Mário Simões Dias de Figueiredo (2 July 1903 in Coimbra – 8 July 1974 in Lourenço Marques) 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. 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). Early life and education Simões Dias was born in Coimbra in 1903 to a family of the local landed gentry, 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 protégé, and later collaborator, of Lucien Capet. Career as performer As a young violinist in Paris, he performed at the famed Salle Pleyel 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