Catalogue W231 Form Chôros Published 1953 (1953): Paris | Genre Chamber music Composed 1928 (1928): Paris | |
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English Quintet (in the Form of a Chôros) | ||
The Quinteto (em forma de chôros) (Fr.: Quintette (en forme de chôros) = Quintet (in the Form of a Chôros)) is a chamber-music composition by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, written in 1928. Originally scored for five woodwind instruments (flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon), it is most often performed in an arrangement for the conventional wind quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. A performance lasts about eleven minutes.
Contents
History
Villa-Lobos composed the work in Paris in 1928, during the same period in which he was working on the series of fourteen Chôros. The first manuscript fair-copy score is titled simply "Quintetto para flauta, oboé, corn'inglez, clarinete e fagote". The subtitle was added only after the premiere in 1930 (Peppercorn 1991, 46, 90). Although it was not originally intended as part of the Chôros series, some writers (e.g. Neves 1977, 84, Wright 1992, 61, and Appleby 2002, 80) have treated it as related.
It was first performed on 14 March 1930 at the Salle Chopin in Paris, on the same concert (part of the Festival de Musique Moderne) with the premieres of Chôros bis (for violin and cello), the Cirandas (for piano), and the Chansons typiques brésiliennes. The performers in the Quintet were Gaston Crunelle, flute; Louis Mercier, oboe; Paul-Gustave Brun, cor anglais; Louis Cahuzac, clarinet; and Auguste Lenom, bassoon. The score was only first published in 1953, by Max Eschig, in an edition that includes alternative passages to facilitate the substitution of the (French) horn for the cor anglais (Peppercorn 1991, 90–91; Villa-Lobos, sus obra 2009). This alternative scoring for conventional wind quintet undoubtedly improved chances for performances (Mellers 2001, 87)
Analysis
The Quintet consists of a loose succession of five large sections played continuously, each of which can be parsed into smaller subsections. The change from one large section to the next is marked by a decided change of texture and tempo (Peterson 2004, 72, 78, 118–19). A free rhythmic organization, reflected by frequent changes of metre and tempo and reinforced by a deliberate tonal freedom, produces a quality of spontaneity (Béhague 1994, 104).