Abstract
"Tupi or not Tupi?" So queried the Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade in his "Anthropophagous Statement" of 1928, which held that Brazilians should not merely imitate European culture but digest it on their own terms, like the Tupi Indians who ate their European prisoners so as to absorb their power (cited in John King, Sur: A Study of the Argentine Literary Journal and Its Role in the Development of a Culture, 1931-1970 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 19). Heitor Villa-Lobos's long career can be seen as a multifaceted response to Andrade's quip. Highly regarded [End Page 633] in Paris and the United States, Villa-Lobos took the lead in defining Brazilian art music both through his prolific, if uneven, output and, from 1930, his service in the Ministry of Education under Getúlio Vargas. A flamboyant personality, the composer has been the subject of several books, including those by Vasco Mariz (Heitor Villa-Lobos, compositor brasileiro, 11th ed. [Belo Horizonte: Itataia, 1989]) and, from beyond Brazil, by Lisa M. Peppercorn (Villa-Lobos [New York: Omnibus Press, 1989]; Villa-Lobos: The Music: An Analysis of His Style [London: Kayn & Averill, 1991]), Simon Wright (Villa-Lobos [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992]), and Gérard Béhague (Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil's Musical Soul [Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1994]).
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