Mário Simões Dias

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mário Simões Dias de Figueiredo (Coimbra, 2 July 1903 – Lourenço Marques, 8 July 1974) was a Portuguese musicologist and professional violinist (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[1].

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.[2][3]. 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[4][5][6]. As a poet[7], he was affiliated with the Portuguese neo-realist tradition and is celebrated chiefly for his book-length poem Cântico das Urzes[8][9].