train of the Brazilian countryman”)

The piece is in ABA form. The sections are shown below with their respective bar
numbers:
 Opening Adagio 1-3
Section A 1st theme 4-26
1st theme (repetition) 26-40
1st theme (repetition) 40-54
Section B 2nd theme 55-77
evocation of Adagio 77-78
Section A’ 1st theme 79-99

Analytical comments

The opening Adagio presents a short theme in a dark atmosphere that seems to
forecast a dramatic music to come. In fact, is a prelude to the Prelúdio that works in the
darkening of the scenario to come, and it will be evoked again just before the reexposition.
Example 1 shows the first bars of the piece14:

Example 1: bars 1-3

This is a two voice phrase in Ab minor: the melody in the upper voice rotate around Ab
and the lower voice around Eb but it ends half step higher, destabilizing the structure, as if it
ends as VI of Ab minor. This little half step in the end of a phrase or theme, which shifts
completely the sense of the music, is an element Villa Lobos will use again in this piece in a
very meaningful way, as we will see. For now, we retain the sober and dark character of this
short Adagio with this break at the end that provokes instability. In fact, this enigmatic
                                                                                                               
14
The musical examples in this article are provisional analytical reductions intended only to ease the reading.
Adagio enacts a tragic atmosphere that imprints some darkness to the following scenario: the
exposition of the 1st theme by the tenor saxophone. The harmony here presents many
dominant 7th chords in cycle of 4ths in the strings (E A D G C F E) as harmonic basis for a
very prominent saxophone solo (example 2)

Example 2: bars 4-10

The saxophone begins with strategic glissando in ascending minor 6th, an important
interval in this piece as I will argue, and it goes on with this sliding style that point to
brejeiro. For me, here manifests itself the capadócio: it is the figure of the malandro himself
that speaks with his loose way. But let’s consider the timbre: it is also a tool for signification
and rhetoricity. Villa Lobos intelligently uses orchestral instruments to convey meaning
through timbre remission, timbre transfer and highlight of key-instruments.
This being said, the sound of the solo tenor saxophone here refers itself to the world of
Choro music and not to jazz. One reason for this is the fact that the great master Pixinguinha
introduced the saxophone in the Choro during the 1920s15 and this installed the sound of this
jazz instrument in the heart of the Choro. A saxophone solo right in the beginning of an
orchestral piece from Brazilian Art music repertoire of this time was something very rare, and
that’s why it is prominent and highly rhetorical. The allusion to this musicality is also in the
phrase on bars 8 and 9, a kind of formula largely employed by Choro musicians. The general
topic here is época de ouro, but other elements play important roles, like the dramatic dark
Adagio, that I will treat as a European expressionism hint, and the brejeiro style. But this
semantically dense beginning16 includes more topics: in fact, the clarinet accompanies the
theme, as he or the oboe will do in other expositions of it, with a musical phrase which, due to
its repetitive melody and irregular rhythm, may be characterized as a bird song, forest sound
topic, as mentioned above. 17  
The exposition of the 1st theme goes ahead with apoggiaturi and zigzags producing a
melodic design that is consistent with the época de ouro topics, which is here reinforced by
the saxophone timbre. There is also a series of timbre transfers between key instruments:
saxophone, violoncello and trombone. The importance of the violoncello in this piece reflects
the impressive role Villa Lobos attributed to this instrument in all his compositions: in fact, he
is responsible for the development of a particular language for the violoncello that brought it
deeply to the Brazilian popular music, launching an important tradition in many repertoires
and to composers like Tom Jobim. Example 3 shows these first timbre transfers:

Example 3: bars 11-13

                                                                                                               
15
Bastos (2004)
16
A characteristic of Villa Lobos’ musical language (see Piedade, 2003)
17
This figure, irregularly repeated notes in instruments like clarinet and oboe, appear in several pieces of Villa
Lobos, and it is sometimes called the araponga motive (name of a Brazilian bird whose song is a repetitive
single metallic tone).
 In his initial moments, this Prelude already is charged with a considerable web of
meanings: a brief dark and dramatic Adagio opens up a scene where a brejeiro saxophone
presents a bending theme in an época de ouro atmosphere, with a hint of the forest. Example
4 shows bars 12-13 shows how the melody is stretched in terms of metrics, one more hint of
brejeiro. See also the ascending minor 6th in the violins at bars 19 and 2: I call here Tristan
motive (T)18:

Example 4: bars 12-13 (modified version)

The next figure (example 5) shows other timbre transfers in the Canto do Capadócio:
at bar 15 from saxophone to trombone. The melodic curves and the fermata climax point to a
lyricism from old Seresta singing style, a época de ouro topic. Trombone and saxophone
descending zigzags are scored with an ascending harmony in the strings. This sliding
trombone has a particular place in Brazilian musicality: it is a brejeiro effect of looseness that
constitute what one may call Brazilian trombone, an important character of the Gafieira bands
that would appear in the 1940s. From then on, the trombone brasileiro, with its sliding
melodies and metallic sound, have played an important role in the Samba and the Choro
music19. Example 5 below shows the score from bar 19 to 26, the end of this first exposition.
The trombone drops out the scene at bar 21, leaving the end of the 1st exposition with the
cellos in the low region, recreating the dark and dramatic aura from the Adagio. In this
obscure moment one can hear two allusions of the Tristan motive in the high register by the
violins.
                                                                                                               
18
The Tristan motive reminds the melodic design of the first notes from Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan and Isolde
in which the motive (A F E D#) is played by the violoncellos alone. This beginning of the opera is largely known
in Western Art music and his presence here is clearly an allusion to this masterpiece and all meanings it may
convey. It is a musical intertext abundantly used by many composers and that Villa Lobos employs in several of
his pieces. I argue that this ascending minor 6th already is a reference to Tristan, though incomplete.
19
As one can hear in the famous song Na Glória.
Example 5: bars 14-26
 In the example above, one can see at bars 25-26 a complete reference to the Tristan
motive: the violoncellos end their descendent melody in the low C and go from there, with a
quick scale of thirty-second notes, up to Ab, therefore completing a composite ascending
minor 6th. And it continues with two chromatic steps down: there is the integral Tristan
motive, as shown in the example 6.

Example 6: Tristan motive

From this point on, two other expositions of the 1st theme take place, each one with
some small changes particularly in the orchestration but maintaining several ascending minor
6ths. As stated before, in this piece I called this very interval Tristan motives because of their
rhetorical role as allusion to Wagner’s famous opera, which the first chord is the famous half-
diminished chord that have been called Tristan chord20. Now, in the prelude to Bachianas Nr.
2, this chord appears as final chord of the first and last expositions of the 1st theme, and it is
also the last chord of the piece. And it is remarkable that this placement of the Tristan chord is
very salient and unique: it appears as tonic in root position after a chromatic descending step
of the 5th in the tonic C minor 7th chord. This melodic stepwise slide has the same
destabilizing effect of the aforementioned one in the Adagio. Besides that, it is rare to find a
piece of the musical repertoire of that time that closes with a cadence on a tonic chord, which
is half-diminished. Villa Lobos highly rhetorical intentions here point to an interior
restlessness that replicates the dark Adagio, both moments aiming at the remission to a
musical expressionism from which the Wagnerian world is a forerunner. I argue elsewhere
that the half diminished chord himself have played a crucial role in the musical aesthetics of
the transition between tonality and atonality, which I refer to as the transfigured night of
tonality (Piedade 2008).
So, after brejeiro and época de ouro topics, the first section A closes with this
Wagnerian inconclusive Tristan tonic chord, there is a sudden change: it abruptly opens up a
completely different scenario. Section B, beginning in bar 55 (example 7) starts a sunny and
joyful dancing scene, harmony becomes Eb major and goes much simpler, basically a I-V7
progression and a stepwise diatonic melody: the innocence of caipira topics comes into play.
The rhythmic pattern used here is typically caipira like the pagode de viola sub-genre; some
of its rhythmic accents are orchestrated in the woodwinds.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
20
See for example Rothgeb (1995)
 Example 7: Section B (excerpt: bars 55-64)

The expressive content in this entire section is totally different from the first; it brings
some pastoral spirit and caipira simplicity to the piece. It goes from Eb through D minor and
ends at bar 77 with a cheerful plagal cadence in Bb major 7th. Then in bar 78 there is a brief
evocation of the dark atmosphere of the Adagio acting as a kind of inner window that darkens
the scene and brings it to the re-exposition of 1st theme by saxophone and violins. After this
last exposition of the 1st theme, the curtain falls over he transformation of a C minor tonic in
C half-diminished chord by means of the lowering of the 5th. A final filtering of this chord
leaves only a pianissimo Eb in the cellos and horns disappearing into the silence.
Conclusions

Maybe because of the final half-diminished chord, this piece ends with an
interrogation. To comment on this, I will discuss some aspects of Brazilian musicality, that is,
a kind of socio musical system the produces and conforms a musical world understood as
Brazilian, which is shared and reproduced by a particular historically situated community. In
these terms, let’s consider the city and the country. This opposition is particularly important to
Brazilian culture, since the notion of city embraces several ideas of civilization, Europe,
developed world, cosmopolitanism, whereas the notion of country poses a necessary
counterpoint to that by remembering that here is a whole inner world that is also necessary to
compose a National identity. So there is a Brazil that is cosmopolitan, connected to European
cultures, and there is a Brazil that is internal, deep and wild. This logic is certainly present in
other Latin American cultures.
This is a kind of opposition like the dualism culture-nature that Claude Lévi-Strauss
emphasizes in his analysis of Amerindian myths. Anthropologist Roberto DaMatta speaks of
contradictory and complementary spheres of the House and the Street in Brazilian culture21.
House is the private, the clean, orderly, secure, family-centred unity, and the Street is the
public, dirty, disordered, dangerous life of the streets.
If we analyse the whole first movement of the Bachianas Nr. 2 taking this dualism into
consideration, we feel the contradiction and the balance between two scenarios. We can
imagine a kind of travel departing from the European influenced fin de siècle Brazilian capital
and going inland to deep Brazil, visiting a rural party in the countryside. Then we come back
to the city, bringing to the old city a little fresh air from the deep roots of the countryside.
Music topics and intertexts are the necessary tools to compose this plot, or narrative,
of the first movement of the Bachianas Brasileiras Nr. 2. The Canto do Capadócio is a kind
of Symphonic Poem that brings up this opposition between Home/City and Street/Country,
permeated by dramatic influxes with dark expressive Wagnerian depictions, Brejeiro, Época
de Ouro and Caipira. The main characters of this story are thus enacted by means of Villa
Lobos’ skilful use of the rhetoricity of musical topics and intertexts.

                                                                                                               
21
Da Matta (1991)
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