Symphony No. 6 (Villa-Lobos)

The symphony consists of four movements:

The main theme of the symphony was devised by projecting the outline of mountains at Belo Horizonte, Brazil, onto graph paper and transcribing the result as a melody. Villa-Lobos called this technique milimetrazação (graphing), sometimes rendered in English as "millimetrization".^[3] or "milmeterization".^[4] A harmonized version of this melody for piano, together with a similar treatment titled New York Skyline, was initially published in the October 1942 issue of New Music, devoted to works by Brazilian composers.^[5]

The first movement is in a slightly unconventional sonata-allegro form which, according to the composer's usual methods, omits the second theme from the recapitulation. The overall tonal centre is on C, with secondary key areas on D and G.^[6]

In the second movement, Villa-Lobos utilizes a technique of drawing attention to a pitch through its exclusion, in an arguably atonal passage in b. 33–47 where a clarinet solo weaves a long melody repeatedly using eleven chromatic notes, with the omission of the note G. This pitch is then introduced emphatically in the viola entrance at b. 47.^[7]

• Demarquez, Suzanne. 1929. "Villa-Lobos". Revue Musicale 10, no. 10 (November): 1–22.
• Enyart, John William. 1984. "The Symphonies of Heitor Villa-Lobos". PhD diss. Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati.
• Salles, Paulo de Tarso. 2009. Villa-Lobos: processos composicionais. Campinas, SP: Editora da Unicamp. ISBN 978-85-268-0853-9.
• Slonimsky, Nicolas. 1945. Music in Latin America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell.
• Villa-Lobos, sua obra. 2009. Version 1.0. MinC / IBRAM, and the Museu Villa-Lobos. Based on the third edition, 1989.

• Béhague, Gerard. 1994. Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil's Musical Soul. Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1994. ISBN 0-292-70823-8.
• Paz, Ermelinda A. 1988. Heitor Villa-Lobos, o educador. Prêmio Grandes Educadores Brasileiros. Monografias Premiadas, 1988, Segunda Parte. Brasília: Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais. (Archive from 5 August 2016, accessed 14 February 2018.)