After the lunch, the artists became engrossed in a lively conversation which drifted into a discussion on the art of musical improvisation. Villa-Lobos, who had already composed an extensive repertoire of piano solos, then sat down to Tarsila’s Erard concerto to improvise. Immediately, Jean Cocteau, known for his boutades and his playful behaviour, sat underneath the piano on the ground, “so he could hear better.” At the end of Villa-Lobos’s improvisation, however, Cocteau returned to his chair and launched a ferocious attack on what he had heard: in his opinion, the music presented by the composer was no more than an emulation of the styles of.
