A brazilian musician in New York: Pan-Americanism in the work of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1939-1945)

Resumen

This article seeks to analyze the ways in which modernism and nationalism were embodied in the music of Heitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959) on the basis of a study of his exchanges with the musical culture of North America during the 1940s. His musical works and the way they became known in the United States, constituted a dynamic process which involved him entering into a continuous dialogue with other intellectuals – musicians, musicologists, journalists and other artists. Following his first journey to the United States and his involvement in the “networks of sociability” of that country, it was evident that as well as engaging in “social thinking about Brazil”, Villa-Lobos was drawn into an “intellectual culture”. This comprised a dynamic network and was expressed by sharing musical practices and holding conversations with musicologists which had political and social meanings. These are reflected in the way the historico-cultural significance of the works of Villa-Lobos was studied and the spread of his ideas in North-American and Brazilian periodicals.