Complete Keyboard Works

From the little that is recorded about Zipoli's life, we may understand that he pursued two paths during his lifetime: music and religion. At first it seems it was the religious road that led him to South America, but in fact, as well as wanting to take his vows in the order of the Jesuits, he was summoned to the New World because he was a musician as well as a missionary. As a child, he sang in the choir and was granted the support necessary to allow him to study in Florence. In 1709, he moved to Naples to study with Alessandro Scarlatti. His study with Scarlatti was short-lived and then went to Bologna and then Rome to study. In 1715, he was appointed organist of the Jesuit church in Rome. The following year his celebrated keyboard collection, Sonate d'Intavolatura, on which his fame rests, was published. Zipoli joined the Society of Jesus on July 1, 1716, and soon after went to Seville to await passage to the Paraguay province. With 53 other prospective Jesuit missionaries he sailed from Cadiz in April, 1717, but due to a violent storm, it was not until July that he and the others disembarked at Buenos Aires. From there they set out for Cordoba. By 1724, Zipoli had completed his theological studies and by 1725 was ready to receive priest's orders. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis before receiving them for lack of a bishop in Cordoba to ordain him that year. Zipoli was one of many excellent musicians recruited by the Jesuits between 1650 and 1750 for work in the Paraguay reductions. There is evidence that his music was in demand in South America. Jesuit documents of 1728, 1732 and later note his continuing reputation up to at least 1774. In the 1970s some 23 works by Zipoli (including copies of known keyboard pieces) were discovered among a large collection of manuscripts at the San Rafael and Santa Ana missions in eastern Bolivia. Sonate d'Intavolatura, Zipoli's work of 1716, consists of two bands of compositions for keyboard. The first band is devoted solely to the Organ. The second band is entitled "Sonate d'Intavolatura per Organo e Cimbalo." It is graceful and elegant music; its charm attracting republication in London and Paris in 1741. Band II of the complete keyboard works contains a series of four dance suites and two partitas. It is played here on the Cristofori piano from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of Keyboard instruments.