In 1956, Fernando Lopes Graça brought together seven small orchestral pieces into a Divertimento. Three years earlier, the political regime had banned him from teaching. He had already been imprisoned twice in the 1930s, both times for political reasons. Despite this, and against all odds, on the first day of the following year this work was performed representing Portugal at the Lausanne International Fair in Switzerland. The invitation came from the pavilion’s architect, Francisco Conceição Silva, who intended to create a “total work” there.
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As the guest of honor that year, Portugal stood out with an exclusive pavilion at the Lausanne Fair. This was a highly prestigious international event in the post-war context; a true showcase of industry, art, and innovation. The space displayed photographic enlargements illustrating the country’s industrial and commercial entrepreneurship, ceramic panels by Querubim Lapa, tapestries by Almada Negreiros, a bronze sculpture titled Musicians by Jorge Vieira, various crafts, and numerous performative events. All of this aligned with the policies of the Export Promotion Fund, a government agency that throughout the 1950s sought to promote a modern and positive image of Portugal abroad, breaking with the aesthetic guidelines of the National Information Secretariat led until 1949 by António Ferro.
Barred from teaching, Lopes Graça devoted himself at that time to producing the Gazeta Musical magazine and his Dictionary of Music. He also composed numerous pieces for the choir of the Academia de Amadores de Música and Five Old Portuguese Romances, among other works explicitly inspired by Portuguese traditional music. Not by chance, around this time he also began collaborating with ethnographer Michel Giacometti, which later resulted in the publication of the Portuguese Popular Songbook. At the same time, the new musical sounds emerging in other countries also significantly influenced his path; it is worth remembering that Lopes Graça lived in Paris during the two years preceding World War II. For all these reasons, the influences in this Divertimento point to multiple contexts. Affinities with Portuguese traditional music are clear, as in the case of the Fandango. But also with the 18th-century divertimentos reminiscent of Mozart, or even with the music of Stravinsky and Bartók.
The Divertimento is written for a relatively small orchestra. The instrumentation consists of wind instruments, timpani, percussion, cellos, and double basses, giving it a transparent sound, dynamic impetuosity, and timbral variety. Overall, it explores a wide expressive palette, alternating festive moments with more introspective ones. The rhythms, often alluding to dance archetypes, are meticulously crafted. Tonality clashes with dissonant intrusions. Together, these elements converge into the most distinctive features of Fernando Lopes-Graça’s unmistakable style.
Rui Campos Leitão
Image: Fernando Lopes Graça at his house in Parede, 1980, photograpy by Augusto Cabrita | FLG Archive, MMP