David Cranmer

David Cranmer, an Anglo-Portuguese musicologist, is a member of CESEM (Centro de Estudos da Sociologia e Estética Musical), at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, and of the Portuguese inter-university research laboratory IN2PAST. Co-founder and coordinator of Caravelas – Study Group for the History of Luso-Brazilian Music 2008-).
Graduate (Music) of the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College), 1976; Master of Music (Musicology) of the University of London (King’s College), 1977; PhD from the University of London, 1997, with the thesis “Opera in Portugal 1793-1828: a study in repertoire and its spread”. He has lived in Lisbon since 1981. He was a member of the teaching staff of the Departamento de Ciências Musicais, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, from 2003 until his retirement in 2023.
His diverse research interests include music in Portugal and Brazil from the 18th century to the opening decades of the 20th, the cataloguing of musical archives and libraries, the Luso-Brazilian composer Marcos Portugal, and Camille Saint-Saëns. In recent years he has begun a personal project on Béziers (France) and the Fêtes des Arènes (1898-1926). He is author, among other books, of Música no D. Maria II: catálogo da coleção de partituras (2015), Peças de um mosaico: temas da história da música referentes a Portugal e ao Brasil (2017) and coordinator of the monographs Marcos Portugal: uma reavaliação (2012) and (with Paulo de Tarso Salles) Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) and Europe (in preparation).
He has been organist of Saint George’s Church, Lisbon (Anglican Church) since 1982 and has given organ recitals in England, France and Brazil, as well as various Portuguese cities. He is also a pianist, and for a number of years has performed in a duet partnership with the Venezuelan pianist Alejandro Reyes Lucero.