Description
Ernesto Julio de Nazareth was a prominent pianist and composer Rio De Janeiro,
Brazil. He first began piano lessons as a young child with his mother, Carolina da
Cunha, and continued his musical education following her death. By the age of
fourteen, Nazareth has published his first original composition and had begun
regular performances in Brazil. Throughout his life, he was recognized as a
prominent Brazilian educator, composer and performer, presenting many of his
own compositions at performances and recitals.
His output consists of more than two hundred compositions, including nearly
ninety “Brazilian tangos,” as Nazareth referred to them. These works were
primarily Choros and Lundus but Nazareth wanted his work to be labeled like the
highly popular Argentine tangos of the time. His tangos are heavily influenced by
African rhythms and ragtime, as well as European harmonies.
1922 was written in the same year as its title as a culmination of Nazareth’s
carnival tangos of the 1910s. Unlike his other works of that year, focused on a
potential revolution in Brazil, 1922 is more lighthearted. It may have also been
intended to be a vocal work, but Nazareth never sent the music to his lyricist and
the piece was subsequently reclassified as a tango.
