Word: rios
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Lobos. He is a fiery little man who can jump in an instant from twinkling good humor to a shouting, stamping rage. He is vain enough to give his age as 60 (though friends say he is 67), and to rush his music indiscriminately into print. "The maestro," a Rio critic once said, "has written about 2,000 works. I would throw 1,950 of them away." The remaining 50 are still enough to make Villa-Lobos South America's greatest living composer...
...Rio lawyer, Villa-Lobos went to work at eleven after his father died, eked out a living playing in theater and cabaret orchestras. He wandered all over Brazil, listening to the boomlay music of the Indians, the songs of the Negroes, and the backroom jazz of cellar cafes. Then he began composing, combining all he had heard. In 1922 he descended on Paris. "I did not come to study," he announced, "but to show what I have done...
...Minor! C Minor!" When he got home again, in 1930, he found himself famous. As time went by he took to stuffing his pockets with costly cigars, developed a taste for conservative grey suits, manicures and perfume. In 1932 he was made director of musical education for Rio's schools...
...Rio soon learned what it was like to have Villa-Lobos around. Symphony orchestras found him a ranting, swearing conductor, who at times seemed barely able to follow a score ("C minor! C minor!" he would scream-then, quietly, "It is C minor, isn't it?"). Once during his class at the Rio Conservatory, a girl fainted. Next day Villa-Lobos posted a sign-and students knew he meant it: "Fainting in class not allowed...
Though royalties piled up, Villa-Lobos never moved from his cramped little apartment in downtown Rio, chaotically cluttered with papers, overflowing ashtrays, strange native instruments and dozens of hats (he collects them). There he has lived, ranting in a mixture of Portuguese and his fluent French, or composing quietly in a corner with a phonograph blaring in his ear. When visitors come, he can be rude ("I hate singers," he once bellowed at one he had just met), or he may entertain them for hours, playing records or showing them how he can sound three different rhythms all at once...