FOUR STUDIES ON HUMORS AND TEMPERAMENTS (“Ancient and mediaeval philosophy represented the human temperament as being determined by the relation of four fluids, or humors, of the body: the blood, the phlegm (or mucus), the yellow bile and the black bile. The sanguine type was hot and humid, the phlegmatic type was cold and humid, the choleric type was hot and dry, and the melancholic type was cold and dry. Disease, therefore, was the consequence of an imbalance between the humors.”From «The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy», Part One, Edições Antígona, Lisbon, 1998; note by the translator, Manuel Portela, p. 57. FOUR STUDIES ON HUMORS AND TEMPERAMENTS was premiered by the trombonist Rui Fernandes in February 2002, in the Noble Hall of the School of Music of the National Conservatory.)