Music history of Portugal

In the early days of the Catholic Church, several local liturgies developed, such as the Gallican in France, the Sarum in England, the antique Roman in Rome and the Ambrosian rite in Milan.

The main source of the Hispanic rite is the León Antifonary (tenth century), which was most probably copied from an original collected in Beja (now in Alentejo, southern Portugal).

The oldest manuscript (eleventh century) of Portuguese liturgical music in Toledan Hispanic notation is kept at the University of Coimbra General Library.

This measure was eased by the fact that, during the Reconquista, most of the bishops were French (Gérard, Maurice Bourdin, Jean Péculier, Bernard, Hughes).

The only musical source known until recently was due to a bookseller in Madrid, who found a parchment with the seven Cantigas de Amigo by Martin Codax, six of them with the respective melodies, in the beginning of the 20th century.

Jehan Simon de Haspre was a well-known composer and defender of the ars subtilior and helped popularize polyphony while in the court of Fernando I of Portugal.

As with the trovadoresque poetry, we keep important collections of texts of the 15th and 16th century (e.g. Cancioneiro Geral, compiled by Garcia de Resende), but the musical documents are fewer.

The first two, similar to the French virelai and to the Italian ballata, are generally dedicated to the love thematic, though satire and social criticism are not excluded.

The musical performances at Santa Cruz competed with those at El Escorial, and were praised for their conciliation between polyphony and the respect for the sacred texts.

In 1555, they are in charge of the Arts College in Coimbra (the superior school in Portugal with most prestige), after the expulsion by the Inquisition of its most reputed teachers (like André de Gouveia); iii) the Portuguese church participated actively in the Council of Trent and, in 1564, Portugal becomes the only Catholic country where the council decisions (namely those concerning the musical practice in the church) are integrally published as laws.

These continued the pedagogical action of their teacher, worthing him references as «mestre de toda boa musica deste reino» («teacher of every good music in this kingdom») and «el Mendes Sonoroso que de Musicos llena toda a Europa» («the sound Mendes who replenishes Europe with musicians»).

The manuscripts kept at the General Library of the University of Coimbra reveal innovative polyphonic practices, such as polychorality, accompanied monody and instrument obligato.

The ducal chapel maintained a magnificent liturgy and, in 1609, Teodósio II founded the Santos Reis Magos College, working in a similar way to the Évora school.

Robelo, some of whose pieces have been issued on CD, composed in an innovative style, making use of opulent polychoral writing à la Giovanni Gabrieli and combining it with the more conservative idiom of Palestrina.

(Or, if a pedalboard was included, it was very basic, and it forbade any melodic complexity of the sort that German composers of organ music from the early 16th century, such as Arnolt Schlick, took for granted in their own pedal parts.)

For example, these organs frequently incorporated a device known as meio-registo ("half-stop"), which, when activated, divided the keyboard into two distinct parts with sharp contrasts in timbre, giving the effect of two manuals instead of one.

Another conspicuous feature in both Portugal and Spain was the horizontal placing (em chamada, the Portuguese called it) of particularly powerful, strident reed stops, very useful for imitating trumpet fanfares.

In the 16th century António Carreira was the chief Portuguese organist-composer (his significance to Portugal resembles that of his slightly older contemporary Antonio de Cabezón to Spain).

The main figures in this connection were Gaspar dos Reis, employed at Braga Cathedral; Pedro de Araújo; and a priest-composer, Diogo da Conceição.

After the definitive peace with Spain, the monarch will try to modernize the Portuguese economy and to drive the country to a development scheme similar to the French Absolutism of Louis XIV.

The main originality on D. João V's absolutism is that he managed, using his influence with the Pope, to face the huge political, economical and cultural power of the Church, by reorganizing it in order to strength its unity and discipline and then putting it under the royal authority.

As such, he contracted the brilliant Master of the Capella Giulia, in Rome, Domenico Scarlatti, as Mestre da Capela Real and music teacher of princess D. Maria Magdalena Bárbara and founded in 1713 a specialized school annex to the Patriarchal Basilica: the Patriarchal Seminary, which would become the major music school in Portugal and form generations of professional musicians of remarkable quality until the foundation of the National Conservatory in 1835.

The neapolitan influence is enormous and, under D. José and D. Maria, the gifted music students of the Patriarchal are sent to Santo Onofre Conservatory in Naples.

José Vianna da Motta (1868–1948) and Luís de Freitas Branco (1890–1955) have a special place in the Portuguese musical life in the turn of the 20th century.

Luís de Freitas Branco (1890–1955) is usually appointed as the «introducer of modernism in Portugal», by his decisive role in the approximation of Portuguese music to the most innovative European aesthetics, namely the Schönberg atonalism and the French impressionism.

In the turn of the 20th century, other relevant composers are Francisco de Lacerda (1869–1934), Óscar da Silva (1870–1958), Luiz Costa (1879–1960) and António Fragoso (1897–1918).

The military coup of 1926 installed in Portugal a dictatorship (self-called Estado Novo, "the new state") which would condition the Portuguese life for near half century.

This propaganda had its maximum height at the Nationality Centenary in 1940; the S. Carlos Theatre was then reopened after a restoration with an opera by the regime semi-official composer Ruy Coelho.

Curiously, the most important figure of Portuguese musical life in that period is a composer who openly contested the régime and its aesthetic orientations and who, consequently, was forced to do his entire activity outside the institutional circuits: Fernando Lopes Graça.

Fernando Lopes Graça (1906–1995) was student of Tomás Borba, Luiz de Freitas Branco and Vianna da Motta at the National Conservatory and finished the Superior Course on Composition in 1931.