Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2019
Ethnomusicology as an academic discipline was introduced to the Portuguese university system for the first time in 1981 with the founding of the musicology department at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. However, local interest in the documentation and study of Traditional Portuguese Music (TPM) goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Since the 1870s, several aspects of TPM from rural areas have been documented and investigated by Portuguese musicologists, composers, music teachers, anthropologists, folklorists, folk music enthusiasts and “local erudites”.3 In addition, a handfull of foreign researchers have published on TPM, both in Portugal and abroad.