Fernando Lopes-Graça was arguably the greatest Portuguese composer of the second half of the 20th century. He absorbed successive stylistic influences, but the core of his musical impulses lay in the folk music of his native country, a feature especially evident in his songs. The originality and complexity of his harmonisations, the vivid and communicative beauty of his sets of Christmas Songs and the subtlety of his settings of Russian and Hungarian songs illustrate a complete mastery of this aspect of his multifaceted art.