The Douze Etudes display all of the wealth of polyhedric cultural suggestion of Villa-Lobos, that extends from the music of Bach to the romantic lyricism of Chopin, finally touching on the traditional music of Brazil, present either in its urban form or through its African and Amazonian influences in the last studies. Even though they are often performed separately, these Études were conceived as a unitary body of work, each Étude being closely linked to that preceding and that following, through tonal logic. When it appeared, the collection was immediately hailed as one of the masterpieces of its author and of guitar repertoire of the 20th century. The latter piece was first published in 2006, the same year it received its premiere performance.Published for the first time by Editions Max Eschig in 1953, with a preface by Andrés Segovia to whom the work was dedicated, the composing of the 12 Etudes by Heitor Villa-Lobos had actually commenced in Paris many years previously, probably in 1924, and finished in October 1928. (c) The Valsa-choro which made it to the 1955 publication is not the same piece as the Valse-choro of the 1920s version.(b) Gavota-choro was a completely new addition to the 1948/55 version.It is doubtful whether he actually wrote the final version of the Mazurka-choro in 1908 it seems more likely that he wrote it in the course of his preparations for the 1955 publication of the work. (a) Despite the composer's assertion of differing composition dates for the first two pieces, only the Mazurka-choro actually exists in what appears to be a preliminary version: a differing treatment of very similar material from 1911 called Simples (see W040).
The bulk of the differences between these versions can be summarized as follows: The original version from the 1920s consisted of only four movements, while the 1948 one that was eventually published in 1955 contains the familiar five. The form of this work as it is known today was developed around 1948 when Villa-Lobos decided to return to a project that he had worked on from 1923-28 to compile several pieces he had written earlier into a suite. See below Mazurka-choro - à Maria Tereza Teran