Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo*

Teresa Cascudo
La Rioja (España)

T he Estado Novo (‘New State’, also known as the Second Republic; EN) was
defined by a series of elements that have been evaluated using different criteria
and subjected to much debate1. Undoubtedly a passionate chapter in political
history, this period has not been researched to the same level in music history, yet, as will
be shown in the present article, it is possible to establish links between politics and music
by transferring the ideological concepts that articulated the regime to the artistic field. It

*
. This article takes part in the research project ‘Fernando Lopes-Graça, um século de música portuguesa,
1906-2006’ (POCI/EAT/61157/2004), settled at the Centro de Estudios Interdisciplinares do Século XX
(Universidade de Coimbra) and sponsored by the Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal). The
translation, due to Yolanda Acker, was supported by the Research Group ‘Music and Ideology’ (Universidad
de La Rioja, Spain).
1
. One of the most useful summaries of interpretations of Portuguese contemporary political history
is Baiôa, Manuel - Fernandes, Paulo Jorge - Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. ‘The Political History of
Twentieth Century Portugal’, in: E-Journal of Portuguese History, vol. 1/2 (2003), <http://www.brown.
edu/Departments/Portuguese_Brazilian_Studies/ejph/html/issue2/html/baioa_main.html>. In regard to
the debate about the definition of Salazarism as a form of fascism, see Martins, Hermínio. ‘Portugal’, in:
European Fascism, edited by Stuart Woolf, London-New York, Weidenfeld and Nicolson-Random House,
1968 (Reading University studies on contemporary Europe: Studies in fascism, 1), pp. 302-336; Cabral,
Manuel Villaverde. ‘O Fascismo português em perspectiva comparada’, in O Fascismo em Portugal: actas do coló
quio realizado na Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa em março de 1980, Lisbon, A Regra do Jogo, 1982 (Biblioteca de
história, 12), pp. 19-30; Pinto, António Costa. O salazarismo e o fascismo europeu: problemas de interpretação nas
ciências sociais, Lisbon, Estampa, 1992 (Imprensa universitária, 92); Torgal, Luís Reis. ‘Salazarismo, fascismo
e Europa’, in: Vértice, lii (January-February 1993), pp. 41-52; Rebelo, José. Formas de legitimação do poder
no salazarismo, Lisboa, Livros e Leituras, 1998; Lucena, Manuel de. ‘Interpretações do salazarismo: notas
de leitura crítica’, in: Análise Social, lxxxiii (1984), pp. 423-451; Id. ‘Notas para uma teoria dos regimes
fascistas’, in: Análise Social, cxxv-cxxvi (1994), pp. 9-32. For a historical introduction to the period, see
Portugal e o Estado Novo (1930-1960), edited by Fernando Rosas, Lisbon, Editorial Presença, 1992 (Nova história
de Portugal, directed by Joel Serrão e António Henrique de Oliveira Marques, 12); Ferreira, José Medeiros.
Portugal em transe, Lisbon, Estampa, 1994 (História de Portugal, directed by José Mattoso, 8) and Torgal, Luís
Reis - Mendes, J. M. Amado - Catroga, Fernando. A história da história em Portugal. Séculos XIX-XX, 2 vols.,
Lisbon, Temas e Debates, 1998.
 Teresa Cascudo

would be naive to play down the effects of the social control the EN exerted over the
population using propaganda, censorship and the submission required from public servants,
instruments which were used, together with political police, from the beginnings of
the regime2. In Portugal, critical elements were constitutionally absent from a wider
narrative, in which the radical distinction between the elite and the common people,
and nationalism, fostering the image of the consoling idea of tradition, were markedly
present3. On the one hand, State mechanisms replaced part of the network of bourgeois
art-music practices, which although clearly weaker when compared to those existing
in other Western countries, organised Portuguese musical life until World War ii,
conserving its clear minority component and the self-affirmation of the upper classes. On
the other, the omnipresence of the ideology of nationalism, as an essentialist, mythical
and totalising concept, determined the content of numerous musical manifestations,
even justifying their own existence. Portuguese composers also took part in the process
of reconstruction of the ‘reportuguesed Portugality’ António de Oliveira de Salazar made
explicit in his speeches4. His calls to stimulate the discovery of the internal forces of the
nation, ignoring, if not rejecting and condemning external influences, were aimed at
the creation of a ‘depoliticised’ Portuguese reality, in which the Nation was identified
with the State. «Everything for the Nation, nothing against the Nation», as Salazar put
it, taking Benito Mussolini’s maxim «Everything for the State, nothing outside the State,
nothing against the State» to his ideological terrain.

2
. See Ribeiro, Maria da Conceição Nunes de Oliveira. A polícia política no Estado Novo, 1926-1945,
Lisbon, Estampa, 1995 (História de Portugal, directed by José Mattoso, 17); Pimentel, Irene Flunser. A história
da PIDE, Lisbon, Círculo de Leitores, 2007; Paulo, Heloísa. Estado Novo e propaganda em Portugal e no Brasil.
O SPN/SNI e o DIP, Coimbra, Livraria Minerva, 1994 (Minerva-História, 11); Franco, Graça. A censura à
imprensa (1820-1974), Lisbon, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1993 (Symbolon) and Azevedo, Cândido
de. A censura de Salazar e Marcelo Caetano: imprensa, teatro, televisão, radiodifusão, livro, Lisbon, Caminho, 1999
(Nosso mundo).
3
. See Paulo, Heloísa. ‘«Vida e Arte do Povo Português». Uma visão da sociedade segundo a propa-
ganda do Estado Novo’, in: Revista de história das ideias, xvi (1994), pp. 105-134; Melo, Daniel. Salazarismo
e cultura popular (1933-1958), Lisbon, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, 2001 (Estudos
e investigações, 22) and Vozes do povo: a folclorização em Portugal, edited by Salwa El-Shawan Castelo Branco
and Jorge Freitas Branco, Oeiras, Celta Editora, 2003.
4
. The notion of ‘reaportuguesamiento’ dates from the late-nineteenth century, see Ramos, Rui. A
segunda fundação (1890-1926), Lisbon, Estampa, 1994 (História de Portugal, directed by José Mattoso, 6). See
also Pinto, António Costa. ‘Nacionalismo’, in: Dicionário de história de Portugal, directed by Joel Serrão, new
edition, Porto, Livraria Figueirinhas, 1985-2000, vol. viii: Suplemento F/O, edited by António Barreto e
Maria Filomena Mónica, 2000, pp. 589-593. Two excellent references explaining Salazar’s political thought
are Mesquita, António Pedro. ‘Perfil doutrinário do regime salazarista. Estudo sobre os princípios teóricos
do pensamento político de Salazar’, in: Id. Liberalismo, democracia e o contrário. Um século de pensamento político
em Portugal (1820-1930), Lisbon, Edições Silabo, 2006 (Colecção Sophia), pp. 89-123 and Salazar: pensamento
e doutrina política. Textos antológicos, edited by Mendo Castro Henriques and Gonçalo Sampaio E. Mello,
Lisbon, Verbo Editora, 1989.

2
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

In spite of the importance of these ideological and political issues, certain

precautionary measures must be taken in order to reduce the danger of analysing the art music
composed during the EN using aprioristic frames that may easily overlook the contingencies
characterising the (at least, at the time) uncontrollable reality. From the perspective adopted
immediately after the 1974 Revolution, which eventually led to a democratic regime, clearly
legitimised by its rejection of the EN, the musicians, and particularly the composers active
during the previous regime were divided into three groups defined by their stance in regard
to Salazar’s regime: ‘collaborators’, ‘opposers’ and the ‘alienated’5. A closer examination,
however, will inevitably reveal aesthetic ruptures, concerns and approaches present in the
work of composers without being directly connected to this view.
The compositional problems facing these artists can only be suitably formulated
after studying the works composed during this period, a task that has only been partially
completed6. Thus, the problem derived from conciliating an empirical approach with
composition during the Estado Novo and the identification of classifications embodied in a
global perception of the period is difficult to resolve, given the incipient state of Portuguese
musicology, particularly in relation to the twentieth century. Despite this limitation, the
present article proposes a global interpretation of the period, putting the impact of the
ideology of nationalism on Portuguese music composition into perspective. My initial
hypothesis is that this ideology provided a narrative fundament and a social functionality
that were keenly adopted in a very significant number of works. This article also provides
the reader with an overview of the most important musical institutions and organizations
involved in Portuguese musical life. The inclusion of biographical information about the
composers has been omitted when this is not directly related to the main line of argument,
as, although sometimes fragmentary, this type of information is more readily available.
The only exception is my approach to the composers that came on the scene during the
1960s, in the degree to which their respective biographies serve in the understanding of the
process of rupture they decided to pursue.

5
. Mots current histories of Portuguese music adopt this approach. See Nery, Rui Vieira - Castro,
Paulo Ferreira de. História da música, Lisbon, Comissariado para Europália 91-Imprensa Nacional-Casa da
Moeda, 1991 (Sínteses da Cultura Portuguesa) and Brito, Manuel Carlos de - Cymbron, Luísa. História da
música portuguesa, Lisbon, Universidade Aberta, 1992 (Textos de base, 47).
6
. Among the most comprehensible approaches to Portuguese composers are Azevedo, Sérgio. A inven-
ção dos sons, Lisbon, Caminho, 1998 (Caminho da música) and Dez compositores portugueses: percursos da escrita
musical no século XX, edited by Manuel Pedro Ferreira, Lisbon, Dom Quixote, 2007 (Arte e sociedade). See
also Moody, Ivan. ‘Mensagens: Portuguese Music in the 20th Century’, in: Tempo, cxcviii (1996), pp. 2-10.
The online Portuguese Music Information Centre (<http://www.mic.pt>) provides exhaustive information
about Portuguese composers working during the EN, including reference works and bibliography. For a
general overview of the main institutions, organizations and composers, see also Enciclopédia da música em
Portugal no século XX, directed by Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, 4 vols., Lisbon, Círculo de Lectores/
Diário de Notícias, forthcoming.

3
 Teresa Cascudo

Institutions and Organizations

The transformation of nineteenth-century musical practices in Portugal after the

end of the monarchy have yet to be reconstructed in a detailed manner7. However, the
EN coincided with a period of significant modifications in the musical institutions and
organizations active in the country at the beginning of the twentieth century, coinciding
with the First Republic (established after the Revolution of 1910) and the military
dictatorship in place from 1926 to 1933. Some of these modifications were directly imposed
by the structural reforms carried out by the regime. After working as Minister of Finance
in 1926 and 1928, Salazar was named Prime Minister in 1932. Two years earlier, he had
founded the União Nacional party, whose objective was to destroy all the other political
parties. In Salazar’s opinion, these parties were the main cause of the critical situation
Portugal had reached during the First Republic. The party’s name says it all in regard to
the role assigned to nationalism, supposedly uniting the Portuguese people. In 1933, the
year in which the Constitution of the EN was proclaimed, Salazar’s party was the only
legal political party to exist. It was not until the legislative elections of 1945 and in the 1949
presidential elections that he came up against some opposition, the so-called Movimento
de Unidade Democrática (MUD), which tried to present alternative candidates8. Once the
constitution was passed in 1933, the Estatuto Nacional do Trabalho abolished the unions.
The professional class of musicians was organised vertically in the form of a National
Syndicate. Thus it directly formed part of the structure of the State itself, as did the rest
of the compulsory unionised professiond. The creation, also in 1933, of the Polícia de
Vigilância e Defesa do Estado (PVDE) and the introduction of censorship, represented the
main tools of social control dependant upon the EN.
That same year, they were joined by the Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN,
which became the Secretariado Nacional de Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo, SNI,
in 1944)9. The first experimental broadcasts by the Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão

7
. See Silva, Manuel Deniz. ‘La musique a besoin d’une dictature’: Musique et politique dans les premières
années de l’Etat Nouveau (1926-1945), unpublished Ph.D. Diss., Paris, Université de Paris 8, 2005. See also
Nery, Rui Vieira. ‘Política cultural’, Silva, Manuel Deniz. ‘Círculo de Cultura Musical’, and Alves, Vera
Marques. ‘Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional/Secretariado Nacional de Informação’, in: Enciclopédia da
música em Portugal no século XX, op. cit. (see note 6). I would like to thank Prof. El-Shawan Castelo-Branco for
allowing me to consult these articles prior to their publication and Hugo Silva for his kind assistance at the
Instituto Nacional de Etnomusicologia, the institution responsible for the publication.
8
. For a history of the movement, see Silva, Maria Isabel Mercês de Melo de Alarcão e. O Movimento de
Unidade Democrática e o EN: 1945-1948, unpublished MA Thesis, Lisbon, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1994.
The composer Fernando Lopes-Graça took part in the MUD. He conducted its youth choir and wrote some
of the songs associated with the movement.
9
. The SPN/SNI has been studied by Ó, Jorge Ramos do. Os Anos de Ferro: o dispositivo cultural durante
a ‘Política do Espírito’, 1933-1949, Lisbon, Editorial Estampa, 1999 (Histórias de Portugal, 45). For a general

4
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

(ENR), which was officially inaugurated in August 1935, also took place during this
period10. These two institutions closely conditioned each other, to the extent that the
former produced a large part of the programs and events that the latter transformed into
information. The SPN directly depended on the President of the Cabinet Ministers, or in
other words, Salazar, and it was directed by António Ferro until 1941. A former modernist,
Ferro feverishly embraced Salazar’s cause and played an important role in the process of
establishing the cultural policy of the EN, which, despite not having contemplated any
specific program in the realm of music, unceasingly orientating its practices and, even,
determined creative activity during this period11. Ferro fed the image of Salazar as the
proverbial saviour of the homeland, and his work as responsible for the SPN/SNI also
helped to create the image of the homeland itself, now identified with that of the State.
Effectively, the SPN/SNI took on the mission of publicizing the regime’s activities, while
disseminating and imposing its ideological principles, and disguising moral values as a
movement of spiritualisation of life. Although its activity was more evident in the visual
arts and cinema, the SPN/SNI also included music in its plan of action.
The SPN/SPI’s most important regulatory acts in the ENR were the foundation
of the Orquestra Sinfónica (OSEN, created in 1934 and presented in public in 1935), the
Departamento de Programas Musicales (1938) and the Gabinete de Estudios Musicales
(1942), as part of the ENR, the reopening of the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (TNSC,
1940) and the creation of the Verde-Gaio ballet company (1940), consequently bringing
musicians in line with the principles of António Ferro’s ‘policy of the spirit’. The OSEN
played a role in the consolidation of a kind of musical consumption of ‘high culture’,
which, hitherto, in the realm of instrumental music, was built on fairly precarious bases in
Portugal12. Its first and only conductor-in-chief during the EN was Pedro de Freitas Branco.
Hailing from a patrician family, the brother of the composer Luis de Freitas Branco and
with a career outside Portugal (for example, he conducted the first recording of the Maurice
Ravel’s Concerto in G), he designed the programming of the OSEN in accordance with
international models. This was particularly evident in the regular collaboration of renowned
conductors and soloists (Weingartner, Gui, Sargent, Klemperer and Kubelik among the

overview, see the same author’s, ‘Salazarismo e Cultura’, in: Portugal e o Estado Novo (1930-1960), op. cit. (see
note 1), pp. 391-454.
10
. See Ribeiro, Nelson. A Emissora Nacional nos primeiros anos do Estado Novo, 1933-1945, Lisbon,
Quimera Editores, 2005 (Comunicação).
11
. In regard to António Ferro, see Rodrigues, António. António Ferro na idade do jazz-band, Lisbon,
Livros Horizonte, 1995 (Colecção Estudos de arte, 12); Leal, Ernesto Castro. António Ferro: espaço político e
imaginário social: 1918-1932, Lisbon, Cosmos, 1994 (Colecção de história moderna e contemporânea, 3); and
Guerra, Cidalisa Maria Ludovico. Do fervor modernista ao desencanto do regime instituído: António Ferro (1895-
1956) ou retrato de uma personalidade em luta, unpublished MA Thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2002.
12
. See Fernandes, Cristina. ‘Orquestras’, in: Enciclopédia da música em Portugal no século XX, op. cit. (see
note 6).

5
 Teresa Cascudo

former, as well as composers such as Hindemith, Stravinsky and Copland). Its role was thus
comparable to that of the TNSC, which became a venue exclusively reserved for the elite
and which, from an artistic point of view, indirectly benefited from the disastrous situation
his European counterparts found themselves in during the years immediately following
World War ii13. The Gabinete de Estudos Musicais plotted four main lines of action:
the recollection and subsequent harmonization of traditional music with the objective
of creating a Portuguese Lied (as the Portuguese song was usually called at the time);
the cataloguing of works by Portuguese composers; making popular light music more
‘Portuguese’; and the publication of works completed as a result of their activities. Finally,
the Verde-Gaio Company owed its existence to António Ferro’s personal initiative and
his fascination with the famous Ballets Russes, who visited Portugal during World War i14.
Active until 1966, the company perfectly incarnated the ‘visual and folkloric staging of the
nation’, inherent in the policy of the SPN/SNI15.
The State also sponsored the Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT),
created in 1935 as a mirror image of the Italian Dopolavoro and the German Kraft durch
Freunde, one of whose lines of action was the organization of educative and ‘popular’
concerts16. The art-music institutions referred to below contrasted with others, such as
the FNAT, directed at a ‘popular’ audience. Among the latter was the network of so-
called Ranchos Folclóricos, which depended on the SPN/SNI, and the departments that,
within the ENR, were directly associated with ‘música ligeira’ or the production of musical
contents of an equally folkloric nature17. Thus, cultural policy distinguished between the
privileged elite and the popular classes, which were proportioned an invented popular

13
. The limited bibliography about the TNSC reflects two opposing methodological approaches: on
the one hand, the mere recompilation of data organized chronologically and, on the other, ideological
analysis without systematic work on the archival sources. See Moreau, Mário. O Teatro de S. Carlos: dois
séculos de história, 2 vols., Lisbon, Hugin, 1999 and Carvalho, Mário Vieira de. Pensar é morrer, ou O Teatro
de São Carlos: na mudança de sistemas sociocomunicativos desde fins do séc. XVIII aos nossos dias, Lisbon, Imprensa
Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1993 (Temas portugueses). In regard to the Verde-Gaio company, see Verde Gaio,
uma companhia portuguesa de bailado (1940-1949), edited by Vítor Pavão dos Santos, Lisbon, Instituto Português
de Museus-Museu Nacional do Teatro, 1999. See also Sasportes, José. História da dança em Portugal, Lisbon,
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1970.
14
. See Sasportes, José. ‘Os ballets russes em Lisboa’, in: Id. Trajectória da dança teatral em Portugal,
Lisbon, Instituto de Cultura Portuguesa, 1979 (Biblioteca breve, 27), pp. 63-68.
15
. The expression was coined by Alves, Vera Marques. Op. cit. (see note 7).
16
. The role of its Portuguese opera company, founded in 1962 and disbandoned in 1975, has been
analyzed, from a sociological point of view. See Domingo, Nuno. A Ópera do Trindade: O papel da Companhia
Portuguesa de Ópera na ‘educação cultural’ do Estado Novo, Lisbon, ASA/Lua de Papel, 2007. See also Melo,
Daniel. ‘A FNAT entre conciliação e fragmentação’, in: Vozes do povo: a folclorização em Portugal, op. cit. (see
note 3), pp. 37-57.
17
. See Alves, Vera Marques. ‘O SNI e os Ranchos Folclóricos’, in: Vozes do povo: a folclorização em
Portugal, op. cit. (see note 3), pp. 191-205.

6
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

culture, strongly integrative and opposed to any type of external cultural manifestation
(including, perversely, art music). It is also worth mentioning the role of the Conservatório
Nacional de Música, whose pedagocial plan also underwent slight modifications during
the 1930s. In 1917, Vianna da Motta and Luís de Freitas Branco drew up a new plan,
significantly changing the way in which music education was conceived, reinforcing
disciplines associated with composition and music theory. The result was a generation of
composers (made up of Frederico de Freitas, Armando José Fernándes, Jorge Corner de
Vasconcellos and Fernando Lopes-Graça, among others) hitherto unseen in Portuguese
music. In 1938, after Vianna da Motta’s retirement, the orchestral conductor and composer
Ivo Cruz (1901-1985), who activally supported the regime, took charge of the Conservatory,
relegating composition to a second plane18.
At least formally, the EN left space for various private initiatives in the area of music.
Informally supported by the State, there were private orchestras and concert societies that
perpetuated the nineteenth-century bourgeois model on the one hand, and on the other,
initiatives that applied a certain principle of ‘extension’ of musical dissemination using the
concept of decentralization. Some of the most significant of the former were created by
Ivo Cruz and Rui Coelho (1892-1986), while, among the latter were two organizations
both directed by influential feminine figures pertaining to Portuguese high society: the
Círculo de Cultura Musical, founded by Elisa de Sousa Pedroso in 1934 (which had
subsidiaries in Porto and in various Portuguese cities, as well as the African colonies), and
the Sociedade de Concertos de Lisboa (Lisbon Concert Society), found in 1917 by the
internationally-renowned pianist José Vianna da Motta and reactivated during the 1940s by
the Marchesa of Cadaval. In regard to musical dissemination outside the exclusive circuit
of subscription concerts, it is worth mentioning the creation, in 1948, of the Portuguese
section of the Jeunesses Musicales and, in 1951, of the Pró-Arte movement, which put
programs featuring Portuguese music performed by Portuguese artists into circulation in
numerous provincial cities.
Also perpetuating nineteenth-century models to a certain extent, the opposition
fostered its own alternative musical space, which basically revolved around the figure of
Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906-1994). A composer, pedagogue and choral conductor, he was
imprisoned and censured by the regime, but was able to gain significant public notoreity,
contributing to various periodicals that formed part of the network of oppositionist
publications, particularly those stimulated by the Portuguese Communist Party from
the mid-1940s onwards. His work as a producer was channelled into the Academia de
Amadores de Música, especially the Sonata Concert Society, which was exclusively
dedicated to the dissemination of twentieth-century music, between 1942 and 1960. The
aforementioned Academy was also the headquarters of the amateur choir he conducted

18
. Rosas, Joaquim Carmelo. ‘Conservatório Nacional de Música’, in: Enciclopédia da música em Portugal
no século XX, op. cit. (see note 6).

7
 Teresa Cascudo

from 1950 onwards, which originated from his support, as choral director, of the MUD’s
campaign for the 1945 elections. The Choir took the composer’s music all over the country,
especially his harmonizations of traditional Portuguese music: thus, it functioned as a kind
of counterbalance to the cultural policy of the EN, offering a ‘different’ image of rural
Portugal to that the regime had adopted.
1957 marked the creation of Radio Televisión Portuguesa (RTP), as well as the
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, set up from the will of the petroleum millionaire.
Financially independent, the Foundation supported a complete program of cultural
intervention embracing all the arts and fields of knowledge. The following year its Servicio
de Música was created. It was directed by Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão, who came up
with complementary initiatives ranging from music publication to the commissioning of
new compositions and the awarding of artistic and research scholarships, the organization
of concerts of international standards in the country’s capital (Gulbenkian Music Festival,
1960-1970) and the creation of a decenralised music circuit led by its own chamber orchestra,
founded in 1962. The orchestra went on to be called the Orquestra Gulbenkian in 1971,
becoming, together with the Gulbenkian Choir, one of the resident music ensembles of
the Grande Auditório in the Foundation’s headquarters, built in Lisbon in 1970.

The Identity-Constructing Past

It is important to recall that the plan to ‘re-Portuguesize’ Portugal dates the end of
the nineteenth century, even though its principal theoretician, Afonso Lopes Vieira,
had linked this transformation of culture and mentalities to the Europeanization of the
country. From this period onwards, this idea pervaded the work of an important group of
artists, including a number of composers. This process began in 1880, the year in which
the tercentenary of Luís de Camões was celebrated. While still under the monarchy, this
poet was chosen as an emblem of the cultural identity of the country, much of which was
based on its literary history. However, the renewed interest in themes from Portuguese
history and, above all, the use of traditional music (considered the incarnation of national
tradition at the end of the nineteenth century) in composition, were also reflected in
Portuguese art music19. During the EN, it is important to note that composers followed
this path in spite of the position they adopted in relation to the regime, using themes that
had since been transformed into instruments for the construction of the ‘official’ image of
the country in various ways.
This tendency was most clearly manifested on 1940, when the SPN organized activities
commemorating the anniversaries of the nation (1140) and Portugal’s independence from

19
. See Cascudo, Teresa. ‘A invenção de Portugal na música erudita (1890-1899)’, in: Revista portuguesa
de musicologia, x (2000), pp. 181-226.

8
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

the Spanish crown (1640). It was no coincidence that all the orchestral works premièred
during this period contained nationalist elements, namely explicit references to traditional
music or to the history of the country. These works included the symphonic poem 1140
by Wenceslau Pinto, the symphonic overture 1640 by Luis de Freitas Branco, the ballets O
muro do derrete by Frederico de Freitas (1902-1980) and Inês de Castro by Rui Coelho, the
Missa Solene, also by Freitas, and, finally, the Concerto for piano and orchestra nº 1 by Lopes-
Graça (which includes references to ‘folk music’) and Proposição dos Lusíadas by Hermínio
do Nascimento (1890-1972)20.
In spite of the very small number of works composed in Portugal that may unequivocally
be identified as being motivated by political nationalism of the end of the nineteenth
century, their coherence with regard to certain programmes and the connection between
them must be taken into account. It is difficult to accept quantity as the only measure of
the success of this connection, especially bearing in mind that at least two compositions
belonging to this group, namely the Sinfonia à Pátria (1894) by José Vianna da Motta and
the opera Serrana (1899) by Alfredo Keil, remained in the repertory as emblematic works,
at least in a historical sense. Vianna da Motta’s only symphony was isolated in its time, but
this was no less the case with later works such as the Sinfonias Camonianas, written by Rui
Coelho between 1912 and 1957, the two symphonies of Luís de Freitas Branco (1890-1955)
written during the 1920s, the Sinfonia per Orchestra (1944) by Fernando Lopes-Graça, the
Sinfonia aos Jerónimos (1961-1962) by Frederico de Freitas and the Symphony No. 5 ‘Virtus
Lusitaniae’ (1966) and Symphony No. 6 (1971-1972) by Joly Braga Santos, which seem to
confirm a certain continuity, in Portugal, in the association of symphonic writing with the
expression of various kinds of national identity. As far as Keil’s lyric dramas are concerned,
though it is difficult to accept that they created a school in the strict sense of the term, they
may be considered antecedents of the few stage works produced by Portuguese composers.
This is the case with some dramatic works by Rui Coelho, including two historical operas
(Inês de Castro, from 1927, and D. João IV, from 1940) and four works based on texts by Gil
Vicente, as well another two works set to texts by the same author: the Trilogia das barcas
(1970) by Joly Braga Santos and D. Duardos e Flérida (1964-1969, premièred in 1970) by
Fernando Lopes-Graça. Although this worklist does not imply that there were any stylistic
connections between them, it does point to a continuity that may be traced from the last
decade of the nineteenth century to the final years of the EN.
The connection between the nineteenth-century ‘state of spirit’ and the propaganda
of the SPN/SNI arose from the impact of the movement known as Integralismo Lusitano
on the intellectual class and particularly on composers. A crucial figure in Portuguese
music of the twentieth century, the aforementioned Luís de Freitas Branco, was directly
related to this movement, though he later denied his more reactionary stance. He played

20
. See the statistics about orchestral music in Leiria, César. Arquivo musical português, Lisbon,
Sassetti, 1940.

9
 Teresa Cascudo

an important role in devising a modern concept of traditionalism and in the defence of the
artist’s mission in society. He was a pioneer in the recovery of early Portuguese music, in
his search for an image of the past founded on the concept of tradition as the substance of
the Portuguese nation’s culture, which justified its ‘equality’ in relation to other western
countries, and as an enriching and necessary factor of ‘spiritual’ activity21. In other words, the
‘spiritual values’ associated with repertoires of by-gone centuries were the true, underlying
motive for the recovery of early Portuguese music, as well as the reason why it was worth
continuing this process today.
Thus, the majority of works composed from the end of the 1930s to the 1950s in
Portugal may be interpreted as attempts to create images of the country based on the
past and by identifying music with the following principles: the renewed discovery of
the rural musical tradition (whose defenders saw it as the true national song, very often
in contradistinction to fado) and of the rural as an image of the nation; musical portraits
of figures and events from Portuguese history and, finally, the recovery of the tradition
of Portuguese art music. An a-temporal conception of history prevailed, which meant
that composers, like other artists, could fearlessly make use of the most varied elements of
history, integrating them in their works.
The utilization of traditional music in the composition of art music had existed in the
work of Portuguese composers from the nineteenth century, gaining a second wind from
the 1920s onwards. Freitas Branco wrote his two Suites Alentejanas for orchestra in 1919
and 1927 respectively, the Suite Portuguesa by Rui Coelho and the Improviso sobre uma cantiga
do povo by Claudio Carneyro (1895-1963) date from 1925, the Variações sobre um tema popular
português by Lopes-Graça from 1927 and the Canção raiana by Frederico de Freitas from 1930.
The list would continue to grow significantly in later years and the presence of works based
on these subjects in the catalogue of works by Portuguese composers is so widespread that it
would merit future comparative study.
The manner in which Portuguese composers worked with material of a rural origin
can also be interpreted from an ideological point of view. Restricting this discussion to the
five composers mentioned above, let’s begin with Freitas Branco, for whom traditional
music was not necessarily an obligatory point of reference for composers, and even less
when its use was imposed by the cultural policy of the regime22. The two suites mentioned

21
. In regard to this issue, see Cascudo, Teresa. ‘«Por amor do que é portugués»: el nacionalismo
integralista y el renacimiento de la música antigua portuguesa entre 1924 y 1934’, in: Concierto barroco:
Estudios sobre música, dramaturgia e historia cultural, edited by Juan José Carreras and Miguel Ángel Marín,
Logroño, Universidad de La Rioja, 2004, pp. 309-330 and Silva, Manuel Deniz. ‘O projecto nacio-
nalista do Renascimento Musical (1923-1946): ‘reaportuguesar’ a música portuguesa’, in: Ler história, xlvi
(2004), pp. 27-57.
22
. Exhaustive information about Luís de Freitas Branco’s work and style may be found in Delgado,
Alexandre - Telles, Ana - Mendes, Nuno Bettencourt. Luís de Freitas Branco, Lisbon, Editorial Caminho,
2007 (Caminho da música).

10
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

in the previous paragraph, partly based on songs the composer collected, served as a model
for the composers of subsequent generations, particularly his students. This model
was taken from mere description and centred on the appraisal of the potentialities the
original themes offered. In turn, Rui Coelho had an expressive and scenic conception
of the idea of ‘popular’: the ‘authenticity’ of the themes used was a secondary issue for
him. Claudio Carneyro was interested in research: a large part of the choral passages he
harmonised reflected a clear popularist intention. Together with Lopes-Graça, Federico
de Freitas was the only of these composers to remain active over the four decades of
the EN. His approach to traditional music was tainted by the idea of the popular as
simple and naive, introducing rural reminiscences, just as the EN encouraged, in the
works he composed for the Verde-Gaio company. These works have been singled out
as the most significant part of his output23.
Of all Portuguese composers, Lopes-Graça maintained the most constant and prolific
relationship with folk music24. This was a result of the dual need to find a solution to
compositional problems and to attain political objectives. Lopes-Graça went from considering
the unconscious communion between the artist and the community inevitable in the 1930s,
to calling into question, from the 1940s onwards, what should be considered ‘folk song’
and the way in which it should be used. Nevertheless, in the early 1950s, this change of
thought, with the aesthetic consequences with which it was associated, took on aspects of
doctrinal and political radicalization, as a result of his activism following the ideas promoted
in the Prague Manifesto25. From the end of the 1950s, when he distanced himself from the
Communist Party (remaining a member after the Revolution of 25 April), traditional music,
previously of central importance to him, began to be combined with other kinds of materials
in his work. Thus, although it is difficult not to sympathize with his position, which proposed
the discovery of ‘authentic’ traditional music as a means of resistance to the propagandistic
manipulation and inventions patronized by the EN, this cannot be separated from his militant
communism. The principal objective of his work was the modernization and re-evaluation
of traditional sources by means of an artistic treatment of traditional material using modern
compositional techniques. Conscious of the symbolic dimension associated with the use of
the music of the people, using his own expressions, Lopes-Graça refused to surrender his
function as an intermediary or translator of this repertoire so that it was appropriate to an
alien context: that of the ritual of city concert halls.

23
. See Delgado, Alexandre. ‘Os bailados de Frederico de Freitas’, in: Revista da dança, i (1998), pp. 9-12
24
. See A canção popular portuguesa em Fernando Lopes-Graça, edited by Alexandre Branco Weffort, Lisbon,
Editorial Caminho, 2006.
25
. About his compromise between artistic creation and communist discipline, see Cascudo, Teresa. ‘A
configuração do modernismo musical em Portugal a través da acção de Fernando Lopes-Graça’, in: Fernando
Lopes-Graça, edited by Pedro Maia, Porto, Atelier de composição, 2008, pp. 37-73.

11
 Teresa Cascudo

It may be surprising that until now the question of the role of fado in the realm of
art music has almost remained untouched26. The fact is that the majority of composers
were strongly opposed to the genre, especially when it became a product tailored for mass
consumption. Fado, particularly that of Lisbon, was, moreover, transformed by the SPN/
SNI propaganda into the epitome of national song, whereby aesthetic and ideological
arguments were combined with political ones. As a consequence, it was despised. In fact,
during this period, the only composer associated with this genre was Frederico de Freitas,
who, in 1931, wrote the first Portuguese film track, A Severa, whose leading role was played
by a fado singer. The promotional campaign for the film emphasized the importance of the
soundtrack within the context of musical nationalism. De Freitas was, however, was an
exception, in that he was the only Portuguese composer who understood and adapted to
the changes in musical practice that took place during the 1930s. He earned the applause
of many, who praised his ability to reconcile apparent opposites, but his connections with
‘light’ music and theatre distorted the manner in which his work was viewed and the
historical importance of his role in the Portuguese context.
History (as opposed to tradition) was introduced into composition in the two manners
mentioned above. Firstly, it gave continuity to the musical aestheticization originating
during the romantic period and associated with the genres of the symphonic poem and
opera. The heroic symphony Nun’Alvares (1935) and the dramatic allegory entitled Auto de
Afonso Henriques (1940), both exalting historical figures, are two examples of the influence
of historicism in Frederico de Freitas’s output. There are other examples by Rui Coelho,
the author of stage works based on historical themes, commemorating historical events
and characters, which were also much politicized at the time. This was the case with the
oratorio Fátima, composed in 1930, or the above-mentioned opera D. João IV (1940).
History also entered composition by means of the recovery of Portuguese art music.
This had been, however, an overly productive trend, largely due to musicology’s lack
of importance as an academic discipline. It was manifest in two kinds of works; the first
group may be described as neo-classical, in which models from the past were reinvented,
and the second, as revivalist, in which these models were transcribed with the intention
of respecting the original. The former is clearly exemplified in the Três tocatas a Seixas
composed between 1937 and 1942 by Jorge Croner de Vasconcelos (1910-1974), and the
latter by Santiago Kastner’s early research into Iberian keyboard music27. In 1939, Frederico

26
. The best introduction to this popular genre is Nery, Rui Vieira. Para uma história do fado, Lisbon,
Público, 2004. The author also discusses its use by the EN.
27
. See Miranda, Gil. Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos, 1910-1974: vida e obra musical, Lisbon, Musicoteca, 1992
and Id. Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos, 1910-1974: catálogo razoado da obra musical, Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional,
2003 (Bibliografias BN). On Kastner’s musicological research, see Alegria, José Augusto. ‘A singularidade
da obra do Prof. Kastner no panorama musicológico português’, in: Livro de homenagem a Macario Santiago
Kastner, edited by Maria Fernanda Cidrais Rodrigues, Manuel Morais and Rui Vieira Nery, Lisbon, Fundação
Calouste Gulbenkian, 1992, pp. 19-32.

12
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

de Freitas and Cláudio Carneyro both composed two seventeenth-century dances, a pavan
and a galliard28. Further, Freitas’s Suite Medieval dates from 1959. This work, an example
of the second type of composition, must be distinguished from the transcriptions and
harmonizations of medieval music the composer made between 1938 and 1947, even
though it may be related to the same ideological references.

Formalism and Ruptures

During the 1940s and 1950s, Portuguese composers had seemingly decided to take
refuge in classical genres. Certainly these ‘neo-classical’ works may be seen to follow the
same tendency to look back at the past, as identified above, but the difference is that, in this
case, the reference point is the legacy of western music. This may be viewed as a kind of
‘Portuguese formalism’, which arose as an alternative to the highly ideological compositional
practices characterizing the context and choice of themes in the works mentioned hitherto.
The hypothesis must be tested, but it does not seem implausible in light of the ideas made
public at the time. For example, Rui Coelho asserted that there were only two opposing
currents in Portuguese contemporary composition: formalism and nationalism. The former
embraced the «friends of the sonata», whose activity was completely opposed to that of the
nationalist composers who, like Coelho, used music as a means of expressing «states of the
soul» and «landscapes with a sense of place, time and life». It must also be remembered that
the previous generation had already reflected on the possible articulation of neo-classicism
with Portuguese musical nationalism. Significantly, it was Vianna da Motta, Rui Coelho’s
great enemy, who was the first to consider the composition of works in sonata form as one
way of linking Portuguese musical nationalism to the Beethovenian tradition. This is what
one gathers from his lecture ‘Beethoven in Portugal’, delivered in Vienna in 1927, in which
he laments the rare influence of Beethoven on Portuguese composers: he was the first to
write a formally Beethovenian symphony, though, in his own words, he subsequently
composed nationalist music29. For him, the neo-classical renewal present in the work of
Portuguese composers of the 1920s (particularly that of Freitas Branco) directly sprang
from the great models of Beethoven’s oeuvre: Beethoven provided the basis, while the
composer modernized its expression. There are numerous examples. It is enough to recall
Frederico de Freitas’s Quarteto concertante (1942), the String Quartet in E minor (1946), the

28
. In regard to these two composers, see Cláudio Carneyro (1895-1995). Espólio musical, by Jorge Costa,
Porto, Biblioteca Pública Municipal, 1995 and José Viana da Mota, cinquenta anos depois da sua morte 1948-1998,
edited by Teresa Cascudo and Maria Helena Trindade, Lisbon, Ministério da Cultura-Instituto Português
de Museus, 1998.
29
. See Motta, José Vianna da. ‘Beethoven em Portugal’, in: Id. Música e músicos alemães. Recordações,
ensaios, críticas, 2 vols., Coimbra, Coimbra Editora, 21947, vol. i, p. 155.

13
 Teresa Cascudo

Sonata in F for violin and piano (1946), and Flute Concerto (1954). This same attitude is
present in numerous chamber works written by other Portuguese during the same period:
the Piano Quintet (1952) and the Piano Quartet (1953) by Armando José Fernandes (1906-
1983), and in the Piano Quartet (1957) and the String Quartet No. 2 (1958) by Joly Braga
Santos — as well as in orchestral works written at the time. Braga Santos, who composed
four symphonies between 1946 and 1950 (the first of them dedicated to the memory of the
‘Heroes and Martyrs’ of World War ii) and a further two, in 1966 and 1972, respectively, is
particularly significant. Some of these works are contemporaneous to the four symphonies
by Luís de Freitas Branco, two of which date from 1944 and 1952. There is also the above-
mentioned Sinfonia by Lopes-Graça (1944), his piano sonatas (a total of six, the second of
which dates from 1939, the third from 1950 and the fourth from 1961), his two concertos
for piano and orchestra (1940 and 1941) and the Preludes for piano (1950-1955), as well as
other works by lesser-known composers, such as the Piano Sonata (1949) and the Sonata
for cello and piano (1958) by Victor Macedo Pinto (1917-1964). Almost all these works
have yet to be studied, but as Alexandre Delgado suggests in his book on the symphony in
Portugal, they seem to form the series of musical works by Portuguese composers that has
best withstood the passage of time30.
The 1950s had been a decade adrift in the realm of music, marking the disappearance
of the generation who had lived the Belle Epoque (Vianna da Motta died in 1948 and
Freitas Branco in 1953), as well as the musical practices associated with this period. On
the other hand, the representatives of the new generation that began to make an impact
after 1960 were still being trained. Meanwhile, composers who had begun their work
before the World War ii, as discussed in the previous section of this article, consolidated
the paths set out by their earlier work. This may explain the sensation of return present
in works composed during the 1960s. Thus, in 1962, Frederico de Freitas conducted the
first performance of his Sinfonia ‘Aos Jerónimos’, commissioned by the Municipal Council
of Lisbon and dedicated «To the heroes of the seas and the artisans, caulkers and other
anonymous people who also discovered Portugal». Critic’s lukewarm response to the
former and the composer’s subsequent disappointment indicated that something had
changed in Portuguese culture31.
Other composers remained faithful to the influence of the ideology of nationalism,
which had dominated composition in Portugal since the end of the nineteenth century,
albeit in a new light. Thus, for instance, the first performance of História Trágico Marítima
by Lopes-Graça, based on a text by Miguel Torga and revised almost two decades after its
composition, took place in 1960. Text and music accentuated a kind of lyric humanism, in

30
. See Delgado, Alexandre. A sinfonia em Portugal. Lisbon, Editorial Caminho, 2002 (Caminho da
música).
31
. See Frederico de Freitas: 1902-1980, edited by Teresa Cascudo and Maria Helena Trindade, Lisbon,
Instituto Português de Museus-Museu da Música, 2003.

14
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

contrast to the pompous official version of this period of Portuguese worldwide expansion.
And, in 1966, Joly Braga Santos composed his Symphony No. 5 ‘Virtus Lusitaniae’ to
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the National Revolution, which constitutes one of
the rare examples of the presence of African music in Portuguese art music32. His approach
to Mozambique’s music for marimba is, notwithstanding, completely modernistic33.
Particularly in the case of these two composers, one can infer that they didn’t remain
immune to the changes that were taking place around them and came from abroad. Their
respective catalogues contain works from the late 1950s that bear witness to this, such as
Braga Santos’s opera Mérope (1958, premièred in 1962), and Lopes-Graça’s song cycle As
Mãos e os Frutos (1959, premièred the same year)34. Indeed, until 1960, Lopes-Graça and
Braga Santos, together with their maestro, Luís de Freitas Branco, were the faces of the
modernist trend in Portuguese music. Their work conserved procedures proper to tonal
thought and the nationalist pathos, but this was in no way incompatible with the search
for new means of expression35.
From 1960 onwards, with the Colonial War (1961-1974) as a backdrop and amid
growing opposition in the tertiary sector36, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
supported the departure of young composers overseas. Abroad, they became familiar
with the change of direction caused by the generalization of serial composition
internationally around 1950. This institution was also responsible for popularising the
music of composers associated with the international avant-garde in Portugal, which
were regularly programmed, together with the works recently premiered by Portuguese

32
. See Silva, Manuel Deniz. ‘Os sons de África nos primeiros anos do Estado Novo: entre exotismo e
«vocação imperial»’, in: Revista portuguesa de musicologia, xiii (2003), pp. 113-143.
33
. The echoes of nineteenth-century nationalism continued after 25 April. For instance, in 1977,
Frederico de Freitas wrote the symphonic poem entitled Alexandre Herculano In Memoriam, commissioned by
the Secretariat of State for Culture to commemorate the writer’s centenary. In 1980 the Sete predicações de ‘Os
Lusiadas’, with music by Fernando Lopes-Graça were premièred, as part of the Camões commemorations,
and for which Joly Braga Santos wrote his cantata Babel e Sião.
34
. See Cascudo, Teresa. ‘Uma interpretação do ciclo As Mãos e os Frutos, de Fernando Lopes-Graça’
and Paes, João, ‘A transformação do estilo de Joly Braga Santos, analisada a partir de duas composições
para orquestra de arcos’, in: Dez compositores portugueses: percursos da escrita musical no século XX, op. cit.
(see note 6), pp. 169-189 and pp. 203-237. In regard to the opera Mérope, see Braga Santos, Piedade.
‘Mérope de Almeida Garrett: uma ópera de Joly Braga Santos’, in: Revista Camões, No. 4 (January-March
1999), pp. 134-142.
35
. See Delgado, Alexandre - Telles, Ana - Mendes, Nuno Bettencourt. Op. cit. (see note 22). See
also Cascudo, Teresa. A tradição como problema na obra musical de Fernando Lopes-Graça. Um estudo no con-
texto português, Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian-Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, forthcoming.
A study of Braga Santo’s life and works is urgently needed for the understanding of Portuguese Twentieth
Century music.
36
. The most important event was the so-called ‘Crise académica de 1962’. See A Primavera que abalou
o regime. A crise académica de 1962, edited by João Pedro Ferro, Lisbon, Presença, 1996 and Garrido, Álvaro.
Movimento estudantil e crise do Estado Novo. Coimbra 1962, Coimbra, Minerva, 1996 (Minerva história, 13).

15
 Teresa Cascudo

composers during the Gulbenkian Music Festivals37. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s and David
Tudor’s visits to Lisbon, and the programs presented on 21 and 22 November 1961,
were the two single events that most clearly marked the change in direction patent in
Portuguese contemporary composition of the period. The composer Jorge Peixinho
(1940-1995) introduced the first concert, consisting of the music of Morton Feldman,
Sylvano Bussoti, Juan Hidalgo, Toshi Ichiyanagi and John Cage. Significantly, Emmanuel
Nunes (1941-) conceded that the second concert, featuring the music of Stockhausen,
was determinant in his decision to take up composition38.
Darmstadt attracted the interest of various young composers, representative of
the new generation, among who were Filipe Pires (1934-), Álvaro Cassuto (1938-)
and the aforementioned Jorge Peixinho and Emmanuel Nunes, who continued the
traditional training they had received in Portugal abroad39. The former attended courses
throughout the decade, completing his training with Hans-Joachim Koellreutter and
Pierre Schaeffer40. Cassuto attended Darmstadt in 1960 and 1961, while Peixinho was
regularly present over the entire decade. Cassuto had previously studied in Berlin and his
familiarity with the dodecaphonic method was reflected in his early works, for example
the Sinfonía Breve nº 1, premièred in Portugal under the baton of Joly Braga Santos. For
his part, Nunes participated in the Darmstadt courses from 1963 to 1965. He also studied
in Paris (1964) and in Cologne (1965-1969), where he was a pupil of Pousseur, Jaap Spek
and frequented Stockhausen’s classes. Notwithstanding, the only work he composed that
was heard in Portugal during this period, Conjuntos I (1964), was later withdrawn from
his catalogue41.
Even the younger composers who were unable to study outside Portugal were
permeable to the influence of the new music: in 1967, Constança Capdeville (1837-
1992), of Spanish origin and trained in Lisbon, composed Diferenças sobre um intervalo, for
orchestra, considered her first serial work. The most characteristic nucleus of her output
began to take shape with Momento I (1971), the antecedent of what would become a

37
. See Leça, Carlos Pontes. ‘História de um festival’, in: Colóquio/Artes: revista de artes visuais, música e
ballado, No. 7 (April 1972), pp. 40-51.
38
. See Emmanuel Nunes, edited by Peter Szendy, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1998 (Compositeurs d’aujourd’hui),
p. 13.
39
. See Monteiro, Francisco José Dias Santos Barbosa. The Portuguese Darmstadt Generation: The Piano
Music of Portuguese Avant-Garde, unpublished Ph.D. Diss., Sheffield (UK), The University of Sheffield, 2003.
Monteiro includes an introduction to the Portuguese musical context during the EN.
40
. See Figueiredo, Pedro. ‘Entrevista com o compositor Luís Filipe Pires’, in: Arte musical, iv Série, i/3
(April 1996), pp. 101-117.
41
. About this composer’s life and work, see Op. cit. (see note 41) and also Borel, Hélène - Bioteau,
Alain - Daubresse, Éric. Emmanuel Nunes: compositeur portugais, XXe siècle, Lisbon-Paris, Fundação Calouste
Gulbenkian, 2001 (Présences portugaises en France: Musique).

16
 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

constant interest in the dramatization of musical gesture42. Other composers pertaining

to the same generation, such as Cândido Lima (1939-) and António Victorino d’Almeida
(1940-), followed different paths. Lima, whose career was affected by his compulsory
participation in the Colonial War, looked to Xenakis as his main reference during the
1970s43. The latter, a pupil of Joly Braga Santos in Portugal, began his studies with
Karl Schiske in Vienna in 1960. Victorino d’Almeida is the only Portuguese composer
born around 1940 who maintained the tonal style in his programmatic works, declaring
himself opposed to the influence of the avant-garde44.
Keeping within the chronological limits of the EN, and taking into account
the importance of his work in absolute terms, Jorge Peixinho is the reference for this
generation45. Moreover, his was a case of the prolongation of the figure of the composer
‘performer’, whose radius of action (as a composer as well as a promoter, teacher and
artistic director of the Lisbon Contemporary-Music Ensemble, which he founded in
1970) went beyond the limits of his output and the limited reception of his music:
perhaps the significance given to the most ‘astonishing’ aspect of his musical activity
(for example, his participation in a famous happening inspired by the Fluxus movement,
organised in Lisbon in 1965) may have overshadowed the coherence of his work46. His
openness to the artistic trends of his time was combined with a fertile dialogue with
tradition, which made him one of the most interesting figures in contemporary music,
even outside a strictly Portuguese ambit. Prior to commencing his visits to Darmstadt,
Peixinho received a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation to study in Rome
with Boris Porena and Goffredo Petrassi. By 1960, he was still a pupil of Luigi Nono in
Venice, and of Pierre Boulez and Stockhausen in Basle. Two main trends can be seen in
the works he composed prior to 1974. On the one hand, the influence of Stockhausen,
and, on the other, the manifestation of what is usually termed ‘lyricism’ around 1968
(coinciding with the use of quotations with an intention that can be related to post-
modernism) has been noted47.

42
. See Serrão, Maria José. Constança Capdeville: entre o teatro e a música, preface by Mário Vieira de
Carvalho, Lisbon, Editorial Colibri-CESEM, 2006 (Ensaios musicológicos, 2).
43
. See Cândido Lima, edited by Pedro Maia, Porto, Atelier de Composição, 2002 (Compositores
portugueses contemporâneos).
44
. See António Victorino D’Almeida conta 50 anos na Música a Paulo Sérgio dos Santos, edited by Paulo
Sérgio dos Santos, Lisbon, Quimera, 2005.
45
. See Jorge Peixinho. In memoriam, edited by José Machado, Lisbon, Editorial Caminho, 2002 (Caminho
da música). In regard to Peixinho’s aesthetic thought, see also Teixeira, Cristina Delgado. Música, estética e
sociedade nos escritos de Jorge Peixinho, Lisbon, Edições Colibri-CESEM, 2006 (Ensaios musicológicos, 1).
46
. See Almeida, Ana Paula. O universo dos sons nas artes plásticas, Lisbon, Edições Colibri, 2007 (Teses,
4), especially pp. 113-122.
47
. See Ferreira, Manuel Pedro. ‘A obra de Jorge Peixinho: problemática e recepção’, in: Jorge Peixinho.
In memoriam, op. Cit. (see note 45), pp. 223-286.

17
 Teresa Cascudo

Conclusion

The critical events that shook world history from the 1930s onwards also affected
Portuguese music: Portuguese writings on music and composition underwent an inevitable
politicisation, which was felt in various manners. The diversification of styles which took
place during the 1920s (perceived in the realm of music as the dissolution of a musical
tradition considered unquestionable), together with the disappearance of a homogeneous,
minority and elitist public that would consume art music, and the increasing importance
of popular music, or, in other words, the irruption of technical means of reproduction
on to the cultural market and the vast increases in audiences meant that during the 1930s
composers redefined their role in society. As Michael Walter noted, they strived to find ways
in which to restore music’s former ‘seriousness’ (in many cases by means of nationalism,
as discussed, a significant word in the cultural policies of the EN) and to save the learned
composer as a specialist in a ‘profession’48.
Further, in Portugal, this process was associated with the omnipresence of the regime
in the public sphere, which would decisively determine the creative trajectory, and even
the compositional strategies, of composers born around the beginning of the century and
during the early years of the EN. That is to say, they worked under the pressure of
propaganda and censorship, disloyally prevailing over any critical alternative, but they
reflected some of its features, mainly nationalism in the musical terrain, tieing them in
with trends already present in the output of Portuguese intellectuals from the end of the
nineteenth century without great difficulty. Together with the productive circumstances
in which Portuguese composers worked during the period from the ‘Revolução Nacional’
(National Revolution, 1926) to the ‘Revolução dos Cravos’ (Carration Revolution, 1974),
this strongly self-conscious way of thinking about composition can, to a large extent,
explain the little known that is known about the music composed in Portugal during this
time, even today. One the one hand, the principal music organizations’ and institutions’
relationship between the regime and the precarious conditions in which they all worked,
irrespective of their political sympathies (the only exception being the FCG), led to the
creation of a professional network, in which composers naturally and effectively took part.
On the other, the impact of this situation was minor and unclear, which was also due
to the regularity with which new works were only heard on the day of their première
or, in many cases, a considerable period of time after their composition. These material
circumstances were added to those of the hypertrophied Portuguese identity stimulated
by the EN. Both fomented a unique awareness of isolation, which only began to be
dismantled during the 1960s.

48
. See Walter, Michael. ‘Music of Seriousness and Commitment’, in: The Cambridge History of
Twentieth-Century Music, edited by Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2005 (The Cambridge History of Music), pp. 286-307.

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 Art Music in Portugal during the Estado Novo

To conclude, a critical evaluation of the contribution of Portuguese composers could

be useful. As mentioned above, the study of this corpus is still in a very incipient phase,
meaning much of what can be said in this regard should be formulated as an hypothesis
that requires testing. Interestingly, apart from the use of traditional music, four main
genres can be identified in the outputs of the most representative composers of the EN49.
In regard to vocal music, the treatment of Portuguese as a sung language was pending
from the nineteenth century and one of the tasks the composers discussed in this article
overcame in more brilliant fashion. One of the most outstanding of these composers was
Fernando Lopes-Graça, who systematically explored the virtues of his native language in
a vast catalogue including choral music and different combinations of solo voices with
instrumental accompaniment. The few examples of stage music composed by Portuguese
composers remain in limbo, due to the virtual non-existence of editions and contemporary
productions. Even though some of the scores of the works composed for the Verde-Gaio
ballet company have been recorded, they are a mystery, as the productions they once
formed part of are only known to us in period descriptions. Thirdly, instrumental music,
particularly piano and chamber music is the most abundant genre in the repertory of present-
day Portuguese musicians, facilitating our knowledge of it. Armando José Fernandes’s
solidly constructed chamber works and the originality of Lopes-Graça’s piano works stand
out amid a repertory none-too-inconsiderable in size. The former, who studied with
Nadia Boulanger in Paris, represented a neo-classicism with modal overtones, and given
that his music is relatively unknown, could surprise due to its indisputable quality. Apart
from his free use of rhythm and harmony, justified in the study of traditional music, the
latter explored the idiom of the instrument through the use of texture as a basic element in
composition, in an unprecedented manner in the Portuguese context. Finally, in orchestral
music, irrespective of the unquestionable interest of the work of other composers, Joly
Braga Santos (also a fine composer of quartets) can be credited with developing his own
symphonic language, anchored in the music of his teacher, Freitas Branco. One of the
greatest challenges of Portuguese musicology will undoubtedly be to establish the best
methodological framework for the understanding of these works, not only in regard to
their relationship with the genres to which they pertain, but putting them into the context
of their period and the output of their composers.

49
. I have excluded the composers pertaining to the so-called ‘Darmstadt Generation’ because their most
significant works were composed after 1974.

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