Sons de Carilhoes
Joao Pernambuco
Sons de Carilhoes is a delightful piece of music by the Brasilian Joao Pernambuco, also known as Joao Teixeira Guimaraes (1883 - 1947).
At a young age he learnt to play the viola caipira, a small steel string guitar, the Brasilian national instrument and he got in touch with the music from the street.
After his parents died, he landed in Recife as an orphan. Here he made a living with various jobs like a blacksmith’s.
In Rio de Janeiro he became well known with compositions of national musical forms like Jongos, Valses, Toadas, and Cancoes. Because he was illiterate, he had to trust that his partners scored and published his music under his name. Unfortunately many broke this trust and quite a few top hits were published under other names, so Pernambuco did not see a penny from it.
Heitor Villa Lobos helped him a bit, scoring and publishing a number of Pernambuco’s songs under the name of the composer.
Sons de Carilhoes is a Maxixe, one of the many Brasilian dance forms, it resembles a tango.
The title translates as ‘sound of bells’. Well, these bells were not quite clear to me in the piece, until my teacher got the idea to play the scales in measures 22 and 23 as flageolets. There were the bells!
Sons de Carilhoes is a charming and joyful piece which requires to tune the 6th string to D. The piece is not very difficult, except for the scale passages which need careful attention.