Fernando Lopes-Graça

Fernando Lopes-Graça (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