Fernando Lopes-GraçaGOSEGCIH (17 December 1906 – 27 November 1994) was a
Portuguese composer, conductor and
musicologist.
Lopes-Graça was born in
Tomar, and was influenced by Portuguese popular music, which he also studied, continuing the work of the composer and musicologist
Francisco de Lacerda.
He was a member of the
Portuguese Communist Party and strenuously opposed the Estado Novo and its leader
António de Oliveira Salazar.
He completed the Dicionário de Música (Dictionary of Music), started by his teacher,
Tomás Borba, himself a composer. He died in
Parede, near
Cascais.
Chronology
1906: 17 December: birth in
Tomar (where he would start his piano studies).
1924: becomes a student at the Conservatório Nacional de Lisboa.
1927: becomes a student of
Vianna da Motta's Classe de Virtuosidade.
1931: obtains the Composition Degree. In the same year he is arrested and expelled to
Alpiarça.
1934: wins a scholarship to study in
France, which he is later denied for political reasons.
1937: goes to
Paris, where he studies with composition and orchestration with
Charles Koechlin.
1938: The "Maison de la Culture de Paris" commissions «La fiévre du temps» (ballet-revue). Harmonisation of traditional Portuguese songs.
1940: Wins the composition prize from
Círculo de Cultura Musical with his 1st Concert for Piano and Orchestra.
1942: wins a prize from Círculo de Cultura Musical for «História Trágico-Marítima» (
Miguel Torga poem).
1944: wins, for the 3rd time, the Composition Prize from Círculo de Cultura Musical for «Sinfonia».
1949: integrates the jury of the International Béla Bartók Festival in
Budapest.
1952: wins another composition prize from Círculo de Cultura Musical for his 3rd Piano Sonata, dedicated to the Franco-Swiss pianist
Hélène Boschi, who premieres the sonata in Paris in 1954.
1979: composes the «Requiem pelas vítimas do fascismo em Portugal» (Requiem for the Victims of Fascism in Portugal) for large orchestra, soloists, and choir.
1981: receives invitation from the Hungarian government for the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of
Béla Bartók's birth.
1993: publication of his complete piano sonatas and sonatinas (
Matosinhos). Tribute for his 87th birthday.
1994: dies, at home, in the evening of 27 November.
Mário Vieira de Carvalho (2012), « Politics of Identity and Counter-Hegemony: Lopes-Graça and the Concept of 'National Music'», in: Music and Politics[1]
Mário Vieira de Carvalho (2011), «Between Political Engagement and Aesthetic Autonomy: Fernando Lopes-Graça's Dialectical Approach to Music and Politics», in: Twentieth-Century Music[2]