Friday, July 23, 2010

More home movies

It's nice to see these pictures of domestic life. One of the great love matches in classical music: Villa and Mindinha.

And I always love seeing Tom Jobim talk about his idol. I wish I knew what he was saying, but maybe the Villa-Lobos-inspired cigar says it all!

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing it Dean. How nice :)

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  2. Dean, that PratoFeito blog about Yerma is interesting. Thanks for the link in Twitter.
    The author certainly isn't short on hyperbole! I don't know any musicologist who would seriously claim that V-L was "the greatest composer of the 20th century", as the blog asserts. Come off it, mate! -- as we say in England. Similarly it annoys me when people claim that V-L's string quartets are the 'equal' of those by Bartok or Shostakovich. Patently absurd. Still, there is only one 20C composer I hold in higher esteem than V-L -- and I'm not talking about that odious man Stravinsky!

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  3. Talking of Yerma, I hope some company made a video of the Manaus production (?)

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  4. Thanks for these comments, Harold. The PratoFeito link is here: http://bit.ly/cnT4by

    I agree about the Villa-Lobos Quartets. Definitely a strong cycle, but it doesn't belong at the very top. Interesting looking at Evan Jones' "shortlist", from his excellent recent 2-volume book "Intimate Voices": http://www.urpress.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=9493

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  5. Thanks for the link to Evan Jones' shortlist, Dean -- I will follow it up. It's a pity the video clip doesn't show the whole of Tom Jobim's contribution. In this bit I think he is conveying V-L's ability to focus on writing music in the middle of a cramped and busy domestic environment - working on a huge score with staves running from piccolos at the top to double basses at the bottom, sharing the room with an enormous piano and other household furniture ...
    I don't recall that clip from the recent Globo TV documentaries about V-L -- perhaps it's from another program. Nice to see Mindinha looking so fresh and sparkling and talking with such animation!

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