Study of musical gesture in Villa-Lobos’ String Quartet No. 1

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze aspects of musical gesture in Villa-Lobos’ String quartet n.º 1. This quartet has the characteristic of a suite, in which Villa-Lobos indicates suggestive titles, in addition to the tempo indications, each one of its six movements. The main theoretical reference used was extracted from the book Interpreting musical gestures, topics and tropes by Robert Hatten (2004). Concepts such as spontaneous, thematic, dialogic, rhythmic gestures are used from examples extracted from various movements of the quartet in focus.