Portugal GROVE

Portugal, Republic of (Port.
República Portuguesa)
Portugal, Republic of (Port. República Portuguesa)

Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco and Manuel Carlos De Brito
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.22157
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
Country in Europe. Occupying a total area of 91,905 km² on a strip of land in the western Iberian peninsula
(and including the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores), Portugal is bordered to the north and east
of the mainland by Spain and to the south and west by the Atlantic Ocean. The population is 9·79 million
(2000 estimate) with c1 million in the capital and largest city, Lisbon .
I. Historical and cultural background

Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco
Portuguese musical traditions and contemporary popular musics reflect multifarious historical, cultural
and political processes, to which they also contributed. Some traditional song and dance genres, musical
styles and instruments are pan-Hispanic and pan-European. Other music traditions resulted from
Portugal's direct and prolonged contact with non-European cultures from North and sub-Saharan Africa
as well as in Brazil. Portuguese maritime exploration and overseas colonization, which started in the 15th
century and ended with the independence of its former African colonies in 1975, also took Portuguese
musical influences overseas. In many of these areas, there are musics that display Portuguese influence, as
well as musical genres and instruments that originated in Portugal.
The beginning of the 20th century saw the rise of nationalism and the establishment of the first
parliamentary republic (1910–26), a development that resulted in the creation of imported new musical
and also stimulated an interest in the documentation and preservation of rural traditions. A military coup
in 1926 paved the way for the formation of the estado novo, the dictatorship which lasted for 48 years and
which advocated a national political ideology based on traditional values, reinforced through cultural
policy and action. Music and other forms of expressive behaviour were used symbolically to represent the
regime's politically convenient conception of Portuguese culture. The 1960s marked the beginning of a
period of profound change in Portuguese society, which acted as a catalyst for new musical ideas,
processes and sounds. Music making was affected by emigration, rural–urban migration,
industrialization, colonial war, immigration from the former colonies, tourism and the wide dissemination
of mass media (radio, television and commercial recordings). The revolution of 25th April 1974 established
freedom and democracy, ended colonial rule and accelerated the transformations that had been taking
place and introduced new ones as well. Political song was central to the revolutionary process, heralding
the revolution and disseminating its ideology. The latter part of the 1980s and 90s heralded the advent of
new changes, with Portugal entering the EU in 1985.
II. Art music

Manuel Carlos De Brito
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1. The Middle Ages.

Information on music in Portugal during the Early Christian era is scarce. In 959 Countess Mumadona Dias
bequeathed to the monastery of S Salvador and S Maria in Guimarães several liturgical books, among them
‘antiphonarios tres, organum, comitum, manuale, ordinum, psalterios duos, passionum et precum’.
Although vestiges of the Hispanic or Mozarabic liturgy are rare in Portugal, the only complete manuscript
of this liturgy, the Antiphoner of León (now lost), may have come from Beja, in the south of the country.
Many of the extant chant sources are preserved at Alcobaça, the most important Cistercian abbey in
Portugal, and at the convent of Lorvão, but the oldest collection of manuscripts with musical notation is at
the Cistercian convent of Arouca. The first cathedral school to be established was that of Braga (1072),
followed by Coimbra (1086), Lisbon (1150), Oporto (1186) and Évora (1200). In 1323 King Dinis granted an
annual salary to the music professor at Coimbra University.
The highpoint of troubadour song in Portugal occurred in the reign of Afonso III (1248–79); two other
kings, Sancho I (1154–1211) and Dinis (1261–1325), were also troubadours. King Dinis, in particular, wrote
a considerable number of songs, some fragments of which have recently been discovered. The Cancioneiro
da Ajuda, a collection of 310 Portuguese song texts copied in the late 13th century or early 14th with blank
music staves, is preserved in the Ajuda Library in Lisbon. No polyphonic music has survived from the 14th
and 15th centuries, but the regulations of the royal chapel drawn up by King Duarte between 1433 and 1438
stipulate that it should have between four and six boy singers, who also performed court music. The fact
that King Duarte and his brothers were grandsons of John of Gaunt explains the use of the Sarum rite in
their chapels. In 1454 Afonso V sent his mestre de capela Álvaro Afonso to England, to obtain a copy of the
music used in Henry VI's chapel.
2. The 16th and 17th centuries.

The first attributable polyphonic works to have survived are those by the Coimbra composers Vasco Pires (
fl 1481–1509) and Fernão Gomes Correia (d after 1532); the most important composer of the early 16th
century, however, was Pedro do Porto (known in Spain as Pedro de Escobar) who served as singer at the
court of Queen Isabella of Spain and was maestro de capilla at Seville Cathedral from 1507 to 1514 and later
mestre de capela to Cardinal Archbishop Afonso of Évora, a son of King Manuel I. The chapel of Évora
Cathedral and its adjoining music school rapidly rose to pre-eminence among Portuguese musical
institutions, not only employing many distinguished mestres de capela and composers, among them
Manuel Mendes, Filipe de Magalhães (c 1571–1652) and Diogo Dias Melgaz, but also training composers
who became mestres de capela of other important institutions in the country. These composers include
Manuel Cardoso (1566–1650) at the Carmelite convent in Lisbon; Duarte Lobo (c 1564/9–1646) at Lisbon
Cathedral; the Spaniard Estêvão Lopes Morago (bc 1575; d after 1630) at Viseu Cathedral; and Francisco
Martins (bc 1620 or c 1625; d 1680) at Elvas Cathedral. Another important cathedral chapel was that of
Braga, whose first known mestre de capela was Miguel da Fonseca (from c 1530 to 1544). Another major
musical centre during the 16th and 17th centuries was the Augustinian monastery of Santa Cruz at
Coimbra, which extended its influence to the monastery of S Vicente de Fora in Lisbon. Among composers
at Santa Cruz Heliodoro de Paiva (c 1500–1552) and, in particular, Pedro de Cristo (c 1550–1618) should be
mentioned.
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The only private musical chapel of true significance is that of the dukes of Braganza at Vila Viçosa, which,
along with its adjoining music school, gained particular importance during the days of the future King João
IV, who assembled the largest music libraries of his day. A partial catalogue of this library was published in
1649, when it was transferred to the royal chapel in Lisbon, but the library itself was lost in the earthquake
and fire of 1 November 1755. There is every indication that much of the library's non-Iberian repertory,
particularly of secular music, was never actually studied or performed. Among the few Portuguese
composers who had access to the library was João IV’s schoolfriend João Lourenço Rebelo (1610–61),
whose published sacred works reveal the influence of contemporary European styles, in contrast with the
generally more conservative idiom of his Portuguese colleagues.
The political union of Portugal and Spain between 1580 and 1640 created new career opportunities for
Portuguese composers both in Spain and in the Spanish New World. Prominent among them were two
pupils of Magalhães, Estêvão de Brito (c 1575–1641), maestro de capilla of Badajoz and Málaga cathedrals,
and Manuel Correia (d 1653), maestro de capilla of the Carmelite convent in Madrid and of Sigüenza and
Zaragoza cathedrals; Manuel Machado (c 1590–1646), a disciple of Duarte Lobo and a member of the
Spanish royal chapel; Manuel de Tavares, maestro de capilla of Baeza, Murcia, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
and Cuenca cathedrals; Gonçalo Mendes Saldanha, organist at Málaga Cathedral; Francisco de Santiago (c
1578–1644), mastro de capilla of the convent of the Calced Carmelites in Madrid and of Plasencia and Seville
cathedrals; Manuel Correia do Campo (1593–1645), his successor at Seville Cathedral; Filipe da Madre de
Deus, master of the royal chamber music to Afonso VI of Portugal and later maestro de capilla of the
monastery of the Discalced Mercedarians in Madrid; and Gaspar Fernandes (bc 1570; d before 18 Sept
1629), who went out to Central America and became maestro de capilla of Puebla Cathedral in Mexico (in
what is now Antigua) and Guatemala Cathedral. Portuguese musicians who lived outside the Iberian
peninsula during the 16th century also included the humanist and amateur composer Damião de Góis
(1502–74), a friend of Erasmus whose motet Ne laeteris was included by Glarean in his Dodechacordon, and
Vicente Lusitano, who conducted a famous debate on modes with Nicola Vicentino in Rome.
The true flowering of Portuguese sacred polyphony began with the publication in Lisbon of a volume of
Magnificat settings (1613), followed by three books of masses (several based on Palestrina motets) and a
miscellany for Holy Week by Cardoso, and a book of masses (1631) and a cycle of Magnificat settings (1636)
by Magalhães. The Renaissance secular forms of the villancico, cantiga and romance flourished in Portugal
as in Spain; substantial collections are preserved in the Cancioneiros at Elvas, the Bibliothèque de l'Ecole
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and the Biblioteca Nacional and the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia e
Etnologia de Belém, both in Lisbon. Only about a quarter of these pieces have Portuguese texts, the rest
being in Spanish. As in Spain, too, sacred villancicos became extremely popular during the 17th century; a
large collection, originating from the monastery of Santa Cruz, is kept at the library of Coimbra University.
Another collection at Évora public library contains works by, among others, António Marques Lésbio
(1639–1709), Francisco Martins and Pedro Vaz Rego (1673–1736).
The first book of keyboard music printed in the Iberian peninsula was the Arte nouamente inuentada per a
aprender a tanger (Lisbon, 1540) by the Spanish organist of the royal chapel, Gonzalo de Baena, a rare copy
of which was discovered in the Biblioteca de Palacio in Madrid. Other organ composers of the 16th and 17th
centuries include António Carreira (d 1589), Manuel Rodrigues Coelho, author of the collection Flores de
musica pera o instrumento de tecla & harpa (Lisbon, 1620), and Pedro de Araújo.
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3. The 18th century.

During the long reign of João V (1707–50) Portugal experienced a new affluence with the discovery of gold
in the colony of Brazil. In music, manifestations of this affluence included the augmentation of the royal
chapel, raised to a patriarchal chapel in 1716, and the founding of an adjoining music school, the Seminário
da Patriarcal, in 1713. Pre-eminent among the many Italian musicians who were hired for the chapel and
the court was Domenico Scarlatti, who arrived in Portugal in 1719 and remained there until 1728. His sacred
music for the chapel is thoroughly Roman in style. Similarly, the sacred works of three Portuguese
composers who studied in Rome as royal scholars, António Teixeira (1707–?after 1769), João Rodrigues
Esteves and Francisco António de Almeida, reflect both the Roman Baroque polychoral tradition and the
new Neapolitan operatic style. Almeida's oratorio La Giuditta, one of the masterpieces of Portuguese 18th-
century music, was performed in Rome in 1726.
In 1735 the court violinist Alessandro Paghetti opened a theatre in Lisbon for Italian opera, the Academia
da Trindade, which was replaced in 1738 by the Teatro da Rua dos Condes. Italian opera composers who
were in Lisbon in this period include Giovanni Bononcini, Gaetano Maria Schiassi and Rinaldo di Capua. Of
the half-dozen comic operas performed at court during the same period, three were by Almeida.
Meanwhile the Teatro do Bairro Alto presented puppet operas with Portuguese texts by António José da
Silva and music in the prevailing Neapolitan style by Teixeira. From 1752 King José I hired the composer
David Perez and the architect Giovanni Carlo Galli-Bibiena, together with some of the best Italian singers
then available, and had three new opera houses built. The largest and most splendid of these, near the
Lisbon royal palace, lasted only seven months before being destroyed by the earthquake of 1755. The court
then moved to the suburbs of Ajuda, where opera performances were resumed some years later on a much
smaller scale, as well as in the Salvaterra theatre and the summer palace of Queluz.
Many of the singers in the royal chapel and the court theatres (including several castratos, as the court
never employed female singers) continued to be recruited from Italy, along with ballet dancers and
orchestral players. The steady purchase of scores resulted in the formation of a large opera collection,
which still exists at the Ajuda Library. A favourite composer of the Portuguese court was Jommelli (1714–
74), who during the last years of his life composed operas and sacred works for Lisbon in exchange for a
pension. During the reigns of José I and his daughter Maria I, Italian operas and serenatas by such
composers as João Cordeiro da Silva, Pedro António Avondano (1714–82), João de Sousa Carvalho (1745–
99/1800) and Jerónimo Francisco de Lima (1743–1822), the last two of whom studied in Naples, were also
performed at court. A large quantity of sacred music by these and other composers connected with the
Seminário da Patriarcal and the royal chapel, among them Luciano Xavier Santos (1734–1808), António
Leal Moreira (1758–1819) and António da Silva Gomes e Oliveira, also reflects the prevailing Italianate style
of the period. After the earthquake, Italian opera, alternating with plays in Portuguese, was performed at
the Rua dos Condes and the Bairro Alto theatres, where one of the great mezzo-sopranos of the second half
of the century, Luísa Todi, began her career. From 1760 onwards the Teatro do Corpo da Guarda in Oporto
also presented seasons of Italian opera.
Leading composers in the field of instrumental music included Carlos de Seixas (1704–42), composer of,
among other works, over 100 surviving keyboard sonatas, and Avondano. Prominent among Portuguese
musicians abroad were the guitar player and composer António da Costa, who settled in Vienna and was
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praised by Burney, and João Pedro de Almeida Mota, who worked at the Madrid court and elsewhere in
Spain. In the last decades of the 18th century the modinha, a type of sentimental song of Brazilian origin
with piano or guitar accompaniment, became very popular as salon music. Composers of modinhas
included Marcos António Portugal (1762–1830), who was the first musical director of the Teatro de S
Carlos, Moreira, the guitar player Manuel José Vidigal and the mestre de capela of Oporto Cathedral,
António da Silva Leite (1759–1833), composer of works for the Portuguese guitar and author of the first
guitar handbook. Keyboard instruments built during the second half of the 18th century include the
clavichords, harpsichords and fortepianos of Manuel and Joaquim José Antunes, Matias Bostem, Henrique
van Casteel and Manuel do Carmo, as well as the many organs made by, among others, António Machado e
Cerveira, which still survive in churches throughout the country.

From the final decade of the 18th century to the first decades of the 20th, Portuguese musical life was
dominated by the two Italian opera houses, the Teatro de S Carlos in Lisbon (1793) and the Teatro de S João
in Oporto (1798), where works by Portuguese composers were only rarely performed. One important
exception to this was Marcos António Portugal, who presented several of his own operas at the S Carlos
during his tenure as musical director (1800–11). Other 19th-century opera composers included João
Evangelista Pereira da Costa (c 1798–1832), Manuel Inocêncio Liberato dos Santos (1805–87), Francisco
Xavier Migoni (1811–61), Francisco de Sá Noronha (1820–81), Miguel Ângelo Pereira (1843–1901),
Francisco de Freitas Gazul (1842–1925), Augusto Machado (1845–1924) and the amateur composers José
Augusto Ferreira Veiga, Viscount of Arneiro (1838–1903), Alfredo Keil (1850–1907) and João Marcelino
Arroio (1861–1930). Several of these wrote Italian operas based on Portuguese history and literary sources.
Machado's Lauriane was first performed in Marseilles in 1883, Keil's Irene was sung at the Teatro Regio in
Turin in 1893 and Arroio's Amore e perdizione was performed in Hamburg in 1910.
Well-known Italian composers, such as Carlo Coccia, Saverio Mercadante and Pietro Coppola, also worked
at the S Carlos. The Teatro de S João always remained a poor relative of the S Carlos and was destroyed by
fire in 1908. Throughout the century several smaller theatres in Lisbon and Oporto presented a varied
repertory of farces, operettas, vaudevilles and zarzuelas, in several cases with music written by local
composers. Sacred music, strongly influenced by Italian operatic style, was cultivated by, among others,
Joaquim Casimiro Júnior (1808–62), Francisco Xavier Migoni (1811–61) and João Guilherme Daddi (1813–
87).
During the first half of the 19th century the leading Portuguese composer of instrumental music was João
Domingos Bomtempo (1775–1842), who pursued a career as a virtuoso pianist in Paris and London before
returning to Lisbon, where he founded the Sociedade Filarmónica in 1822; this performed works by Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven until it was closed for political reasons in 1828. After the civil war of 1828–34,
Bomtempo was appointed director of the newly created Conservatório Nacional (1835), which remained
the country's only official music school throughout the 19th century.
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Later concert societies included the Academia Filarmónica (1838), the Assembleia Filarmónica (1839), the
Academia Melpomenense (1845–61), the Sociedade de Concertos Populares (1860), the Orquestra 24 de
Junho (1870), conducted by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Colonne and Ruddorf, among others, the Sociedade
de Concertos de Lisboa (1875) and the Real Academia dos Amadores de Música (1884), whose music school
offered an alternative to the conservatory. Nevertheless, most concert series were short-lived. In 1845
Liszt gave several concerts in Lisbon, as did Thalberg in 1856. Portuguese instrumentalists who had
notable careers abroad included the clarinettist José Avelino Canongia (1784–1842), the pianist Artur
Napoleão (1843–1925) and the singers Francisco de Andrade (1859–1921), António de Andrade (1854–
1942) and Maurício Bensaúde (1863–1912).
Music published in Portugal remained at a modest level and generally in the hands of foreigners and their
descendants, such as João Baptista Sassetti or Eduardo Neuparth, whose firm later passed into the hands of
Valentim de Carvalho. Instrument makers, most of whom were also of foreign origin, were increasingly
unable to compete with imported instruments.

Cultural changes from the 1870s onwards favoured the development of music criticism and musicology, as
exemplified in journals such as A arte musical (1873–5; 1899–1915) and Amphion (1884–98), and the
activity of scholars such as Joaquim de Vasconcelos, Francisco Marques de Sousa Viterbo and Ernesto
Vieira. In the two main cities, Lisbon and Oporto, Portuguese musicians were increasingly drawn towards
German instrumental music. Influential performers and teachers who studied in Germany included the
violinist, pedagogue and writer Bernardo Valentim Moreira de Sá (1853–1924), who in 1917 founded the
Oporto Conservatory, the cellist Guilhermina Suggia (1888–1950), the conductor Raimundo de Macedo
(1889–1931), the pianist Alexandre Rey Colaço (1854–1928) and the pianist and composer José Vianna da
Motta (1868–1948). A pupil of Liszt and Bülow, Vianna da Motta toured extensively in Europe and the
Americas before returning to Lisbon in 1917 to become director of the Conservatório Nacional. His works
reveal Portuguese nationalist traits within a fundamentally Germanic idiom. Another performer with a
distinguished international career was the conductor Francisco de Lacerda (1869–1934), a pupil of d'Indy
at the Schola Cantorum and of Nikisch and Hans Richter in Berlin.
The music of Luís de Freitas Branco (1890–1955), a colleague of Vianna da Motta at the Conservatório
Nacional, was influenced by French Impressionism and atonal tendancies before moving towards neo-
romantic nationalism in an attempt to create a Portuguese symphonic tradition. Impressionism also
influenced one of the most promising composers of the the beginning of the century, António Fragoso,
who died in 1918 at the age of 21. In Oporto the leading composer in the first half of the 20th century was
Cláudio Carneiro (1895–1963), a pupil of Widor and Dukas. Frederico de Freitas (1902–80), who became
the conductor of the newly founded Orquestra Sinfónica da Emissora Nacional in 1935, produced an
eclectic output embracing instrumental and vocal works, as well as film, ballet and revue music. Two
teachers at the Conservatório Nacional, Armando José Fernandes (1906–83) and Jorge Croner de
Vasconcelos (1910–74), studied in Paris with Cortot, Nadia Boulanger, Dukas and Stravinsky, and
composed music in a neo-classical vein.
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The most distinguished pupil of Freitas Branco, Joly Braga Santos (1924–88), developed the symphonic
tradition inherited from his teacher, evolving from modality to a free chromaticism verging on atonality.
Another central figure of Portuguese 20th-century music, Fernando Lopes Graça (1906–94), a militant
opponent of the Salazar dictatorship, incorporated folk material into his music, along the lines of Bartók
and Kodály, working with Michel Giacometti on an important collection of recordings of folk music (see
§III, 4(ii) below) and arranging many songs for performance by the choir of the Academia de Amadores de
Música.
If a number of composers, such as Victor Macedo Pinto (1917–64) or Maria de Lourdes Martins (b 1926),
represent a transition between neo-classical and more progressive tendencies, the renewal of Portuguese
music in the 1960s was mainly the work of a new generation of composers who studied in Darmstadt.
These included Filipe Pires (b 1934), Alvaro Cassuto (b 1938), Alvaro Salazar (b 1938), founder of the
Oporto-based group Oficina Musical, Constança Capdeville (1937–92) and, above all, Jorge Peixinho
(1940–95), who in 1970 founded the Grupo de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa. Another composer who
attended the Darmstadt summer courses, Emanuel Nunes (b 1941), has worked mainly in Paris and in
Germany. Prominent among the younger generation of Portuguese composers are such figures as João
Pedro Oliveira, António Pinho Vargas and Alexandre Delgado.
While the estado novo (the name by which Salazar's regime was known) created or restored a number of
important musical institutions, such as the Orquestra Sinfónica da Emissora Nacional (National Radio
Orchestra, often known as the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional) in 1934, the Orquestra Sinfónica do
Conservatório de Música do Porto in 1947 and the Teatro de S Carlos, the management of these institutions
and the generally conservative public they catered for were for the most part unsympathetic to avant-
garde tendencies in European music. Nevertheless, during its early years the Orquestra Sinfónica da
Emissora Nacional under Pedro de Freitas Branco (1896–1963), brother of Luís de Freitas Branco, gave the
Portuguese premières of works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Hindemith and Bartók. Among concert societies
active in the first half of the century, the Círculo de Cultura Musical, founded in 1934, introduced
composers such as Prokofiev, Casella, Poulenc, Honegger and Hindemith to Lisbon. The Gabinete de
Estudos Musicais, created in 1942 under the auspices of the Emissora Nacional, promoted national music
by commissioning works from Portuguese composers, as did the folk ballet group Verde Gaio.
In 1963 the Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho created an opera company based at the Teatro da
Trindade, which offered young Portuguese singers an opportunity to pursue an opera career, although it
was unable to establish a national operatic tradition. The company ceased to exist in 1975, and most of its
singers were integrated in the Teatro de S Carlos.
Notable Portuguese performers active in the first half of the 20th century included the tenor Tomáz
Alcaide, the pianists Helena Sá e Costa, José Carlos Sequeira Costa, Marie Antoinette Levèque de Freitas
Branco and Nella Maissa, and the conductor Joaquim da Silva Pereira. From the 1930s onwards musicology
developed in Portugal with the work of Manuel Joaquim, Mario Luis de Sampayo Ribeiro and, in particular,
Macario Santiago Kastner; they have been succeeded by a new generation of musicologists, most of whom
teach at the musicology department of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, created in 1980.
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The most significant factor in Portuguese musical life in the second half of the 20th century was the
creation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1956 ( see Gulbenkian Foundation ). Between 1957 and
1970 the Gulbenkian music festivals presented leading international performers. In 1962 the Gulbenkian
Chamber Orchestra was established (renamed the Gulbenkian Orchestra in 1971); the Gulbenkian Choir, the
first permanent semi-professional choir in the country, was created in 1964, followed in 1965 by the Ballet
Gulbenkian. The Gulbenkian Foundation also promotes the publication and performance of early
Portuguese music, publishing the Portugaliae Musica series (50 volumes by 1995), as well as monographs
and catalogues of musical holdings in Portuguese libraries. Since 1977 it has organized the annual
Encontros Gulbenkian de Música Contemporánea, and since 1980 the annual Jornadas de Música Antiga. It
also continues to promote regular concerts in Lisbon and elsewhere in Portugal.
Since the 1970s several summer festivals have been established, including those in the regions of the Costa
do Estoril, Sintra, Capuchos, the Algarve, Viana do Castelo, the Azores and Madeira. New orchestras have
also been created (Nova Filarmonia, Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa), while others have been
reorganized and renamed (Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa, Orquestra Clássica do Porto). In the early
1980s the Teatro de S Carlos acquired its own permanent orchestra and created the nucleus of a resident
opera company, but by the mid-1990s all that survived of the company was an excellent chorus. In spite of
the various reforms of the curriculum at the Conservatório Nacional and the spread of new music schools,
there remained a dearth of both qualified teachers and capable performers in Portugal. In an attempt to
remedy this, two music high schools were established in Lisbon and Oporto in 1983, and more recently
music departments were created at Aveiro and Évora universities.
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R. Stevenson: Portuguese Music and Musicians Abroad (to 1650) (Lima, 1966); repr. Portugal and Brazil in Transition:
Cambridge, MA, and New York, 1966, ed. R.S. Sayers (Minneapolis, 1968), 310–17, 352–7
E. Veiga de Oliveira: Instrumentos musicais populares portugueses (Lisbon, 1966, enlarged 2/1982)
M. de Sampayo Ribeiro: Livraria de música de El-Rei D. João IV (Lisbon, 1967) [vol.i is a facsimile of the Primeira
parte do index da livraria (Lisbon, 1649)]
R. Stevenson: ‘Portuguese Music: a Historical Résumé’, Journal of the American Portuguese Cultural Society, 4 (1970),
1, 49
G. Doderer: Clavicórdios portugueses do século XVIII/Portugiesische Klavichorde des 18. Jahrhunderts (Lisbon, 1971)
J.A. Alegria: Arquivo das músicas da Sè de évora: catálogo (Lisbon, 1973)
G. Doderer: Orgelmusik und Orgelbau im Portugal des. 17. Jahrhunderts: Untersuchungen an Hand des MS. 964 der
Biblioteca Publica zu Braga (Tutzing, 1978)
Catálogo geral da música portuguesa: repertório contemporâneo (Lisbon, 1979–)
J.F. Branco: ‘A música em Portugal nos anos 40’, Os anos 40 na arte portuguesa: a cultura nos anos 40 (Lisbon, 1982),
vi, 54–75
R. Stevenson: Preface, Antologia de polifonia portuguesa (1490–1680), PM, 37 (1982)
M.C. Brito: ‘Musicology in Portugal since 1960’, AcM, 56 (1984), 29–47
P. Scarnecchia, ed.: La musica in Portogallo (Rome, 1986)
R. Stevenson: ‘Portuguese Musical Contacts Abroad (to 1500)’, Inter-American Music Review, 8/2 (1987), 89–99
D. Montez: An Introduction to Portuguese Vocal Music (San José, 1988)
M.C. de Brito: Estudos de história da música em Portugal (Lisbon, 1989)
M.C. de Brito: Opera in Portugal in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989)
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M.C. de Brito and D. Cramer: Crónicas da vida musical portuguesa na primeira metade do século XIX (Lisbon, 1990)
M. Valena: A arte organística em Portugal, c.1326–1750 (Braga, 1990)
R.V. Nery and P.F. de Castro: História da música (Lisbon, 1991)
M.C. Brito and L. Cymbron: História da música portuguesa (Lisbon, 1992)
O. Rees: Polyphony in Portugal, c.1530–c.1620: Sources from the Monastery of Santa Cruz, Coimbra (New York, 1995)
L. Cymbron, ed.: A arte musical, 1873–1875; 1890–1891 (Ann Arbor, 1996)
III. Traditional music

1. Introduction.
Until the 1970s, music collectors and researchers regarded rural Portugal as one of the last havens for
western European archaic musical traditions, which they attempted to salvage through documentation and
by founding revival groups. Our understanding of music in traditional rural life up to the 1970s has been
largely mediated by the selective documentation that they produced, and by the memories of tradition
bearers, who were themselves often influenced by investigators' conceptions. These as well as the
configurations of revival groups were frequently conditioned by political ideologies.
Documentation and research focussed on practices regarded as archaic, primarily the singing,
instrumental performance and dance that accompanied agricultural and domestic work, marked life-cycle
events, entertained families and communities, and was a basic ingredient in sacred and secular rituals.
Transcriptions and recordings were made of ploughing songs (aboio), threshing songs (canções de malha),
harvest songs (cantiga de cegada or canções de ceifa) and grape and olive gathering songs (canções de
vindima and canções da apanha da azeitona). Some vocal genres documented, such as ballads (romances) in
Trás-os-Montes and polyphonic songs (modas) in southern Alentejo, were performed during agricultural
work and for entertainment. Songs marking life-cycle events were collected throughout rural Portugal,
including lullabies, courting, wedding and mourning songs. Up until the 1950s, in a few relatively isolated
rural areas, older tradition bearers tended to preserve selected musical practices, genres and style that had
been documented at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the profound changes that have taken
place in Portugal since the 1960s influenced those musical practices. Emigration and migration to large
urban centres reduced the rural population to 10% of the country's total. Mechanization of agriculture
contributed to the cessation of agricultural labour as one of the contexts of music making. Radio, television
and sound recordings changed traditional patterns of music production and consumption, introducing
urban music to the remotest village and altering traditional patterns of sociability, which often included
singing. The development of the tourist industry in the 1960s and 70s affected music making in areas that
are economically dependent on tourism such as the Algarve and Madeira.
Page 10 of 25

Within this scenario of profound change, some traditional contexts, genres and styles were radically
changed, ceased to exist or were readapted to perform new functions in new contexts. Songs associated
with agricultural work and traditional forms of domestic sociability fell out of use or were adapted for
performance by revival groups. Selected repertories and musical practices documented in the early 20th
century continue to play a central role in hundreds of religious and secular festivities celebrated annually;
in addition new forms of expressive behaviour have been introduced.
Throughout the country, regular music making is essentially in the hands of formally structured
performance groups of various kinds. These are named groups that perform regularly, are usually legally
constituted as recreational associations and have a fixed membership, as well as artistic and
administrative directorships. In 1998 close to 4000 groups were counted, among which the most
widespread are folklore groups (ranchos folclóricos), civil windbands (bandas filarmónicas), choral groups
(grupos corais or grupos de cantares) and groups of traditional string instruments (tunas).
These groups, which often represent their region, village or locale in religious and secular festivities,
folklore festivals and other events, have been the main repositories of local repertories. In addition, they
play an important role in constructing, maintaining and projecting local and regional identities, which
have been challenged by demographic, socio-economic and cultural changes.
2. Rural traditions.
(i) Vocal musical styles.

Portugal's rural musical traditions are predominantly vocal, with texts that are central to the performance.
Metric strophic songs are widespread, the quatrain is a common poetic structure for songs and different
texts are often set to the same melodies. Creativity with words is particularly valued in song duels between
two or more singers (cantares ao desafio). A few instrumental genres accompany dances or are used in
religious rituals.
Lyrical songs with homophonic instrumental accompaniment are common. However, vocal polyphony in
two, three or four voices is also found in the districts of Aveiro, Beja, Braga, Castelo-Branco and Viana do
Castelo. Except for Beja, where vocal polyphony is primarily practised by men in public contexts, vocal
polyphony is performed by women. In much of the country, pitch is organized according to major and
minor modes, and harmonic accompaniment centres on the alternation of tonic/dominant chords. Church
modes and modal structures that do not correspond to common European practice occur in districts that
have preserved older styles, such as Beja and Castelo-Branco. Duple and triple metres are most common in
vocal music and dance songs. Song texts deal with all aspects of life, past and present: love, nature, the
local village or town, agricultural work, emigration, religious themes and historical and current political
events.
Page 11 of 25

(ii) Dances.
A wide variety of dances continues to thrive, especially within folklore groups, and ranges from medieval
sword dances to adaptations of 18th- and 19th-century central European salon dances. Traditional dances,
which are either local or widespread, are distinguished by their metre choreography and musical repertory.
Dances in duple or triple metre accompanied by strophic dance songs are the most common. Vira, chula and
malhão are three of the most widespread dances, each with numerous local variants. More localized dances
include the corridinho (Algarve), saias (district of Évora and Portalegre), fandango (district of Santarem),
bailinho (Madeira) and dança dos pauliteiros (district of Bragança).
(iii) The romanceiro (traditional balladry).

The ballad (romance) is one of the oldest and most important genres of Portuguese sung poetry. It consists
of a vast repertory of orally transmitted narrative songs and epic poems, of which there are often several
variants that are sung or recited by members of a rural community, in most cases without instrumental
accompaniment. The Portuguese romanceiro has been regarded as one of the richest and most innovative in
Europe. Peripheral regions, such as the north-eastern district of Bragança and the islands of the Azores
and Madeira, have been principal repositories for ballads, which have also been collected throughout
Portugal, as well as from Portuguese communities in Brazil and North America.
Romances have had different uses and functions. In the Azores they were recited or sung to the
accompaniment of the traditional guitar (viola de arame) during moments of pause from work. They were
also sung by women to accompany daily chores, such as the preparation of bread and washing clothes, or
during the Holy Spirit festivities. In the north-eastern district of Bragança, they were sung without
instrumental accompaniment during family gatherings around the fire place, during religious festivities
and during agricultural work, such as threshing and harvesting, where they were sung by two individuals
or groups in alternation at fixed intervals corresponding to the canonical hours. In principle there was a
specific romance for each canonical hour.
Romance texts focus on Carolingian, historical, religious and social themes. In general, there is no fixed
relationship between melody and text. Most ballads are in strophic form and are set to fluid rhythms and
simple melodies, which vary from one region to the next, but generally remain within the range of a 5th or
a 6th. In Trás-os-Montes the melodic organization of the romance largely depends on its function:
romances that are sung during agricultural work tend to be melismatic, while those that are sung for
entertainment are usually syllabic.
3. Instruments.
Most traditional Portuguese musical instruments are used to accompany singing and dancing.
Chordophones constitute the richest and most varied category.
Guitars, designated by the generic term viola, usually have five double courses of metal strings. In his study
of Portuguese musical instruments, Veiga de Oliveira (1982) distinguishes two types of guitars. The
western type has a gently waisted body and comes in three variants: the braguesa (from Braga) with an oval
Page 12 of 25

or round soundhole, which is prevalent in the north-west; the amarantina (from Amarante) with two
heart-shaped soundholes, found in the area of Amarante; the toeira, with an oval soundhole, three double
and two triple courses of strings, popular in Coimbra in the early 20th century. The western type of guitar
with heart-shaped soundholes, two triple and three double courses of strings is also found in the Azores,
where it is called viola de arame or viola da terra. The eastern type of guitar has a sharply waisted body and
comes in two variants: the bandurra, characterized by its round soundhole, profuse ornamentation and a
pair of additional sympathetic strings, was popular in the district of Castelo-Branco; the viola campaniça,
the largest of all Portuguese guitars, has two double and three triple courses of strings and is used to
accompany the song duels called baldão in the district of Beja. The cavaquinho, a small guitar (about 50 cms
long) with four courses of strings, is widespread throughout the north-west and was diffused by
Portuguese settlers and emigrants to many areas where it was renamed, including Madeira (braguinha or
machete), Brazil (machete), Hawaii (ukulele) and Indonesia (kroncong).
The guitarra, also called guitarra portuguesa, is a local adaptation of the ‘English guitar’, which was
introduced to Portugal in the second half of the 18th century by the British colony in Oporto. It is the main
instrument for the accompaniment of Lisbon's fado and the song of Coimbra. It is also used in selected
traditional instrumental ensembles and accompanies vocal music in selected areas of the north, in Alentejo
and the Azores. A type of cittern with a pear-shaped soundboard, it has six double courses of metal strings
and seventeen frets corresponding to three-and-a-half octaves. The neck terminates in a flat, fan-shaped
tuning device with machine screws.
The viola, an acoustic guitar with six metal strings, was adopted as an accompaniment for fado and also in
instrumental ensembles in rural areas. The viola baixo is larger than the viola, has four courses of metal
strings and is used in the accompaniment of fado as well as in traditional string ensembles known as tunas.
The gaita-de-foles (bagpipe) has been documented in Portugal since the 14th century. It has a conical
chanter with nine fingerholds, a drone pipe and a bag made of goatskin. It is used on ceremonial occasions,
especially in the north-east, where it is usually accompanied by a snare and bass drum.
Two kinds of flutes are found in Portugal. An end-blown flute with two front holes and one back hole is
accompanied by the tamboril drum. Played by the same person, this flute and drum ensemble, known as
tamborileiro, is now found only in the north-eastern area bordering Spain. A transverse cane flute with six
holes, a shepherd's instrument, is found in the central eastern area.
Both the chromatic accordion and the diatonic accordion (the latter locally designated concertina) were
introduced to Portugal during the first quarter of the 20th century and were quickly adopted for the
performance of a wide range of musics in both rural and urban areas, accompanying singing and
integrating instrumental ensembles, often replacing traditional string instruments.
The snare drum (caixa) has two skins with one or two sympathetic strings. It is suspended horizontally
from the player's waist and is struck on the upper skin with two wooden drumsticks. The bass drum
(bombo), played with a large padded drumstick, has two skins and is suspended vertically from the player's
neck. Usually played as a pair, both drums have variable sizes and are used for ceremonial purposes.
Page 13 of 25

Two kinds of framedrum are used. The adufe is square, has two skins and interior metal jingles. Each of the
sides of the frame is approximately 45 cm. This instrument, introduced by the Arabs between the 8th and
12th centuries, is mainly found in central eastern Portugal. It is played exclusively by women, who hold it
with the thumbs of both hands and the index finger of the left hand, thereby freeing the remaining fingers
for playing. The pandeiro is a round framedrum, about 20 cm in diameter, with a single skin and metal
jingles. It is found mainly in the district of Évora close to the Spanish border. The pandeireta is a small
pandeiro that is used throughout the country, especially in tunas (ensembles of string instruments). The
sarronca is a friction drum made of a clay pot with a narrow opening covered with a skin, which vibrates
through the movement of a friction stick. It is found in the north-west and in the central eastern area.
Several idiophones are used, including various kinds of castanets in the north-west and north-east; the
reque reque, a wooden scraper found in the north-west and the Tagus river valley; and the ferrinhos
(triangle), common in folklore groups, especially in the north-west and south. The cântaro com abano is a
large clay pot that the player holds below his left arm while hitting the opening with a straw or leather fan;
and the cana is a cane tube about 60 cm in length, cut vertically through the middle, creating two parts that
are struck together. Both instruments are primarily used in the Tagus river valley.
4. Ensembles.
Ranchos folclóricos (‘folklore groups’) are the most widespread ensembles for the performance of revivals
of traditional music and generally include one or several accordions, as well as string, wind and percussion
instruments, which vary from one region to the next. Civil windbands (bandas filarmónicas) are also
widespread. Traditionally two types of ensembles accompanied dance and song in the north-west. The
rusga included a braguesa, a cavaquinho, a viola, a reque reque and ferrinhos. To these instruments a
concertina or an accordion were also added. The chula, a term that also designates a dance, is similar to the
rusga. However, the amarantina substitutes the braguesa, and a rabeca chuleira, a short-necked fiddle that
has fallen out of use, was added. Tunas, ensembles primarily formed of string instruments, including
guitars of different sizes, mandolins and cavaquinhos, are found primarily in the north and in Madeira.
Their repertory consists of instrumental compositions written for this kind of ensemble and arrangements
of vocal music. Smaller kinds of ensembles are also found. A bagpipe accompanied by a bass and snare
drum is found on the west coast from the north down to the centre.
5. Traditional music and religious ritual.

Religious rituals provide one of the most important contexts for traditional music making throughout
Portugal. There are rituals and their associated repertories that are central to the official religious
calendar. For example, during the Christmas season in many villages and towns, January songs (janeiras)
and kings' songs (reis) are performed by groups of children and adults at villagers' doorsteps, wishing the
members of the household happy holidays and requesting food donations. Specific repertories and rituals
also mark Carnival, Lent and Easter.
Page 14 of 25

Hundreds of religious festivities (festas) and pilgrimages (romarias) honouring the Virgin Mary or saints
are celebrated annually in villages, towns and cities throughout Portugal. These are complex ritual events,
lasting from one to several days, in which religious devotion, social interaction and economic transaction
intersect. Music, dance and other forms of expressive behaviour structure these festivities ritually,
sonically, spatially and temporally. Festas are highly dynamic arenas for constructing cultural place, for
shaping and negotiating local and regional identities, and for enacting power relations. Some are local
events drawing participants from their communities and nearby parishes, as well as visiting emigrants.
Others attract visitors and pilgrims from a wider region, from other parts of the country or from Spain, and
have been developed and promoted by municipal governments as tourist attractions.
In the past few decades festas have undergone profound transformations, which have affected expressive
behaviour. Performances of civil windbands (bandas filarmónicas) are central to most festas. However,
singing and dancing by participants, including repertories that are specific to the festa, have declined or
disappeared and have been replaced by performances by a variety of formally structured ensembles, such
as folklore groups and urban popular music groups, as well as by recorded music broadcast through
loudspeakers.
Although festas vary in their scope and ritual detail, a basic sequence of ritual events, in which expressive
behaviour plays a central role, can be established for the main day of festivities in many rural festas
throughout central and northern Portugal. The alvorada is an announcement of the beginning of the festa
in the early morning through the performances of a civil windband (banda filarmónica) or bagpipe and
drum ensemble that marches through the streets of the village or town. Arruada, peditório or recolha de
andores are requests for donations by the festa organizers who also march through the village or town
streets, accompanied by a civil windband, and who stop in front of donors' houses to collect money and
goods that are sold for the benefit of the festa and local parish. This is followed by a sung mass, the only
liturgical event without which the festa cannot take place, and the procissão, a procession parading the
icons of the Virgin Mary and/or saint(s) through a fixed itinerary, moving solemnly to the rhythm of the
marches performed by the civil windband. Finally, the arraial, a secular celebration, takes place, following
the procession and ending in the late evening. Donations are sold and an array of performances takes
place, which often includes: windbands, folklore groups, popular music artists and groups, and a dance for
local youth. Expressive behaviour, including music and dance, also plays an important role in a variety of
secular celebrations such as municipal holidays.
6. Revival movements.
A movement for the revival of traditional music and dance from rural areas emerged in the early decades of
the 20th century and was configured by political ideologies, cultural policies, local interests and aesthetic
preferences. Undergirding this movement was the conceptualization of ‘tradition’ (also designated
folclore, cultura popular or património) as an ‘objective repository’ of music sounds, dances, texts and
costumes constituting essential ingredients in the construction of cultural identity. Throughout the 20th
century many scholars, collectors and selected tradition bearers claimed that ‘tradition’ was endangered
by modernizing processes, and they attempted to ‘salvage’ it by collecting traditional poetry, songs,
dances and objects, as well as by publishing song anthologies and ethnographies. Some also founded
Page 15 of 25

formally organized groups of dancers, singers and instrumentalists to perform selected representations of
local music and dance as they were supposedly practised in the late 19th century and the early 20th, within
contexts that were different from their original settings, causing them to take on new functions and
meanings. They thus (re)created a mythologized past, geographically circumscribed and culturally
defined, embodying it as staged performance. Through songs, poetry, dance, costumes and artefacts,
revival groups evoke traditional rural landscapes, agricultural labour, social life and values that have
vanished. They thus (re)construct or symbolically reinvent the past, visually and sonically embodying local
identities and shaping the present, as well as mapping trajectories for the future.
(i) Ranchos folclóricos.

The most widespread ‘revival groups’ are ranchos folclóricos (‘folklore groups’), over two thousand of
which represent the music, dances and costumes of local communities. These are ensembles of 30–50
dancers, singers and instrumentalists that perform staged revivals of traditional dance, song and
costumes of their villages, regions or otherwise circumscribed areas, ideally representing practices that go
back to the beginning of the 20th century.
During the 1930s and the following decades ranchos folclóricos were formed at the initiative of the estado
novo. An ideologically charged concept of folclore provided the basis for the development of the rancho
folclórico model. Folclore was associated with the picturesque image of rural Portugal projected by the
regime's political propaganda. Ranchos folclóricos were required to affiliate with the Fundação Nacional
para Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT), founded in 1935 and inspired by the German Fascist organization Kraft
durch Freude. The FNAT sponsored, promoted and oriented ranchos folclóricos throughout the country.
Following the 1974 revolution, ranchos folclóricos continued to mushroom but were transformed into
grassroots organizations, founded and maintained through local initiative and largely sustained by
subsidies from municipal governments, regional tourist offices and, in some areas, by restaurants and
hotels.
The activities of ranchos folclóricos are centred on the preparation of staged performances of dances.
Performances of vocal or instrumental music without dance are rare. Ranchos perform in folklore festivals,
religious and secular festivities and, in some cases, in tourist establishments. A rancho folclórico ideally
performs a cross-section of the dance and song repertory of the area it represents. In practice, the choice
of repertory is conditioned by its potential attractiveness to the audience. Dances that are considered
emblematic of their regions tend to predominate.
(ii) Urban revival groups.

Following the 1974 revolution, a movement for the revival and dissemination of traditional music from
rural areas emerged among university students and young professionals, especially in Lisbon, Coimbra
and Oporto. Many of the students who formed urban revival groups participated in alphabetization
campaigns and other civic service programmes in rural areas following 1974 and collected music and local
Page 16 of 25

artefacts as part of their mission. They were largely inspired by the ideals and approach of Fernando Lopes
Graça and Michel Giacometti, who emphasized the historical and aesthetic value of traditional music,
called for its preservation and documented selected traditions through recordings and writings.
Over a dozen revival groups were formed between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. Typically they had
ten or more members who performed traditional repertories from various parts of the country, which they
had learnt from tradition bearers through recordings and transcriptions, using both traditional and non-
traditional instruments. Some groups attempted to reproduce the traditional model as closely as possible,
while others performed stylized re-creations of what they and other researchers had collected, generally
preserving the main melodic line and text, while introducing new harmonic, rhythmic and melodic
elements.
7. Documentation and research.

Interest in rural musical tradition goes back to the 1870s and was initially inspired by Portuguese literary
romanticism, as well as by philological and ethnological research. The first musical transcriptions were
published by Neves e Melo in 1872 and marked the beginning of a phase that lasted up to the 1920s in
which traditional music was documented through musical transcriptions. Three landmark volumes of
harmonized transcriptions by César das Neves and Gualdino Campos followed; these included both rural
and urban songs (1893, 1895 and 1898). In 1902 the Musical Arts Council for the Royal Conservatory of
Music solicited musical transcriptions of local traditions from subscribers to its journal and provided
guidelines for collecting. Over a decade later, prominent critic António Arroyo discussed the limitations of
notation and urged collectors to use the gramophone. No evidence is thus far available as to the use of
sound recording for the systematic documentation of traditional music prior to 1940.
The 1920s marked the beginning of a new phase in the investigation of traditional music that lasted up to
the 1980s. There was a substantial increase in the quantity and quality of documentation and research that
focussed on regional repertories, their origins and distinctive traits. Surveys of traditional musical style,
genres and instruments throughout mainland Portugal were also published.
In 1932–3 Kurt Schindler made a few recordings and musical transcriptions of traditional music during his
brief passage through Trás-os-Montes. However, the first systematic recorded survey of rural traditions
from continental Portugal was carried out in 1940 by the composer and musicologist Armando Leça (1891–
1977), who was sponsored by Portuguese National Radio (Emissora Nacional, presently Radio Difusão
Portuguesa), where this unpublished collection is deposited. Since the 1950s, over one hundred
ethnographic recordings have been published in Portugal and abroad, documenting music primarily from
areas that preserved archaic traditions. Noteworthy are the published collections of the composer and
ethnomusicologist Artur Santos (1914–87) from his research in the Azores (1956–65), and the researcher
Michel Giacometti in collaboration with the composer Fernando Lopes Graça from Trás-os-Montes,
Algarve, Minho, the Beiras and Alentejo (1959–81). See also §IV, 3 below.
IV. Popular music

Page 17 of 25

The major cities of Portugal have been important centres for the production and dissemination of a rich
array of urban popular musics. In these cities, musical genres and styles developed, rural traditions were
reinterpreted and foreign traditions were adopted.
1. Before 1974.
The 1960s marked the beginning of a period of expansion and innovation in popular music that has
continued up to the present. Rock and jazz were introduced, political song developed, the 19th-century
tradition of Lisbon's fado and Coimbra's song were revitalized, Portuguese styles of pop and rock evolved,
musics from the former African colonies and Brazil occupied an increasingly important place in Lisbon's
musical life and local styles of rap and hip hop emerged.
(i) Fado and cançāo de Coimbra.

Fado is the best known genre of Portuguese music outside Portugal. It has two distinct traditions. The most
widely known is from Lisbon and involves a solo vocalist, instrumental accompanists and audiences in a
communicative process using verbal musical, facial and bodily expression. A separate though related
tradition, also named fado or canção de Coimbra (‘Coimbra song’), is a lyrical performance tradition that
thrives in the central city of Coimbra, where it is integrated into the academic life of the medieval
university. Lisbon's fado emerged in the second quarter of the 19th century and has remained essentially
an oral tradition. While some of its characteristics can be traced back to its initial phase of development,
several aspects of fado have changed considerably, including its social context, performance practice and
repertory.
(ii) Political song.

Political song (canção de intervenção) played an important role in protesting against the totalitarian regime
of the estado novo. José Afonso (1929–87) was one of its main protagonists, but other musicians, several of
whom had been exiled in France, also contributed to its development and include Adriano Correia de
Oliveira, José Mário Branco, Luís Cília, Francisco Fanhais, José Jorge Letria, José Barata Moura and Sérgio
Godinho. These musicians traced a new course for urban popular music and influenced a generation of
musicians, some of whom also participated in this movement and are still active, including Fausto,
Vitorino, Janita Salomé and Júlio Periera.
The texts of political song, often written by the composer-singer, are politically and socially engaged.
Melodies, in conjunction with the accompaniment, reinforce textual content. The musical style reflects
influences from traditional music, French urban popular song of the 1960s, African music and Brazilian
popular music. By the late 1970s the revolutionary climate had subsided and the need for expressing
political militancy through song was no longer felt by poets, composers and singers, who redefined their
role and creative contribution.
Page 18 of 25

2. Since 1974.
The 1980s and 90s were marked by the search for a new musical discourse for urban popular music, the
increase, commodification and industrialization of musical production, the growth of music consumption
through recording and broadcast media and the globalization of the production and dissemination of
urban popular music. The recording industry, essentially in the hands of multinational companies (EMI,
BMG, Polygram, Sony Music and Warner) and over two dozen local independent producers, has played a
central role in producing, shaping and disseminating urban popular music. The increase in production by
recording companies was paralleled by a significant increase in the purchase of record, cassette and CD
players, a 70% increase between 1985 and 1997 according to a recent study.
The boom in musical production during the 1980s and 90s was accompanied by the diversification of the
musical domains and styles produced and consumed in Portugal, and the emergence of new styles that,
although intended primarily for Portuguese audiences, increasingly took into account the global market.
In the late 1970s and 80s there was a boom in the number of Portuguese rock groups and a local style of
rock developed. Jazz saw a substantial increase in the involvement of musicians and audiences. Several
transplanted musical traditions, especially from the former African colonies, thrived in Lisbon, and
foreign styles such as rap and hip hop were adapted locally. In all, two stylistic tendencies can be observed
in the popular musics of the 1980s and 90s: a musical discourse created by Portuguese musicians that is
integrated within the major international developments of commercial popular music, and a new musical
style that vindicates its Portugueseness by drawing upon various musical elements identified by musicians
and audiences as Portuguese and by emphasizing the Portuguese language.
3. Research.
Up to the 1980s, researchers neglected urban musical phenomena or deemed them unworthy of study.
Lisbon's fado, however, has been the subject of historical research and ideological debate, as well as recent
anthropological and ethnomusicological investigation. It was also documented from an early date. Foreign
record companies recorded fado from the first decade of the 20th century onwards. The Portuguese
company Valentim de Carvalho started issuing recordings of fado in 1926, when it became the sole agent of
Columbia in Portugal and Portuguese West Africa. Useful information on other urban music domains,
genres, artists, groups, song texts and recordings is provided in selected journalistic publications.
The 1980s marked the beginning of a new phase of ethnomusicological research in Portugal.
Ethnomusicology was introduced as an academic discipline within the Musicology Department at the
Universidade Nova de Lisboa (founded in 1980), where an ethnomusicology graduate programme and a
research institute (Instituto de Ethnomusicologia, INET) were launched in 1990 and 1995 respectively.
Recent research by academically trained ethnomusicologists focusses on the array of current research
problems, including the use of music in the construction of identity among immigrants from the former
Portuguese colonies and among Portuguese emigrants in other countries; the history of the recording
industry and its role in shaping urban musical practices; cultural policy and its impact on music making;
urban musical genres such as fado, rap and political song; the role of civil windbands in religious
festivities; and the revival and re-creation of expressive behaviour during the 20th century.
Page 19 of 25

Bibliography
AND OTHER RESOURCES
General
A. Garrett: Romanceiro e cancioneiro geral (Lisbon, 1843–51, 3/1900–01)
A.A. das Neves e Mello: Músicas e cantigas populares colligidas da tradição (Lisbon, 1872)
J. Leite de Vasconcellos: Tradições populares de Portugal (Oporto, 1882, rev. 2/1986 by M. Viegas Guerreiro)
J. Leite de Vasconcellos: Romanceiro português (Lisbon, 1886, enlarged 2/1958–60)
C. das Neves and G. Campos: Cancioneiro de músicas populares (Oporto, 1898)
E. Vieira: Dicionário musical (Lisbon, 1899)
Conselho de Arte Musical do Conservatório Real de Lisboa: ‘Cancioneiro popular português’, Revista do Conservatório
Real de Lisboa, 1 (1902), 15–16
T. Braga: História de poesia popular portuguesa (Lisbon, 3/1902–5//R)
M.A. Lambertini: Chansons et instruments: reseignements pour l'étude du folk-lore portuguais (Lisbon, 1902)
A. Arroyo: ‘Sobre as conções populares portuguesas e o modo de fazer a sua colheita’, Velhas canções e romances
populares portugueses, ed. P.F. Thomás (Coimbra, 1913), 7–52
P.F. Thomás: Velhas canções e romances populares portugueses (Coimbra, 1913)
M.A. Lambertini: ‘Portugal’, EMDC, 1/iv (1920), 2434–69
A. Leça: Da música portuguesa (Lisbon, 1922)
R. Gallop: ‘The Folk Music of Portugal 1’, ML, 14 (1933), 222–31
R. Gallop: ‘The Folk Music of Portugal 2’, ML, 14 (1933), 343–55
R. Gallop: Portugal: a Book of Folk-ways (Cambridge, 1936)
K. Schindler: Folk Music and Poetry of Spain and Portugal/Música y poesía popular de España y Portugal (New York,
1941); ed. I.J. Katz, M. Manzono Alonso and S.G. Armistead (Salamanca and New York, 1991)
A. Leça: Músic popular portuguesa (Oporto, 1942)
F. Lopes-Graça: A canção popular portuguesa (Lisbon, 1953, 4/1991)
R. Bonito: Chulas, charambas e desgarradas (Oporto, 1959)
F. de C. Pires de Lima: A chula: verdadeira canção nacional (Lisbon, 1962)
Page 20 of 25

E. Veiga de Oliveira: Instrumentos musicais populares portugueses (Lisbon, 1966, enlarged 2/1982)
M. Giacometti and F. Lopes-Graça: Cancioneiro popular português (Lisbon, 1981)
M. Correia: Música popular portuguesa: um ponto de partida (Coimbra, 1984)
A. Duarte: 25 Anos de rock'n Portugal: a arte eléctrica de ser português (Lisbon, 1984)
L.F. Rebello: História do teatro de revista em Portugal I: da regeneração à república and II: da república até Hoje II
(Lisbon, 1984)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco, M.C. Correia and R.C. Neves: ‘Commercial LPs of the Grupos de Recolha e Divulgação de
Música Popular Portuguesa: Ensembles for Collecting and Disseminating Portuguese Traditional Music from Rural
Areas’, YTM, 18 (1986), 205–10
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco and M. Toscano: ‘In Search of a Lost World?: an Overview of Documentation and Research on
the Traditional Music of Portugal’, YTM, 20 (1988), 158–92
A.A. Alves: Arabesco: da música árabe e da música portuguesa (Lisbon, 1989)
P. Ferré: ‘O romanceiro’, Portugal moderno: tradições, ed. J.P. Brito (Lisbon, 1991), 121–30
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco: ‘Safeguarding Traditional Music in Contemporary Portugual’, World Music, Musics of the World:
Aspects of Documentation, Mass Media and Acculturation, ed. M.P. Baumann (Wilhelmshaven, 1992), 177–90
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco: ‘Some Aspects of the “Cante” Tradition of the Town of Cuba, Portugal’, Livro de homenagem a
Santiago Kastner, eds. M.F.C. Rodrigues, M. Morais and R.V. Nery (Lisbon, 1992), 547–61
A. Barreto: A situação social em Portugal, 1960–1995 (Lisbon, 1996)
M.F. Mónica: Os costumes em Portugal (Lisbon, 1996)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco, ed.: Portugal and the World: the Encounter of Cultures in Music (Lisbon, 1997) [incl.
‘Introduction: Five Centuries of Cross Cultural Processes in Music’]
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco: Voix du Portugal (Paris, 1997)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco and M.J. Lima: ‘Práticas musicais locais: alguns indicadores preliminares’, Revista do
Observatório das Actividades Culturais, 4 (1998), 10–13
J.S. Neves: Os profissionais do disco: um estudo da indústria fonográfice em Portugal (Lisbon, 1999)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco, ed.: Enciclopédia de música em Portugal no sécolo XX (Lisbon, forthcoming)
Local and regional studies

F. Martins: Folklore do concelho de Vinhais (Coimbra, 1928–38)
R. Gallop: ‘The Folk Music of Eastern Portugal’, MQ, 20 (1934), 96–106
Page 21 of 25

G. Sampaio: Cancioneiro minhoto (Braga, 1940)
V. Pereira: Cancioneiro de Cinfães (Oporto, 1950)
A. Marvão: Cancioneiro alentejano: corais majestosos, coreográficos e religiosos do Baixo Alentejo (Braga, 1955)
V. Pereira: Cancioneiro de Resende (Oporto, 1957)
V. Pereira: Cancioneiro de Arouca (Oporto, 1959)
A. Caufriez: ‘La survivance du romanceiro dans les chants de Fauchage du Trás-os-Montes, Portugal’, YIFMC, 21 (1980),
1–26
A. Mourinho: Cancioneiro tradicional e danças populares mirandesas (Bragança, 1984)
J. Purcell: Novo romanceiro português das ilhas atlânticas (Madrid, 1987)
J.C. Valente: ‘A FNAT: das origens a 1941, estado novo e a alegria no trabalho’, História, new ser. 18/6 (1995), 4–17
A. Caufriez: Le chant du pain: la ballade au Trás-os-Montes, Portugal (Paris, 1997)
P. Lameiro: ‘Práticas musicais nas festas religiosas do concelho de Leiria: o lugar privilegiado das bandas
filarmónicas’, Actas dos 3°s Cursos Internacionais de Verão de Cascais, 4 (1997), 213–54
J.C. Valente: ‘Fundação Nacional para a Alegria no Trabalho (FNAT)’, Dicionário de história do estado novo (1997)
S. Armistead and others: Cancioneiro tradicional de Trás-os-Montes (Madison, WI, 1998)
P. Lameiro: ‘Corêtos sagrados: algum reportório litúrgico das filarmónicas do concelho de Leiria’, Cultura: Revista de
História e Teoria das Ideias, 2nd ser., 10 (1998), 255–90
Folklore
S. Sardo: ‘O papel do grupo folclórico (federado) no contexto da música popular portuguesa’, Boletim da Associação
Portuguesa de Educação Musical, 58 (1988), 58–9
J. Soeiro de Carvalho: ‘A nação folclórica: projecção nacional, política cultural e etnicidade em Portugal’, Revista da
Sociedade Ibérica de Etnomusicologia, 2 (1996)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco and J.F. Branco: Vozes do povo: A fólclorização em Portugal (Lisbon, forthcoming)
Popular urban music

P. de Carvalho: História do fado (Lisbon, 1903, 2/1982)
A. Pimentel: A triste canção do sul: subsídios para a história do fado (Lisbon, 1904/R)
M. de S. Pinto: ‘O Lundum: o avô do fado’, Ilustração, 6 (1931), 17–19
L. Moita: O fado: canção dos vencidos (Lisbon, 1936)
Page 22 of 25

F. de Freitas: ‘Fado’, Enciclopédia luso-brasileira de cultura (Lisbon, 1969)
A. Osório: A mitologia fadista (Lisbon, 1974)
J.J. Letria: A canção política em Portugal (Lisbon, 1978)
J. Pais de Brito: ‘O fado: um canto na cidade’, Ethnologia, 50/1 (1983), 149–84
A.F. de Costa and M. das D. Guerreiro: O trágico e o contraste: o fado no bairro de Alfama (Lisbon, 1984)
V. Pavão dos Santos: Amália: uma biografia (Lisbon, 1987)
M. de Andrade: ‘Fado’, Dicionário musical brasileiro, ed., O. Alvarenga and F.C. Toni (Belo Horizonte, 1989)
A. Duarte: ‘Da balada de intervenção à música popular portuguesa e aos novos ritmos modernos’, Portugal
contemporâneo, ed. A. Reis (Lisbon, 1989)
E. Sucena: Lisboa: o fado e os fadistas (Lisbon, 1992)
J. Pais de Brito, ed.: Fado: Voices and Shadows (Lisbon, 1994)
R. de Carvalho: As músicas do fado (Oporto, 1994)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco: ‘The Dialogue between Voices and Guitars in Fado Performance Practice’, Fado: Voices and
Shadows, ed. J. Pais de Brito (Lisbon, 1994), 125–40
J.A. Salvador: José Afonso: o rosto da utopia (Lisbon, 1994)
J.R. Tinhorão: Fado: dança do Brasil, cantar de Lisboa: o fim de um mito (Lisbon, 1994)
M. de S.J. Côrte-Real: ‘Sons de Abril’, Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, 6 (1996), 141–72
P. Vernon: A History of the Portuguese Fado (Lisbon, 1998)
S. El-S. Castelo-Branco and J.S. de Carvalho: Sons de cidades: fado, samba, rap e outras músicas (Lisbon, forthcoming)
Ethnomusicological recordings
Portugal Today: Rui Veloso, Trovante, Madredeus, Sétima Legião, António Pinho Vargas etc., EMI-Valentim de Carvalho
797836 2 (1991)
Amália Rodrigues: Abbey Road, rec. 1952, EMI-Valentim de Carvalho 07777 81195 24 (1992)
Brigada Vitor Jara: 15 anos de recriação da música tradicional Portuguesa, Caravela CV-9202 (1992)
Fado de Coimbra 1926–1930, Interstate HTCD 15/Tradisom TRAD005 (1992)
Tempos de Coimbra: oito décadas no canto e na guitarra, EMI 0777 79960729 (1992) [incl. disc notes by A. Brojo and A.
Portugal]
Biografia do fado, EMI-Valentim de Carvalho 724383 1965 24 (1994)
Page 23 of 25

Musical Traditions of Portugal, Folkways SF 40435 (1994) [incl. disc notes by S. El-S. Castelo-Branco]
Alfredo Marceneiro: a casa da mariquinhas, rec. 1960, EMI-Valentim de Carvalho 72438 52856 22 (1996)
José Afonso: cantigas do maio, rec. 1971, Movieplay JA 80004 (1996)
Music from the Edge of Europe, EMI-Hemisphere 7243859270 27 (1997)
Portuguese Folk Music: Minho. Trás-os-Montes, Beiras, Alentejo, Algarve, rec. 1959–70, Portugalsom-Strauss SP 4198 to
4202 (1998) [incl. disc notes by M. Giacometti and F.L. Graça]
See also
Americas, §II, 5: Encountering and mixing communities and traditions, Immigrant musics, 1800–present.
Fado, §2: ‘Canção de Coimbra’
Cantiga
Lisbon
Copyright, §VI: Romania
Folia
Antunes
National anthems: Portugal
Conceição, Manoel Lourenço da
Dos Santos
Fontanes, Joaquim António Peres
Fontanes, Simão
Lobo, Heitor
Sá Couto, Manoel de
Solha, Francisco António
periodicals
Lambertini
United States of America, §II, 3(ii)(c): Traditional music, Hispanic American., i) Contemporary traditional music.,
Portuguese American.
Radio, §III, 1: Western Europe (including Scandinavia)
Page 24 of 25

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Portugal (opera) <http://oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/
omo-9781561592630-e-5000002920> in Oxford Music Online <http://oxfordmusiconline.com>
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Portugal, Republic of (Port.

Portugal, Republic of (Port. República Portuguesa)

I. Historical and cultural background

II. Art music

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

1. The Middle Ages.

2. The 16th and 17th centuries.

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

3. The 18th century.

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

4. The 19th century.

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

5. The 20th century.

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

MCL, suppl. (‘Portugiesische Musik’; P. de Waxel)

J. de Vasconcellos: Os musicos portuguezes: biographia-bibliographia (Oporto, 1870)

J. Vasconcellos: El-Rey D. João o 4to.: biographia (Oporto, 1900/R)

E. Vieira: Diccionario biographico de musicos portuguezes (Lisbon, 1900)

M.A. Lambertini: ‘Portugal’, EMDC, 1/iv (1920), 2401–69

M.S. Kastner: Contribución al estudio de la música española y portuguesa (Lisbon, 1941)

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

F. Lopes-Graça: A música portuguesa e os seus problemas (Oporto, 1944–73, 2/1989)

T. Borba and F. Lopes-Graça: Dicionário de música (Lisbon, 1956)

A. Carneiro: A música em Braga (Braga, 1959)

J. de Freitas Branco: História da música portuguesa (Lisbon, 1959, 3/1995)

J. de Freitas Branco: Alguns aspectos da música portuguesa contemporânea (Lisbon, 1960)

J.A. Alegria: Arquivo das músicas da Sè de évora: catálogo (Lisbon, 1973)

Catálogo geral da música portuguesa: repertório contemporâneo (Lisbon, 1979–)

R. Stevenson: Preface, Antologia de polifonia portuguesa (1490–1680), PM, 37 (1982)

M.C. Brito: ‘Musicology in Portugal since 1960’, AcM, 56 (1984), 29–47

P. Scarnecchia, ed.: La musica in Portogallo (Rome, 1986)

D. Montez: An Introduction to Portuguese Vocal Music (San José, 1988)

M.C. de Brito: Estudos de história da música em Portugal (Lisbon, 1989)

M.C. de Brito: Opera in Portugal in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989)

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

M. Valena: A arte organística em Portugal, c.1326–1750 (Braga, 1990)

R.V. Nery and P.F. de Castro: História da música (Lisbon, 1991)

M.C. Brito and L. Cymbron: História da música portuguesa (Lisbon, 1992)

L. Cymbron, ed.: A arte musical, 1873–1875; 1890–1891 (Ann Arbor, 1996)

III. Traditional music

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

(i) Vocal musical styles.

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

(iii) The romanceiro (traditional balladry).

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

5. Traditional music and religious ritual.

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Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

(i) Ranchos folclóricos.

(ii) Urban revival groups.

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7. Documentation and research.

IV. Popular music

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(i) Fado and cançāo de Coimbra.

(ii) Political song.

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

Subscriber: University of North Carolina - Greensboro; date: 12 October 2023

J. Leite de Vasconcellos: Romanceiro português (Lisbon, 1886, enlarged 2/1958–60)

C. das Neves and G. Campos: Cancioneiro de músicas populares (Oporto, 1898)