Mário Simões Dias
Encyclopedia
Mário Simões Dias de Figueiredo (Coimbra
, 2 July 1903 – Lourenço Marques
, 8 July 1974) was a Portuguese musicologist and professional violin
ist (a disciple of Lucien Capet
and collaborator of Fernando Lopes Graça, among others), as well as a prolific music critic and poet
. He was blind
from the age of 10.
As an academic affiliated with the University of Coimbra, he authored works on music theory and the history of music as well as introductory texts concerned with raising public awareness of classical music
; his collection of essays A Música, essa desconhecida became a popular introduction to music history
in Portugal
. For 13 years (from 1950 to 1963) he maintained a series of weekly live radio
shows devoted to the divulgation of classical music, broadcast by the former Emissora Nacional
.
As a poet, he was affiliated with the Portuguese neo-realist
tradition and is celebrated chiefly for his book-length poem Cântico das Urzes (The Song of the Heathers).
, originally rooted in the nearby Beirão countryside. His father, Carlos Simões Dias, was a doctor and entrepreneur whose initiatives included, among other things, importing Buick automobiles
. His maternal grandfather was the Romantic
poet José Simões Dias
, author of the Peninsulares.
He became blind at the age of 10 due to meningitis
. From the age of 18 he studied violin with the Spanish
violinist Francisco Benetó Martinez in Lisbon
. He left Portugal for Paris
in 1926, where he became a protegé, and later collaborator, of Lucien Capet
.
to great acclaim, as well as in Biarritz
and St. Jean de Luz. He was received with enthusiasm by the contemporary French
press; he was celebrated in the pages of the Figaro
as un des plus grands virtuoses de l'art de Paganini, the Courrier
observing that ce jeune violiniste, q'une malheureuse cécité isole du munde, reproduit trés délicatement les plus belles compositions des grands maîtres classiques et modernes.
Having returned to Portugal in 1929, he co-founds the Academia de Música in Coimbra, of which would become the first director, and (in 1934) the Instituto de Música, having been active as a teacher and performer in both institutions. Between 1932 and 1936, he performs as a violinist in several Portuguese and Spanish concert halls, sometimes alongside Fernando Lopes Graça, then a celebrated pianist
and later to become an important Portuguese composer
. Despite acute ideological differences (Simões Dias was a conservative while Graça was an active communist), the two would remain close friends and exchange correspondence until Simões' death in 1974 - Graça's Sonatina nº 2 is dedicated to Simões Dias.
and theory of music, and would provide the foundations for his contribution to the divulgation of classical music via radio over the following decades.
Meanwhile, he pursues more strictly academic work, publishing Aspectos da Canção Popular Portuguesa in 1952. The book, a study of Portuguese musical folklore, received the Ramalho Ortigão National Prize, granted by the Portuguese Secretariat for National Propaganda, and merited the attention of Marc Honegger, leading French musicologist and then director of the Institute of Musicology of the University of Strasbourg
- over the 1950s, the two would become collaborators in the Dictionnaire de la Musique, to which Simões Dias contributed with his studies of Iberian music.
For 13 years (from 1950 to 1963), Simões became more widely known for a series of weekly radio shows devoted to the divulgation and critique of classical music and music performance, broadcast by the former Emissora Nacional
, including a series on the life and work of Mozart, which spanned several years, and a commented selection of musical pieces under the title Compositor do Mês (Composer of the Month). He also toured Portugal on occasion as a lecturer, often in initiatives organized by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
, collaborating with João de Freitas Branco.
From 1953, Simões Dias also contributed with a regular column to the Gazeta Musical, then directed by João José Cochofel Ayres de Campos, and with articles to the literary supplement of the Comércio do Porto
.
, capital of what was then the Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique. There he pursued his dedication to poetry and filled several notebooks with his memoirs, as yet unpublished. Until his death shortly after the Carnation Revolution
in 1974, he maintained a radio show along the moulds of his previous project in Portugal - A Arte de ouvir (The Art of Listening), broadcast by local station Rádio Clube de Moçambique.
Coimbra
Coimbra is a city in the municipality of Coimbra in Portugal. Although it served as the nation's capital during the High Middle Ages, it is better-known for its university, the University of Coimbra, which is one of the oldest in Europe and the oldest academic institution in the...
, 2 July 1903 – Lourenço Marques
Maputo
Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...
, 8 July 1974) was a Portuguese musicologist and professional violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist (a disciple of Lucien Capet
Lucien Capet
Lucien Louis Capet was a French violinist, pedagogue and composer.-Career:Capet came from the Paris proletariat. By the age of fifteen, he had to maintain himself by playing in bistros and cafes...
and collaborator of Fernando Lopes Graça, among others), as well as a prolific music critic and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
. He was blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
from the age of 10.
As an academic affiliated with the University of Coimbra, he authored works on music theory and the history of music as well as introductory texts concerned with raising public awareness of classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
; his collection of essays A Música, essa desconhecida became a popular introduction to music history
Music history
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...
in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
. For 13 years (from 1950 to 1963) he maintained a series of weekly live radio
Live radio
Live radio is radio broadcast without delay. Before the days of television, audiences listened to live dramas, comedies, quiz shows, and concerts on the radio much the same way that they now do on TV. Most talk radio is live radio where people can speak about their opinions/lives....
shows devoted to the divulgation of classical music, broadcast by the former Emissora Nacional
Rádio e Televisão de Portugal
Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, S.A.,commonly known as RTP, is Portugal's public service broadcasting organization. It operates four terrestrial television channels and three national radio channels, as well as several satellite and cable offerings....
.
As a poet, he was affiliated with the Portuguese neo-realist
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
tradition and is celebrated chiefly for his book-length poem Cântico das Urzes (The Song of the Heathers).
Early life and education
Simões Dias was born in Coimbra in 1903 to a family of the local landed gentryGentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
, originally rooted in the nearby Beirão countryside. His father, Carlos Simões Dias, was a doctor and entrepreneur whose initiatives included, among other things, importing Buick automobiles
Buick
Buick is a premium brand of General Motors . Buick models are sold in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, and Israel, with China being its largest market. Buick holds the distinction as the oldest active American make...
. His maternal grandfather was the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
poet José Simões Dias
José Simões Dias
José Simões Dias was a Portuguese poet, short-story writer and literary critic, as well as politician and pedagogue...
, author of the Peninsulares.
He became blind at the age of 10 due to meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
. From the age of 18 he studied violin with the Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
violinist Francisco Benetó Martinez in Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
. He left Portugal for Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1926, where he became a protegé, and later collaborator, of Lucien Capet
Lucien Capet
Lucien Louis Capet was a French violinist, pedagogue and composer.-Career:Capet came from the Paris proletariat. By the age of fifteen, he had to maintain himself by playing in bistros and cafes...
.
Career as performer
As a young violinist in Paris, he performed at the famed Salle PleyelSalle Pleyel
The Salle Pleyel is a concert hall in Paris, France. The resident ensembles are the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.-History and Design:...
to great acclaim, as well as in Biarritz
Biarritz
Biarritz is a city which lies on the Bay of Biscay, on the Atlantic coast, in south-western France. It is a luxurious seaside town and is popular with tourists and surfers....
and St. Jean de Luz. He was received with enthusiasm by the contemporary French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
press; he was celebrated in the pages of the Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
as un des plus grands virtuoses de l'art de Paganini, the Courrier
Le Courrier
Le Courrier is a daily newspaper published in Geneva, Switzerland. Founded in 1868, it was originally supported by the Roman Catholic Church, but has been completely independent since 1996....
observing that ce jeune violiniste, q'une malheureuse cécité isole du munde, reproduit trés délicatement les plus belles compositions des grands maîtres classiques et modernes.
Having returned to Portugal in 1929, he co-founds the Academia de Música in Coimbra, of which would become the first director, and (in 1934) the Instituto de Música, having been active as a teacher and performer in both institutions. Between 1932 and 1936, he performs as a violinist in several Portuguese and Spanish concert halls, sometimes alongside Fernando Lopes Graça, then a celebrated pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and later to become an important Portuguese composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. Despite acute ideological differences (Simões Dias was a conservative while Graça was an active communist), the two would remain close friends and exchange correspondence until Simões' death in 1974 - Graça's Sonatina nº 2 is dedicated to Simões Dias.
Career in musicology and divulgation of classical music
Having become affiliated with the University of Coimbra as a lecturer, Simões Dias published his most widespread work, A Música, essa desconhecida, in 1951. The collection of essays provides an introduction to the historyHistory of music
Music is found in every known culture, past and present, varying wildly between times and places. Around 50,000 years ago, early modern humans began to disperse from Africa, reaching all the habitable continents...
and theory of music, and would provide the foundations for his contribution to the divulgation of classical music via radio over the following decades.
Meanwhile, he pursues more strictly academic work, publishing Aspectos da Canção Popular Portuguesa in 1952. The book, a study of Portuguese musical folklore, received the Ramalho Ortigão National Prize, granted by the Portuguese Secretariat for National Propaganda, and merited the attention of Marc Honegger, leading French musicologist and then director of the Institute of Musicology of the University of Strasbourg
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
- over the 1950s, the two would become collaborators in the Dictionnaire de la Musique, to which Simões Dias contributed with his studies of Iberian music.
For 13 years (from 1950 to 1963), Simões became more widely known for a series of weekly radio shows devoted to the divulgation and critique of classical music and music performance, broadcast by the former Emissora Nacional
Rádio e Televisão de Portugal
Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, S.A.,commonly known as RTP, is Portugal's public service broadcasting organization. It operates four terrestrial television channels and three national radio channels, as well as several satellite and cable offerings....
, including a series on the life and work of Mozart, which spanned several years, and a commented selection of musical pieces under the title Compositor do Mês (Composer of the Month). He also toured Portugal on occasion as a lecturer, often in initiatives organized by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is a Portuguese private foundation of public utility whose statutory aims are in the fields of arts, charity, education, and science...
, collaborating with João de Freitas Branco.
From 1953, Simões Dias also contributed with a regular column to the Gazeta Musical, then directed by João José Cochofel Ayres de Campos, and with articles to the literary supplement of the Comércio do Porto
Comércio do Porto
O Comércio do Porto was a Portuguese daily newspaper, founded in Oporto in 2 June 1854. It was the second-oldest newspaper published in Portugal, second only to O Açoriano Oriental....
.
Later life
In 1968, and a widower since 1956, Simões Dias moved with his daughter and son-in-law to Lourenço Marques, present-day MaputoMaputo
Maputo, also known as Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. It is known as the City of Acacias in reference to acacia trees commonly found along its avenues and the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. It was famous for the inscription "This is Portugal" on the walkway of its...
, capital of what was then the Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique. There he pursued his dedication to poetry and filled several notebooks with his memoirs, as yet unpublished. Until his death shortly after the Carnation Revolution
Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution , also referred to as the 25 de Abril , was a military coup started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance...
in 1974, he maintained a radio show along the moulds of his previous project in Portugal - A Arte de ouvir (The Art of Listening), broadcast by local station Rádio Clube de Moçambique.