Heitor Villa-Lobos is regarded as the most important and internationally most successful composer of Latin America. His comprehensive oeuvre combines traditional Brazilian with European art music in a many-faceted way. Despite all that, it has more or less been ignored in German-language literature until today. This gap is now closed by the present monograph which is at the same time a comprehensive study of cultural trends in Brazil of the first half of the 20th century. For the first time, the national traditions that influenced Villa-Lobos all his life are documented in great detail and related to his compositional oeuvre. A monograph that combines biographical facts with information on the cultural and contemporary history of Villa-Lobos‘ home country in a fascinating way. Manuel Negwer, born in Berlin in 1952, grew up in Argentina, Angola and Italy. He studied musicology and Romance languages and literature in Berlin and Würzburg and got his PhD in 1982. Today he works as a freelancer of SFB, RIAS, Deutsche Welle and the Berlin Festival as well as as a guitarist. From 1985 he was a lecturer at various Goethe Institutes, such as in Brazil and since 2008 has been head of the department ‚Amateur music-making and encouragement of up-and-coming musicians‘. His main focus is on Latin American music and literature.