Born in Lisbon on July 26, 1906, Armando José Fernandes began to attend the course of Engineering, despite early on having been attracted by music. He decided to dedicate himself to this art only in 1924 and entered the National Conservatoire in Lisbon in 1927 to study with Alexandre Rey Colaço and Varela Cid (piano), Luís de Freitas Branco (musical science) and António Eduardo da Costa Ferreira (composition). He completed the course in 1931, having obtained the 1st distinction in piano and the Rodrigo da Fonseca Prize. As scholarship holder of the Junta Nacional de Educação (National Board of Education) he continued his studies in piano and composition, between 1934 and 1937 in Paris, with Alfred Corot, Nadia Boulanger, Paul Dukas and Igor Stravinsky. His studies abroad also included investigation on the music of Portuguese contrapuntists, to which he would dedicate a part of his activity.
Group of Four (Grupo dos Quatro)
Still as pupil of the National Conservatoire, Armando José Fernandes integrated a group of young composers and musicians united in the effort for the valorisation of Portuguese music. Known as the “Grupo dos Quatro” (Group of Four) it was constituted by Pedro do Prado, Fernando Lopes-Graça and Jorge Croner de Vasconcelos, with whom Armando José Fernandes maintained friendship until the end of his life.[1] Among the various initiatives of this group one can distinguish, on the one hand, the organization of concerts to present their works and on the other, edition of a journal called “De Música: Revista da Associação Académica do Conservatório Nacional de Música” (On Music: Journal of the Academic Association of the National Conservatoire), which published analysis of contemporary works by Portuguese and foreign composers, as well as articles on various aspects and problems of Portuguese music.[2]
Pianist and Composer
Armando José Fernandes’ first works for piano date from the 1920s and 1930s, namely, the “Five Preludes” (1928) and “Scherzino” (1930). They were dedicated to his professors and teachers. Between 1940 and 1942 he was professor of piano and composition at the Academia de Amadores de Música in Lisbon. In 1942 he was invited to integrate the recently created Gabinete de Estudos Musicais na Emissora Nacional (Cabinet of Musical Studies at the National Broadcaster), having dedicated himself exclusively to composition. In 1953 he became professor of composition at the National Conservatoire in Lisbon, the position from which he retired when he completed 70 years of age (1976).[3]
Armando José Fernandes was pianist of recognized merit, giving preference to the form of solo recital and chamber music. His juvenile and adolescent works, created until the 1940s, were followed by a phase of major productivity, which also corresponded with greater experimentalism in what concerns instrumentation – he was writing works for various instruments and piano or for solo instruments and orchestra. During the years when he was connected to teaching his production became reduced, and it was then that he developed his interests towards Portuguese 18th century keyboard music. Having already retired from teaching he still realized two commissions for compositions.[4]
Armando José Fernandes was awarded with the composition prizes: Moreira de Sá (Porto, Orpheon Portuense, 1944) for his Sonata in d minor for violoncello and piano; and the prize of the Círculo de Cultura Musical (Lisbon, 1946; Circle of Music Culture) for his whole work. In most cases, his pieces are dedicated either to his masters or to the most distinguished performers of that time.
Armando José Fernandes passed away 30 years ago, in 1983, in Lisbon.
The Language
Although Armando José Fernandes’ language, harmonically chromatic in colour and formally neoclassical in spirit, reveals a cosmopolitan character of Fauré’s and Ravel’s sensibility, or Hindemith’s constructivism, it is not free from Portuguese inspiration, thus, being motivated by Portuguese popular themes. As Alexandre Delgado wrote in 2006 on the occasion of the composer’s centenary: “In a neoclassical style of great elegance, Armando José Fernandes cultivated a harmonic refinement inherited from Fauré and Ravel, in which sensuality is combined with geometrism, somewhere between Art Déco and cubism, reinforced by the lessons with Nadia Boulanger and refreshed through the example of Stravinsky.”[5]
The piano, solo, with orchestra or in small chamber groups is present in almost all of the composer’s work. Having been described as “follower of a neoclassical and more conventional path, however with great subtlety”[6], the idea of Armando José Fernandes’ more intimate personality is reflected in his predilection towards chamber music. “It was in chamber and concert music [for example in the Suite Concertante for harpsichord and chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1967] that Armando José Fernandes’ talent was concentrated, perhaps the Portuguese composer whose work was the closest to the ideal of «pure» music, free from extra-musical suggestions”[7], emphasises Alexandre Delgado.
Between 1944 and 1946 Armando José Fernandes composed three sonatas for violoncello, viola and violin, all of them with piano accompaniment. “Capturing a lot form the personality of every instrument, this set achieves its culmination probably in the Larghetto of the sonata for violin, one of the composer’s more personal inspirations (…).”[8] The three sonatas were written in response to the commission of the Gabinete de Estudos Musicais da Emissora Nacional (Cabinet of Musical Studies of the National Broadcaster), where Armando José Fernandes entered in 1942 and for which he also composed such works as the Concerto for Violin (1948), Suite for Strings (1950), Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1951; version for symphony orchestra from 1966) and the Quintet for Piano and Strings (1953) later converted in Quartet with Piano (1956).[9]
Within the framework of “pure” music, to which one should add the works for solo piano, there are some exceptions such as the ballet “O Homem do Cravo na Boca” (1941) and the symphonic poem “O Terramoto de Lisboa” (1961), both official commissions, “from which the first one deserves attention for sharing some of the approach to ballet with other 20th century composers, who Fernandes admired.”[10]
The “national” or folkloric side of his work was manifested in various pieces such as the “Três canções populares” (1942; “Three Popular Songs”) or in the “Fantasia sobre temas populares portugeses” (1945; “Fantasy on Portuguese Popular Themes”), together with harmonisations of popular songs. In this context he used motives close to Portuguese traditional music, creating a symbiosis between the popular and the cosmopolitan, which influenced him during his stay in France. He joined chromatism and dissonances without abandoning tonality and recurred frequently to antique modes as well as to past forms inside the neoclassical current.As Nuno Barreiros tells us: “Armando José Fernandes remained equal to himself, not venturing through paths, which could fit less to his temperament (…). He maintained a coherent attitude and honesty towards his psychological world. His work presents, therefore, from the first to the last piece, an exemplary homogeneity.”[11]
Prelúdios nos. 1-3 (1928)
Samuel Lercher – piano
Quarteto com piano - Adagio cantabile (1956)
Nella Maissa – piano
Manuel Villuendas – violin
Clélia Vital – cello
Barbara Friedhoff – viola
Suite concertante for harpsichord and chmaber orchestra (1967)
José Carlos Araújo – harpsichord
Orquestra do Conservatório Nacional
Rui Pinheiro – conductor
1. Prelúdio
2. Fughetta
3. Scherzo
4. Elegia
5. Eco e Rondo
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1 Catarina Latino, “Fernandes, Armando José” in: Enciclopédia da Música em Portugal no Século XX (Encyclopaedia of Portuguese Music in the 20th Century); coordination: Salwa Castelo-Branco; Lisbon 2010, p. 471
2 ibidem
3 José Carlos Picoto e Adriana Latino. "Fernandes, Armando José." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed on March 12, 2013 http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/09490
4 Catarina Latino, op. cit., p. 471-72
5 Alexandre Delgado, “Neoclassicismo sem Bafio”, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Gulbenkian Música), “Not@s Soltas - Pontos de vista”, Lisbon 2006; English translation: Jakub Szczypa
6 Ivan Moody, "Mensagens: Portuguese Music in the 20th Century". Tempo. New Series, 198 (1996). p. 4. Available in JSTOR
7 Alexandre Delgado, op. cit.
8 ibidem
9 ibidem
10 ibidem
11 Nuno Barreiros quoted in: Alexandre Delgado, op. cit.; English translation: Jakub Szczypa
