Musical Production and Professional Work of Joao de Deus de Castro Lobo (Vila Rica, Brazil, 1794 - Mariana, Brazil, 1832): from the Disappearance of His Work to its Transmission through Social Networks

This article resulted from an investigation of the available information on the composer Joao de Deus de Castro Lobo (1794-1832), the most productive Afro-Brazilian author from the State of Minas Gerais during the first half of 19th century in regards to the volume and diffusion of his works. His printed musical compositions, discography and bibliographic data, as well as information available from notary and ecclesiastical documents were systematically collected. In parallel, a thematic and detailed catalog of his works was made from approximately 700 manuscript sources, consulted from 20 different collections, based on methodology developed in Brazilian cataloging projects from the 1990s and2000s. Among the key findings is the realization that he had a very active professional career in music in institutions from Vila Rica (until 1823) and Mariana (at least from 1825). Moreover, after cataloguing his works and other sources, we observed that there are no original manuscripts of his compositions, only ones preserved as transcripts, the majority of them from the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. Finally, this paper investigates the causa mortis of Joao de Deus de Castro Lobo, and from its details, provides a hypothesis for the disappearance of the manuscripts of the musical compositions of this composer while relating the loss to the way in which his music came to the present day.