Remembering Mercedes Reis Pequeno (1921–2015)

Posting on behalf of Ricardo Tacuchian:

Founder and Director Emeritus of the Music Division of Brazil’s National Library, Member of the Academia Brasileira de Música, and former IAML Vice President.

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1921, she graduated from the Escola de Música of the Universidade do Brasil in 1937, and, between 1940 and 1941, collaborated with Luiz Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo on the Revista Brasileira de Música. She began her training in librarianship at the Instituto Nacional do Libro in 1942. From 1947 to 1949, she worked at the then called Pan American Union (now OAS) as assistant to Charles Seeger, first Chief of the Music Section. Back in Brazil in 1951, Mercedes Reis Pequeno began working on the establishment and organization of the Music Division of Brazil’s National Library, which became a model for other institutions throughout Latin America. 

She served as Chief of the Music Division until her retirement in 1990. During her tenure, she curated numerous exhibits commemorating anniversaries of Brazilian and European composers, producing handsomely illustrated and informative catalogues. Among the most memorable were those dedicated to José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1967); Francisco Braga (1968); Alberto Nepomuceno (1964); Ernesto Nazareth (1966); Glauco Velásquez (1964); Beethoven (1970) Mozart (1956 and 1991); and Milhaud (1970). In addition, she curated Música no Rio de Janeiro Imperial (1962), I Decênio da Divisão de Música e Archivo Sonoro (DIMAS), and Três Séculos de Iconografia da Música no Brasil (1974), among other thematic exhibits.

In addition to organizing courses in music librarianship, Mercedes Reis Pequeno was an active member of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML/AIBM), serving as Vice President from 1965 until 1974. As such, she collaborated with RISM and RILM. She also contributed to the Boletín Interamericano de Música, published by the Music Section of the OAS. She was the recipient of prestigious awards, among them the Prêmio Paula Brito (1974), Prêmio Estácio de Sá (1977), Medalha Biblioteca Nacional (1990), Medalha Museu da Imagem e do Som-RJ (1990), and the Medal of the Societé d’encouragement au progrès–Paris (1993).  

She was elected Member of the Academia Brasileira de Música in 1994, the institution from which she coordinated and implemented the Bibliografia Musical Brasileira to lend continuity to the previous work on this project by Luiz Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo and Cleofe Person de Mattos.