Francisco José Coutinho

Francisco José Coutinho (Lisbon, 21 October 1680 – Paris, 13 February 1724) was a Portuguese composer from an aristocratic and well-to-do family of the Portuguese capital.

The son of Manuel Pereira Coutinho, governor of Angola between 1630 and 1635, he enjoyed a high social standing. Because of this rank he was frequently commissioned to write the first villancico of the nine collections with instrumental accompaniment sung in Lisbon between 1719 and 1723. At the end of 1723 he travelled to Paris to receive medical treatment, and he died there of an aneurysm.

His contemporaries praised above all his polychoral works: an eight-voice Te Deum performed at São Roque on 31 December 1722, and a mass for four choirs, Scala Aretina, which rivalled Valls's hexachord mass. According to Barbosa Machado, he also composed hymns, psalms and responsories, although the surviving catalogue is more modest: a solo aria, Este dezasosiego, and a duet with accompaniment.

A large part of his large-scale sacred output has not survived intact, so his legacy is known mainly through the testimony of his contemporaries.