Graça, Fernando Lopes (1906-94)

JOSÉ CARLOS PICOTO/TERESA CASCUDO Grove 7, 2001

(b Tomar, 17 Dec 1906; d Parede, nr Cascais, 27 Nov 1994). Portuguese composer and musicologist. He studied
in his home town and at the Lisbon Conservatory (1924–31), where he was taught by Adriano Merea and Vianna
da Motta (piano), Tomás Borba (composition) and Branco (musicology). He also attended courses in the arts at
Lisbon University (1928–31) and Coimbra (1932–4). His first works were performed in concerts organized with
fellow students at the conservatory. During this time he also started to work as a writer on music, displaying a rare
literary gift and a broad culture. His years of teaching at the Coimbra Academy of Music (1932–6) were preceded
and followed by periods as a political prisoner, and this prevented him from taking up a teaching post at Lisbon
Conservatory. These years coincided with his first efforts as a composer, which reveal the influence of Schoenberg
and Hindemith. The early vocal works also show a profound understanding of Portuguese prosody, gained through
contacts with contemporary poets, which he cultivated throughout his life.
In 1937 Graça went to Paris, where he studied musicology with Paul-Marie Masson at the Sorbonne. While he was
there he composed the realist ballet La fièvre du temps, commissioned by the Maison de la Culture; he also made
his first harmonizations of Portuguese folksongs. He turned towards an ‘essential nationalism’, characterized by the
treatment of folk material and by the assimilation of its harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements into some of his
own compositions (e.g. the Piano Sonata no.2), in which references to folksongs are combined with the use of
expanded harmony and percussive rhythms alternating with linear polyrhythms. This new tendency reflects the
influence of Bartók, Falla and Koechlin.
Graça returned to Lisbon in 1939 and there took on work as a writer on music, musicologist, teacher, concert
organizer and choirmaster. He taught piano, harmony and counterpoint at the Academia de Amadores de Música,
founded both the Sonata organization (1942–60), dedicated to 20th-century music, the Gazeta musical (1951) and
undertook research into folk music, which he continued to do from the 1960s in collaboration with Michel
Giacometti. He was also involved in the opposition movement working against the Salazar dictatorship and
composed a large repertoire of political songs known as the Canções heróicas. His first major work following his
return to Lisbon was the Piano Concerto no.1, which won the composition prize of the Círculo de Cultura Musical in
1940. He was awarded the same prize in 1942, 1944 and 1952. During these years he composed numerous vocal
works (both choral and for accompanied soloist) based on folksongs, orchestral pieces, piano works and songs
based on texts by Portuguese poets.
A new period begins with three piano works composed in the 1950s (11 Glosas, 24 Preludes and the 5 Nocturnes)
and continues through Canto de amor e de morte (1961) to the Piano Sonata no.5 (1977). During these years he
explored rhythmic and harmonic parameters, the latter based on the use of a reduced number of connections
between intervals, in intensely concentrated structures. This new phase reflects the experimentalism among
composers of the next generation. This is the period of his Concerto da camera, commissioned by Rostropovich,
who gave its première in Moscow, and his String Quartet no.1, which won the Prince Rainier III Prize in 1965. From
the 1970s, with the exception of the Requiem para as vítimas do fascismo em Portugal (1979), which combines all
the most characteristic elements of his style, new works emerge with their own particular hallmarks. During this
period Graça begins to return to neo-classicism combined with the use of instruments or groupings hitherto
unheard in his output … meu país de marinheiros, the Sinfonieta homenagem a Haydn and Geórgicas for oboe,
viola, double-bass and piano exemplify the new styles of this final phase; the third piece is, moreover, a humorous
parody of pastoral topoi.
Graça's work may be described as neo-classical in that a clear and concise structure supports a neo-modal
harmonic language which alternates between an expanded diatonicism and chromatism, using polytonality to
achieve effects that are frequently colouristic. The exploration of rhythm is a hallmark, as is the focus on timbre,
evident in a rich, though academic, orchestral palette and notable above all in his works for piano.
WRITINGS
A caça aos coelhos (Lisbon, 1931); repr. in A caça aos coelhos e outros escritos polémicos (Lisbon, 1976)
Reflexões sobre a música (Lisbon, 1941, 2/1978)
Música e músicos modernos (Oporto, 1943, 2/1986)
A música portuguesa e os seus problemas, i (Oporto, 1944, 2/1989); ii (Coimbra, 1959, 2/1989); iii (Lisbon, 1973)
Talia, Euterpe e Terpsícore (Coimbra, 1945, 2/1990)
A canção popular portuguesa (Lisbon, 1953, 2/1991)
with T. Borba: Dicionário de música (Lisbon, 1956–8)
Musicália (Baia, 1960, 3/1992)
Lieder der Welt: Portugal (Hamburg, 1961)
Nossa companheira música (Lisbon, 1964, 2/1992)
Páginas escolhidas de crítica e estética musical (Lisbon, 1966)
Um artista intervém: cartas com alguma moral (Lisbon, 1974)
Escritos musicológicos (Lisbon, 1977). Opúsculos (Lisbon, 1984–5); iii (Lisbon, 1985)
with M. Giacometti: Cancioneiro popular português (Lisbon, 1981)
BIBLIOGRAPH
M.S. Kastner: Contributión al estudio de la música española y portuguesa (Lisbon, 1941)
J. de Freitas Branco: Alguns aspectos da música portuguesa contemporânea (Lisbon, 1960)
Vértice, nos.444–5 (1981)
M. Vieira de Carvalho: O essencial sobre Lopes-Graça (Lisbon, 1989)
R. Vieira Nery and P. Ferreira de Castro: História da música: sínteses da Cultura Portuguesa (Lisbon, 1991)
Uma homenagem a Lopes-Graça, ed., Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos (Matosinhos, 1995)
Fernando Lopes-Graça, anos 30, ed., Câmara Municipal de Cascais (Cascais, 1996) [exhibition catalogue]
M. Vieira de Carvalho: ‘Catorze anotações em memória de Lopes-Graça’, Boca do Inferno, i (1996), 31–46
T. Cascudo: Casa verdades de Faria–Museu da música Portuguesa: 1: Catálogo da obra musical de Lopes-Graça, i (Cascais, 1997)
T. Cascudo: ‘Seis cartas de Fernando Lopes-Graça: introdução, edição e notas’, Boca do Inferno, ii (1997), 1–15