A letter from Paris

This letter from Heitor Villa-Lobos to Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald De Andrade is from Aracy A. Amaral's 1975 book Tarsila: sua obra e seu tempo. It's a missive from Paris, the world centre of Modernism, to two of the top Brazilian modernists. Villa-Lobos never gets enough credit for his leading edge avant garde musical theory and practice, perhaps because of his transition to more conservative musical styles in the 40s and 50s.

This comes from the Houston Museum of Fine Arts' International Center for the Arts of the Americas' new Documents of Latin American and Latino Art.

Pa! pa! pa!

Villa-Lobos wrote Choros No. 3, "Pica-pau"in 1925, and dedicated it to Tarsila & Oswald. It was premiered in São Paulo that year, and made a big splash in Paris at the famous Salle Gaveau concert in December of 1927.

Here's the Aracy Amaral book.

Here's where Villa-Lobos lived in Paris in the 1920s: Place Saint-Michel, in the Latin Quarter near the Pont Saint-Michel. I'm trying hard to learn my arrondissements: this is on the border between the 4th and the 5th.