"The Little Train of the Caipira" is the subtitle for the Toccata movement that concludes an

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

l suite written by Brazilian composer

Heitor Villa-Lobos Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, cellist, and classical guitarist described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the ...

in 1930, titled '' Bachianas brasileiras No. 2''.

Overview

The Toccata is approximately 4 to 5 minutes long. The subtitle refers to the local trains, drawn by steam locomotives, in the small communities of the Brazilian interior, the noises of which are imitated in the composition . It does not follow a

program Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Progra ...

, but rather suggests the train and its movement through the countryside by all the textural elements of the music—least of all through its classically balanced melodic construction. The concluding chords are particularly interesting for their anticipation of a recurrent sort of atmospheric effect found later in the writing for strings by composers such as

Giacinto Scelsi Giacinto Francesco Maria Scelsi (; 8 January 1905 – 9 August 1988, sometimes cited as 8 August 1988) was an Italian composer who also wrote surrealist poetry in French. He is best known for having composed music based around only one pitch, ...

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...

, and Krzysztof Penderecki .

Composition

In the year of composition, 1930, Villa-Lobos transcribed this movement for cello and piano, titled simply ''O trenzinho do caipira''. This arrangement, which lasts about two minutes in performance, was premiered in São Paulo–Pirajuí in 1930, with Villa-Lobos himself playing the cello and João de Souza Lima the piano. The original, orchestral version was only first performed (in the context of the complete ''Bachianas No. 2'') on 3 September 1934, at the Venice International Festival, with an orchestra conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos . An opposed point of view holds that the orchestral ''Bachianas No. 2'' was put together from preexistent and unrelated pieces, three originally for cello and piano (''O canto do capadócio'', ''O canto da nossa terra'', and ''O trenzinho do caipira''), the other (''Lembrança do sertão'') for solo piano (; ). An unrelated

a cappella ''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Ren ...

chorus composition by Villa-Lobos, ''Trenzinho'', setting a text by Catarina Santoro, was written in 1933, and premiered on 10 October 1939 by the choir of the Escola Argentina (Rio de Janeiro), conducted by the composer. Originally for three-part chorus, it was also adapted for four-part female chorus, in which form it was published in 1951 as number 31 in volume 2 of the composer's collection, ''Canto orfeônico'' .

References

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Little Train of the Caipira, The Compositions by Heitor Villa-Lobos 1930 compositions Works about rail transport