In the first chapter the importance of Villa-Lobos as a nationalistic composer and an innovative pedagogue is discussed. The second chapter contains a biographical sketch of Heitor Villa-Lobos, a summary of his career as an educator, a discussion of the effect of nationalism and folklore on his compositional style, and an overview of his piano works. Chapter three describes the original vocal anthology Guia pratico, or Practical Guide, and explains the musicological classification charts which accompany each folk tune.

Three succeeding chapters describe the stylistic and pedagogic features of each piece in the Guia pratico for Solo Piano, Albums I, VII, and IX respectively. Stylistic analysis focuses on form, rhythm, harmony, and melody; pedagogic insights pertain to technical and interpretive considerations. The classification chart and lyrics from the vocal anthology have been translated from the Portuguese and are reproduced for each folk tune. Musical and cultural links between folk songs from the vocal anthology and the solo piano arrangements are explored. The level of difficulty of each piece is assessed using the ten categories for leveling of literature contained in Jane Magrath's The Pianist's Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature.

The purpose of this document is to provide stylistic and pedagogic insights into each piece in Albums I, VII, and IX of the Guia pratico for Solo Piano by Heitor Villa-Lobos. This study is intended to acquaint the contemporary teacher with appealing twentieth-century teaching repertoire reflecting the culture of Brazil.

Chapter seven contains a summary, conclusions, and recommendations. A bibliography precedes the appendices. Appendix A lists the eleven albums of the Guia pratico for Solo Piano and gives the publisher and titles in each album. Appendix B lists Villa-Lobos' published piano music with selected publishers and dates of compositions.