The Villa-Lobos Magazine

Villa-Lobos on the Kindle DX

2009-07-13T15:28:00.002-06:00

It looks like people are using the Kindle DX, Amazon's new 9.7" wireless reading device, to read scores at the piano. There are scores of each of the pieces in the Prole do Bebe series for sale in the Kindle Store, at US$2.36 each. These scores are in the public domain in the U.S., though not in other parts of the world.

There's an interesting blog post about using the Kindle to read scores here; it includes some thoughtful comments.

It's unfortunate that the Kindle isn't yet available in Canada. I'll be one of the first to buy one here once Amazon signs up a Canadian wireless provider. Kindle's ability to load PDF format files and its high resolution greyscale screen makes it a natural for score reading, and in 2010 Villa-Lobos scores go into the public domain.

Kindle + imslp.org = an awesome score-reading platform. (I'm spending too much time tweeting!)

Rio's Theatro Municipal @ 100

2009-07-13T13:40:00.003-06:00

A while ago I posted about the Centennial of the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro. Here is an album on Facebook, with some pictures of the ongoing restauration project, including this cool picture from the very top:

The actual Centennial date is July 14th.

Dancing Bachianas

2009-07-10T19:12:00.005-06:00

The Cisne Negro Cia. de Danca will be presenting Forrolins, choreographed by Dany Bittencourt, in three shows at the Theatro Municipal in Sao Paulo this July. The ballet is based on Bachianas Brasileiras #4. This production was premiered in Ballet Nacional do Chile in 2008; the music was adapted by André Mehmari.

Klang der Welt - Brasilien

2009-07-09T18:55:00.006-06:00

Here's a new addition to the Naxos Music Library: a disc from a label I hadn't heard of before, New Classical Adventure from Germany. The disc is the Brazilian entry in the Klang der Welt series, with instrumentalists from the Deutschen Oper Berlin and soprano Adriane Queiroz.

The disc includes an excellent version of Villa's Quinteto em forma de Choros, a work which has been well-served on CD. More interestingly, it includes a group of chamber works by composers from Villa-Lobos's generation and the generations that followed him.

Two of Villa's contemporaries on the disc are the fairly obscure Luciano Gallet, and Francisco Mignone, who is actually fairly well represented on CD. From the generation following Villa, there are Camargo Guarnieri and Claudio Santoro, two of the best-known composers in Brazil after Villa-Lobos. Finally, a generation or two later, we have Ronaldo Miranda (born in 1948), and João Guilherme Ripper (born in 1959).

Actually, the generation before Villa-Lobos is also represented on this disc. Ronaldo Miranda's work is Variações sérias sobre um tema de Anacleto de Medeiros, from 1991. It makes use of a very well known, and very lovely, melody by the great Choros musician who was born in 1866, and died in 1907. Anacleto was an important influence on Villa-Lobos, so this piece brings us full circle. While listening to this disc, I learned a lot about the context of Villa-Lobos's music and his legacy. This is an enjoyable programme - highly recommended.

Descobrimento do Brasil at MoMA

2009-07-09T09:48:00.003-06:00

Every summer the Museum of Modern Art in New York presents Premiere Brazil, an exhibition of Brazilian film. This year, one of the featured films will be the classic 1937 film by Humberto Mauro O Descobrimento do Brasil, with music by Villa-Lobos. The film will be presented on July 23 at 4:30 p.m.

If you make it to MoMA that day, make sure you stick around for the MoMA Thursday Nights event:

Davi Vieira presents Hip Hop Axé, an Afro-Pop-Brazilian Sound

Robinho Cerqueira, guitar and vocals; Chris Eddleton, drums; Olivier Glissant, keyboard; Zé Grey, bass and vocals; Fabiana Masili, vocals; David Schommer, percussion and vocals; Davi Vieira, percussion and vocals

Another Silvio Barbato Memorial Concert

2009-07-08T08:49:00.004-06:00

Thanks to Marcelo Rodolfo at the Museu Villa-Lobos for this. What a star-studded line-up!

Concert in Memory of Maestro Silvio Barbato

2009-07-07T18:15:00.003-06:00

A special concert in the Brazilian Senate will be held in memory of Silvio Barbato on July 9th in Brasília. Barbato was one of 228 people killed in the crash of Air France Flight 447 last month. The concert will include Bachianas Brasileiras #5, along with the National Anthem and Gounod's Ave Maria. This sad occasion will also be a chance to celebrate the musical legacy of a great conductor.

I'm planning my own private memorial: it's been a while since I watched the DVD of Villa-Lobos: Uma Vida de Paixao, for which Maestro Barbato served as Musical Director. It's a great blessing that, though we've lost a great musician there is some recorded music, and this great film, to remember him by.

Girl in the Clouds

2009-07-07T17:49:00.003-06:00

If I had to choose one Villa-Lobos work to hear it would be this one: A Menina das Nuvens (Girl in the Clouds), the 1958 "Musical Adventure in Three Acts." This piece received high praise from Prof. Tarasti:

"It represents the concentrated late Villa-Lobos, with a harmonically and melodically innocently simple texture extraordinarily well suited to a fairy tale opera meant for children."

This work has never been recorded, and I know of only two performances. One was soon after Villa-Lobos's death, in 1960 in Rio de Janeiro. The other was at the Americas Society in New York in 1989, conducted by Alfred Heller. It's too bad Alfred didn't arrange for a recording of this performance - I wonder if by any chance there might be a bootleg recording out there.

It was great to hear, then (from Prof. Eduardo W. Dias) that a new production is being planned in Belo Horizonte in September 2009. Roberto Duarte will be conducting the Orquestra Sinfônica de Minas Gerais at the Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte. I hope that a recording might follow.

Kerkezos Plays Villa-Lobos

2009-07-07T14:41:00.003-06:00

Theodore Kerkezos plays the second & third movements of the Villa-Lobos Fantasia for Saxophone & Strings with the Iasi Philharmonic in Moldova. Kerkezos recorded one of the best versions of this work on Naxos in 2002.

Gilberto Mendes on Villa the Modernist

2009-07-03T19:57:00.003-06:00

The Brazilian composer Gilberto Mendes is quoted in Neo-Avant-Garde (ed. by David Hopkins), p. 166:

"Villa-Lobos... whose work Mendes likened to that of another typically American composer, Charles Ives, was intent on creating 'sound events', exploring 'the combinatory possibilities of the new sound he was inventing' - where the folkloric element was one among others. And in his best compositions he explored effects, expecially in timbre and instrumentation, that were to become dear to the neue Musik of later decades."

Mendes counted Villa-Lobos among those who,

"...each in his own way, helped to destroy the tonal system and consequently the predominance of melody, giving rise to the music of this second half of the century, made on the basis of noise, electronic sound, microtonal, non-discursive, made up of moments." (p. 177)

There is an interesting generational dynamic between Villa-Lobos and the composers who followed the master, with a natural reaction against Villa's nationalist music of the 1940s in favour of the International Style. It looks like Mendes, who studied with Boulez and Stockhausen, came around in the end, and he adds some lustre to Villa's modernist credentials.

Mendes' best tribute to Villa-Lobos was his piano piece Viva Villa!, which was written in 1987, in celebration of the Villa-Lobos Centennial year. It's included in José Eduardo Martins' disc Music of Tribute v. 1. Those who can read Portuguese should check out the book O antropofagismo na obra pianística de Gilberto Mendes, by Antonio Eduardo Santos. It's available in a Google Books preview; the chapter on Viva Villa! begins on p.108.

The Peacock and the Araponga

2009-07-03T18:40:00.005-06:00

David Hurwitz writes about Sibelius's Swanwhite (1908):

"The opening movement, 'The Peacock,' has castanets imaginatively imitating the bird's clacking beak. Even more interesting is the pedal point on the note E that runs through the entire piece in oboes, clarinets, and harp. Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos coincidentally used exactly the same technique in the second movement of his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 (1936), where the obstinately repeated pitch also represents a stylized birdcall."

from Sibelius Orchestral Works: An Owner's Manual, p. 181. Villa-Lobos's bird is the Araponga, and the repeated note in BB#4 is a beautiful effect in the orchestral adaptation, but especially in the original piano version. The bird-call is is in si bémol: B flat.

George Rochberg & Villa-Lobos

2009-07-01T20:29:00.004-06:00

In his book Five Lines, Four Spaces: The World of My Music, George Rochberg writes about his 1991 work Muse of Fire for flute and guitar:

There is one long, continuous tune in which both join in the traditional pattern of flute carrying the ecstatic melodic release and guitar accompanying with running arpeggiated harmonic figures progressing through tonal motions that verge on a kind of 'south of the border' pop tune. (Inspired perhaps by distant associations with Villa-Lobos's Brasileiras, of which I was once very fond?)

Rochberg wrote this work for guitarist Eliot Fisk and flautist Paulo Robison. Later, Fisk

...had played some solo guitar pieces of Villa-Lobos whose 'impassioned romanticism' gave me the direct impetus to set about writing the Bouquet. (p. 182)

It's interesting that Villa's music had this particular resonance in Rochberg's music. I look forward to hearing these works. The disc Eden: Out of Time includes Muse of Fire played by Fisk and Robison, as well as Fisk's American Bouquet, Tin Pan Alley melodies for solo guitar.

Philippe Bertaud plays Choros #01

2009-07-01T20:07:00.001-06:00

Philippe Bertaud's new instructional video "Philippe Bertaud on the Music of Heitor Villa-Lobos" includes this assured performance of Choros #01.

Academy of Santa Cecilia

2009-07-01T19:29:00.002-06:00

In his new book George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait, Walter Rimler writes about how George Gershwin,

"...along with Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, had been elected to honorary membership in the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome. George was informed of this in a letter dated February 9, 1937, from composer Alfredo Casella who addressed his as 'Dear Master' and asked for a new piece for September's Venice Fifth International Music Festival."

I don't remember hearing about this honour for Villa-Lobos, or a commission for a new work from the Academy. I'll look into the standard references and check this out.

I've often been struck by the similarities between Villa-Lobos and George Gershwin. Both had a special connection to popular music, and both had formative artistic experiences in Paris in the 1920s. Both created a kind of "national style" for their respective countries. But perhaps most importantly, both loved billiards and big cigars.

Intimate Voices

2009-07-01T18:57:00.003-06:00

In November 2009 the University of Rochester Press will publish Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet, Volume 1: Debussy to Villa-Lobos, edited by Evan Jones, ISBN: 9781580462297. The book is in the Eastman Studies in Music series, and will be available at Amazon on November 15. The chapter on Villa-Lobos is written by Prof. Eero Tarasti. It's good to see Villa-Lobos has finally made the A-list in a mainstream classical music text. He's in good company:

Debussy
Ravel
Sibelius
Bartók
Hindemith
Schoenberg
Berg
Webern
Prokofiev

and in the second volume:

Shostakovich
Britten
Ligeti
Berio
Xenakis
Scelsi
Cage
Babbitt
Carter
Mel Powell
Shulamit Ran

An interesting subtext of my Villa-Lobos career (which began with the creation of the Villa-Lobos Website in 1995) has been the slow but steady rise of Villa's reputation. Since then an explosion of recordings and live performances has raised his profile, and the music is speaking for itself.

Concerts in New York

2009-06-28T20:04:00.002-06:00

The new Performance History Search feature at the New York Philharmonic's website is really useful. There were impressive Villa-Lobos concerts in the 1950s especially, that sometimes included works that are rarely programmed today.

A "Villa-Lobos" search returns 36 works, and it's interesting to look at some of the programmes. Here's one from the Subscription Series at Carnegie Hall in March of 1957 (the 28th & 29th) that featured the Schola Cantorum:

Villa-Lobos / Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1
Schmitt / Salammbo, Suite No. 2
Villa-Lobos / Choros No. 6
Intermission /
Guarnieri / Abertura Concertante
Villa-Lobos / Mandu-çarará

I wish we'd see more performances (and recordings) of the cantata Mandu-çarara. This concert was conducted by the composer.

And here's one from the New York World's Fairgrounds on September 1939, conducted by Walter Burle Marx. [pictured above: a photo of the Perisphere by Alfred Eisenstaedt taken at the Fair in July 1939, from the Life Magazine archive © Time Inc.]

Liszt / A Faust Symphony
Intermission /
Mignone / Maracatu de Chico Rei
Villa-Lobos / Caixinha de boas festas (Magic Windows)
Villa-Lobos / Choros No. 10 (Rasga o Coracao)

Happy Father's Day, Epaminandos Villalba

2009-06-27T22:03:00.004-06:00

I've always had a soft spot for Heitor's father Raúl Villa-Lobos, partly because he was a librarian, and partly because he introduced his son to music before his untimely death in 1897, when Heitor was a teenager. I came across this work by the elder Villa-Lobos, a scholar who worked at the National Library in Rio de Janeiro: it's a naval history called "A Revolta da Armada da 6 de septembro 1893".

You can see the work scanned by Google from a book in the Harvard Library, thanks to the archive.org website.

You'll notice that Raúl's book is published under the name "Epaminandos Villalba." Heitor Villa-Lobos paid tribute to his father throughout his life by using the pseudonym "Epaminandos Villalba Filho" (filho being the Portuguese version of Jr.) The early piano piece Tristorosa, written in 1910, was published under that name. Later, Heitor used the pseudonym for the texts of a number of works he published in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

This post is a little late; Father's Day has passed, but I liked the title.

Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão

2009-06-26T18:53:00.004-06:00

The 40 edition of the Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão runs from July 5 to July 26th. In honour of the Ano Villa-Lobos, there are many Villa-Lobos works featured this year. The other focus of this year's event is French music, as the Ano da Franca no Brasil is celebrated.

Here are some highlights:

July 5: Orquestra Sinfônica Jovem do Estado. Três Cirandas, orchestrated by Nelson Ayres
July 5: Coro de Câmara da Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Ave Maria, and Cor dulcis, cor amabilis
July 7: Camerata Fukada. Bachianas Brasileiras #9
July 8: Orquestra Sinfônica de Ribeirão Preto. Bachianas Brasileiras #9
July 10: Chamber Music Concert. String Quartet #1
July 11: Banda Sinfônica do Estado. BB#7 and the Choro movement from the Fantasia em três Movimentos
July 12: Chamber Music Concert. Choros #4 and BB#1
July 13: Grupo de Câmara do Festival. Choros #7
July 15: Chamber Music Concert. Quatuor, Sexteto Mistico, Ciranda das sete notas
July 17: Nelson Freire. BB#4 and A Lenda do Caboclo
July 18: Grupo de Metais do Festival. BB#5
July 18: Orquestra Sinfônica de Santos. BB#2 and BB#7
July 20: Chamber Music Concert. Fantasia concertante for clarinet, bassoon, and piano
July 22: Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal + Fabio Zanon. Guitar concerto
July 23: Cristina Ortiz. A Prole do Bebê nº 1, Alma Brasileira, Valsa da Dor, Festa no Sertão
July 24: Quinteto Villa-Lobos. Quinteto em Forma de Choros, Choros nº 2, BB#5, BB#2, O Trenzinho do Caipira
July 25: Orquestra de Metais Lyra Tatuí. A Lenda do Caboclo
July 25: Fabio Zanon. Choros #01, Preludes, Etudes

Villa-Lobos on Cultura FM: July 2009

2009-06-26T17:55:00.007-06:00

Here are Villa-Lobos performances upcoming on Cultura FM from Sao Paulo. Listen here on the Internet. Times are local Sao Paulo times, one hour ahead of EST.

Beginning this month, and continuing to the end of the year, Cultura FM will be presenting Turibio Santos in a regular series on Sundays at 11:00 a.m., entitled "O Brasil de Villa-Lobos". The programme on July 26 includes music from the CD "O Raro Villa-Lobos", with the late conductor Silvio Barbato.

Another highlight this month: a concert by Nelson Freire at the 40º Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão (recorded on July 17, and presented on Cultura FM on July 23).

July 2:
20:00 VOZES - canto coral com Naomi Munakata:
Francisco MIGNONE / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS. Coro e Orquestra do Estado de São Paulo. Reg. Naomi Munakata e John Neschiling.

July 4:
10:00 CIRANDA - Academia Brasileira de Música:
Hermeto PASCOAL - Bebê. Camerata Brasílica / Suite Norte-Sul-Leste-Oeste. Quinteto Villa Lobos. / Egberto GISMONTI - Um anjo. Quaternaglia. / Sérgio ASSAD - Uarekena. Quaternaglia. / VILLA LOBOS - New York Skyline./ A lenda do caboclo. Arthur Moreira Lima (piano) / VILLA-LOBOS - Dança dos mosquitos. Orquestra Sinfônica da Rádio Eslovaca. Reg.: Roberto Duarte.

July 7:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
Radamés GNATTALI - Suite brasiliana n° 4. Miguel Proença (piano). / VILLA-LOBOS - Concerto para violão e pequena orquestra. Narciso Yepes (violão). Orquestra Sinfônica de Londres. Reg.: Garcia Navarro. / Johannes BRAHMS - Quarteto para cordas Op. 51 n° 1. Quarteto Belcea.

July 12:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS com Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial:
Doze Estudos para Violão Pedro Pedrassoli (violão) / Suíte Popular Brasileira. Fabio Zanon (violão)

July 19:
11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS com Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial:
Choros nº 10 (Rasga Coração) / Momoprecoce / Danças Africanas e O Trenzinho do Caipira (sexteto). Orquestra da Radiodifusão Francesa. Reg. Villa-Lobos. Magdalena Tagliaferro (piano)

July 23:
21:00 SALA DE CONCERTO ESPECIAL - 40º Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão:
RECITAL NELSON FREIRE: Robert SCHUMANN - Papillons, Op. 2. / Johannes BRAHMS - Sonata em fá sustenido menor, Op. 2. / Frédéric CHOPIN - Noturno em Sol maior, Op.37 n° 2. Noturno em dó menor, Op. 48 n° 1. Scherzo n°4 em Mí maior, Op. 54. / Claude DEBUSSY - Prelúdio n° 4 - Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir. Prelúdio n° 5 - Les Collines d'Anacapri. Prelúdio n° 8 - La fille aux cheveux de lin. Prelúdio n° 12 - Ministrels. / Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Prelúdio das Bachianas brasileiras n° 4. A Lenda do Caboclo. Gravação realizada em 17 de julho no Auditório Cláudio Santoro.

July 24:
12:00 CONCERTOS DO MEIO-DIA com o Maestro Walter Lourenção:
Chôros n° 9, de Villa-Lobos, com Kenneth Schermerhorn e a Orquestra Filarmônica de Hong Kong.

July 26:
10:00 ENCONTRO COM O MAESTRO com João Mauricio Galindo:
Villa-Lobos em Paris

11:00 O BRASIL DE VILLA-LOBOS com Turíbio Santos - Edição Especial:
Sinfonieta nº 2 / Primeira Suíte para Orquestra de Câmara / Naufrágio de Kleônicos. Orquestra do Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro. Reg. Silvio Barbato

22:00 KALEIDOSCÓPIO com Almeida Prado:
Heitor VILLA-LOBOS - Choros nº 12 / Eric Satie - Trendement / Poudre d'or /Lê Piccadilly e Je te Veux. Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo. Reg. John Neschling / Jean-Pierre Armengand (piano)

July 27:
13:00 DELICATESSEN com Teresa Lima:
27-VILLA-LOBOS - Sonata n° 2 para violoncelo e piano. Marcio Carneiro (violoncelo). Werner Genuit (piano). / SAINT-SAËNS - Suíte para violoncelo e piano Op. 16. Christoph Henkel (violoncelo). Huseyin Sermet (piano).

20:00 ENCONTRO COM O MAESTRO com João Maurício Galindo:
Villa-Lobos em Paris

Fairfax Symphony plays BB#2

2009-06-25T20:23:00.003-06:00

The Fairfax Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marcelo Lehninger played the Little Train of the Caipira movement from Bachianas Brasileiras #2 at a concert at George Mason University last October. You can listen to the piece, along with music by de Falla and Rimsky-Korsakov, at Instant Encore.

There's lots of other excellent Villa-Lobos available at Instant Encore:

BB#5 with Hyunah Yu at a Chamber Music Northwest performance from August 2008;
Assobio a Jato with Art of Élan from April 2009; and with Gili Schwartzman, Gili, flute, and Gilad Kaplansky, cello, at the Jerusalem Music Center in December 2007;
Celin Romero playing a couple of Preludes, from the Romeros 50 Anniversary concert last April; and Pepe Romero playing all five Preludes;
Distribuiçao de flores, with Eugenia Zukerman, flute, and David Starobin, guitar, at Music Mountain in August 2007; and
Plus music for guitar by David Leisner, and for flute and guitar by Gary Schocker and Jason Vieaux.

This is only a portion of the many resources available at the Heitor Villa-Lobos page at Instant Encore: it's highly recommended.

Marsalis Brasilianos in Lisbon

2009-06-25T20:01:00.004-06:00

Branford Marsalis (who's in Alberta this weekend - in Calgary tomorrow and Edmonton on Sunday - my birthday, hint, hint) is reprising his very successful 2008 Marsalis Brasilianos tour in Europe. He's in Lisbon on July 16th, performing with the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa. I'm assuming the program will include the Fantasia for Saxophone and Orchestra, which Marsalis has pretty much made his own after 27 performances during his US tour.

Villa the Conductor

2009-06-23T21:57:00.002-06:00

In his review of the monster (22 CD) Composers in Person set from EMI, "Composers at the wheel", Scott Foglesong gets a chance to critique various composers as performers/conductors. He's pretty positive about Villa-Lobos:

"There are those composers who have played and/or conducted their own music but were really better served by others: Aaron Copland comes to mind in that respect, Paul Hindemith ditto. Heitor Villa-Lobos, on the other hand, did at least as well as anyone else and considerably better than most."

Though many have slammed Villa's conducting, Foglesong is in line with some pretty perceptive critics from the past:

Virgil Thompson:
“The composer conducted one through both pieces with courtesy, making everything clear and keeping us interested at every moment.”

Wesley Wehr:
"Mr. Villa-Lobos was a good conductor, especially of his own music. He could conduct with a glance."

Paul Bowles:
"In his conducting he bounced along with the beat animatedly and managed to keep the sometimes complicated rhythms clear of each other…. The further afield he goes, the more likely he is to bring back discoveries of true charm and value."

Villa-Lobos Children's Book

2009-06-23T21:44:00.002-06:00

Portions of this children's book by S Santa Nereide Santa Rosa, and Angelo Bonito are available in Google Book Search. Unfortunately, the cover scan didn't work out. Here it is, from the Sebo do Messias bookstore in Brazil:

Arranging Bachianas Brasileiras #5

2009-06-22T20:21:00.004-06:00

A recent post at Albert Combrink's Blog discusses the complicated and interesting matter of arranging Bachianas Brasileiras #5 for voice and piano. The sound that 8 cellos make is not easily reproduced by the piano. The solution of Combrink and Louise Howlett using the guitar-and-voice versions by Villa-Lobos and Segovia as transitions is clever. We'll have a chance to hear it in an upcoming CD, and hopefully it will be published for other musicians to perform.

I agree with Combrink that Villa-Lobos would have approved of an arrangement like this. The whole series of Bachianas Brasileiras includes many different versions by Villa-Lobos (#4 for piano & for orchestra; #2 for cello/piano & for orchestra; #9 for strings & for choir, among others). Villa-Lobos's music came from various traditions that relied on practical arrangements (piano trio and piano-4-hands versions of opera arias from Europe, for example), and on-the-fly improvisations (with the Choroes serenaders as well as the cinema orchestras that Villa played in). I look forward to hearing Howlett & Combrink's BB#5.

Combrink has a couple of other BB#5 posts, including this report on recordings and arrangements. I look forward to following up on some versions I hadn't heard myself. I'm also impressed that Combrink thinks so highly of Wayne Shorter's version, which is my favourite jazz version of Villa-Lobos.

Brazilian Composers at Google Squared

2009-06-22T09:15:00.003-06:00

From Google Labs comes Google Squared. Right out of the box, it provides this nifty table of Brazilian composers. Try your own squares at http://www.google.com/squared.