Influence of Brazilian Choro on Selected Solo Bassoon Works of Francisco Mignone and Selected Chamber Works of Heitor Villa-Lobos

Choro is a genre of Brazilian popular music that emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the 1870s as an amalgamation of musical elements and instruments from Brazil, Europe, and Africa. It reached the height of its popularity in the 1920s and remains a fixture of Brazilian culture today. Many twentieth-century Brazilian classical composers incorporated elements of choro into their own works as a symbol of their nationalism. This treatise examines the influence of choro on the selected bassoon works of two such composers, Francisco Mignone (1897-1986) and Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). Although Mignone’s solo works for bassoon and Villa-Lobos’s chamber works including bassoon have been analyzed by Elione Medeiros, José Maria Neves, and others, an in-depth analysis of the choro influence in these pieces had not, until now, been undertaken. This treatise identifies characteristic melodic and rhythmic structures found in choro music as a foundation for the analysis of similar structures found in Mignone’s Concertino for Bassoon and Chamber Orchestra, Valsa-Choro, Apanhei-te Meu Fagotinho, Pattapiada, and Valsa Improvisada, and in Villa-Lobo’s Chôros Nº.7, Quinteto em Forma de Chôros, Noneto, and Bachianas Brasileiras Nº. 6.