Emerico Lobo de Mesquita

José Joaquim Emerico Lobo de Mesquita (c. 1746 – mid-April 1805), also known as Emerico Lobo de Mesquita or Lobo de Mesquita, was a Brazilian composer, organist, music director and teacher. He wrote sacred music for the churches, brotherhoods and public ceremonies of colonial Minas Gerais, where he worked in Serro, Arraial do Tejuco, now Diamantina, and Vila Rica, now Ouro Preto. He spent his final years as an organist in Rio de Janeiro.

Mesquita earned his living within the network of lay religious associations that supported music in the mining towns. He played the organ, directed singers and instrumentalists, supplied music for feast days and civic ceremonies, and held administrative offices in local brotherhoods. His appointments included long periods with Carmelite third orders in Tejuco, Vila Rica and Rio de Janeiro. The details of his birth, family and musical education remain uncertain, but his career can be followed through contracts, payments and manuscripts from the 1770s until his death.

His accepted works are all sacred and vocal, usually written for a small choir or vocal quartet with strings, continuo and occasional winds. They include Masses, music for Holy Week, Marian antiphons, litanies, psalms, funeral offices and settings of the Te Deum. Plainchant, solo voices and full ensemble passages often alternate within the same service. Among his best-known compositions are the Missa para Quarta-Feira de Cinzas, Dominica in Palmis, Tercio, Salve Regina and the A-minor Te Deum.

His music remained in use after his death. Musicians in Minas Gerais continued to copy and perform it through the nineteenth century, and manuscript sets entered the archives of groups such as the Orquestra Lira Sanjoanense. Francisco Curt Lange brought the repertory to a wider concert and recording audience in the twentieth century, while later editors returned to Mesquita's own manuscripts and other early copies to prepare critical editions for smaller, historically informed ensembles. Mesquita is the patron of chair 4 of the Academia Brasileira de Música.

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