Villa-Lobos and Modernism: The Apotheosis of Cannibal Music

Villa-Lobos and Modernism: The Apotheosis of Cannibal Music offers a fresh perspective on Heitor Villa-Lobos' contributions to the Modernist Movement, highlighting his anthropophagic appetite for multiple opposing aesthetics and his legacy of unmatched originality. Ricardo Averbach uses Stravinsky's works as a familiar touchstone for accessing Villa-Lobos as the leading exponent of an aesthetic movement that has been neglected due to a traditional Eurocentric view of Modernism.

Format: Hardback
Length: 392 pages
Publication date: 15 August 2022
Publisher: Lexington Books

Villa-Lobos and Modernism: The Apotheosis of Cannibal Music presents a fresh perspective on the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and his significant contributions to the Modernist Movement of the twentieth century. In this profound study, Ricardo Averbach elevates Cultural Cannibalism as a prominent aspect of Modernist aesthetics and Villa-Lobos as its foremost exponent in the realm of music. Villa-Lobos' anthropophagic appetite for diverse and conflicting aesthetics is illuminated through the juxtaposition of contrasting elements, resulting in a legacy of unparalleled originality and a dazzling kaleidoscope of sounds that draw from the radical energy of Josephine Baker to the outrageous extravagance of Carmen Miranda, from Dada to Einstein's counterintuitive scientific discoveries, and from folklorism to atonality. The constructed analyses utilize the works of Stravinsky as a familiar and popular touchstone for accessing Villa-Lobos as the preeminent figurehead of an aesthetic movement that has been overlooked due to a traditional Eurocentric view of Modernism. Averbach opens up new avenues for the study of twentieth-century music, in general, while shedding light on the profound debt our present aesthetics owes to the Modernist ideas introduced by the Brazilian composer.

Weight: 694g
Dimension: 228 x 160 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781666911350