String Quartet No. 6 (Villa-Lobos)

String Quartet No. 6 ("Brazilian") is one of seventeen works in the genre by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, and was written in 1938. A performance lasts approximately 24 minutes.
History.
Villa-Lobos composed his Sixth Quartet during 1938 in Rio de Janeiro, and it was first performed in the same city by the Quarteto Haydn on 30 November 1943, on the same programme as the premiere of the Seventh Quartet. The published score bears no dedication, but the manuscript is dedicated to the violist Orlando Frederico, who many years earlier had participated in the premieres of both the Second and Third Quartets. Together with the Fifth Quartet, this work is marked by a deliberate move toward a more "popular" style, incorporating elements of Brazilian popular music, and the Sixth is regarded as the most nationalistic of all Villa-Lobos's string quartets. Villa-Lobos originally planned to designate this work as the second "popular quartet" (the Fifth Quartet is subtitled "Quarteto popular no. 1"), but in the end abandoned the idea of such a series. At the same time, it is with this quartet that the references to the quartets of Haydn, which continue throughout the composer's later quartets, become clear for the first time.
Analysis.
This composition, like all of Villa-Lobos's quartets except the first, consists of four movements:
Instead of the usual sonata-allegro form, the first movement presents a sectional structure. Four contrasting sections (with transitions between the first and second, and between the third and fourth) are followed by a recapitulation of the first section, and an extended coda. There is no development section.
The second movement is in a three-part, ABA song form in the character of the Brazilian improvised serenade known as the choro. The A section is homophonic, while the central B section features imitative textures and a xangô-like theme set against a syncopated accompaniment in quadruple time.
The third movement is also in ternary form, but with a variation. The A section falls into two parts, which are reversed in order when A is recapitulated after the central B section. The tonal language and textural features of the outer sections resemble those of the "Bachianas Brasileiras", especially parts of the first movement of "Bachianas" No. 5. The middle section features a fugato on a subject related to the cantilena (xangô) motive from the second movement. This passage is the first occurrence of the atonal, chromatic, legato style found often in Villa-Lobos's subsequent quartets
The finale is similar in structure to the first movement, consisting of three successive, contrasting sections and a recapitulation of the first, concluding with a short coda. Unlike the first movement, however (and unlike all of the composer's earlier quartets), there is a certain thematic kinship amongst the sections, with a recurrence of a falling-third figure and the use of pseudo-Indian motifs influenced by Antonín Dvořák's "American" Quartet
Discography.
Chronological by date of recording.