In his Sonate d'intavolatura per organo e cimbalo, published in Rome in 1716 and from which the pieces heard here are taken, Domenico Zipoli, the farmer's son from Prato, describes himself as organist of the church of Il Gesù in Rome, the mother church of the Jesuit order. (There seems to be no other record of his having held this post -- we do know that the official incumbent was somebody else). But with the ink of the Sonate barely dry Zipoli decided to become a Jesuit missionary. In April 1716 he left Rome for Seville, where he spent a year in preliminary training before boarding a ship bound for Buenos Aires. Thence he travelled a further 700km inland to Córdoba, with its Jesuit-run university. Zipoli spent the rest of his life there, training for the priesthood, but also making music. Manuscripts with his music have been turning up in various places in South America. Not the least interesting of these finds is a substantial collection of keyboard pieces discovered at San Rafael de Velasco, a former Jesuit mission in the Bolivian lowlands. Quite a few of these pieces come from the Sonate d'intavolatura, proving that that volume had crossed the ocean along with its composer. Indeed Zipoli became something of a star at Córdoba. Following his death on 2 January 1726 Pedro Lozano, who had travelled with him from Seville, penned a Latin obituary: "Dominicus Zipoli, of Prato in Etruria (Tuscany)...A man of profound musical learning, with the uncommon accomplishment of a printed volume to prove it, he gained a place among the musicians of the mother house [of the Jesuit order] at Rome. Yet although he could have hoped for further advancement, he put a higher value on the salvation of the Indians and undertook the voyage to Paraguay [the name of the Jesuit province where Córdoba lay], having joined the Society [of Jesus] at Seville. Feast days requiring music both devout and magnificent he made it his task to celebrate with diligence, to the immense pleasure of both Spaniards and natives...Huge crowds would flock to our church for the various solemnities, lured by their desire to hear him." (Dominicus Zipoli, Pratensis in Etruria...Musices peritissimus, cuius speciem non vulgarem praebuit in libello typis excusso, in odaeum Domus professae Romanae adscitus est; cumque ampliora posset sperare, omnia Indorum saluti postposuit ac in Paraquariam navigavit, Societati Hispali adscriptus. Festis apparatu musico pie ac splendide celebrandis, ingenti tum Hispanorum tum neophitorum voluptate, sedulo invigilavit...Frequentissimus populus ad templum nostrum accedebat singulis quibusdam solemnitatibus, eiusdem audiendi cupiditate illectus.) There is archival evidence that even a remote mission church like San Rafael had not one organ but two; one windchest (of 5 ranks), a few pipes and a set of twin bellows (perhaps belonging to a larger organ?) remain. At the neighbouring mission of Santa Ana the case, keyboard and windchest of another small instrument, likewise of (roughly) mid-18th c. date, are extant. This instrument was "only" missing its four ranks of metal pipes and the bellows. (It has recently been put back in service, being operated by one of the bellows from San Rafael and reconstructed pipes.) The organ of the Jesuit church at Córdoba was no doubt more substantial. Unfortunately information about it is very scarce. At some point it was transferred to Córdoba cathedral (rebuilt in 1782, by which time the Jesuit order had been suppressed), then to yet another church, but it seems that no one knows what became of it or what its specification was (information kindly provided by Prof. Bernardo Illari). In any case it is a fact that no sooner had Zipoli published the Sonate d'intavolatura than he himself had only Iberian organs to play them on. Few such instruments currently exist as digital sample sets, none of them from colonial Latin America. But the 1702 Caimari organ at the Església del Socors (Sant Agustí) at Palma must at least be closer to the instruments Zipoli knew at Seville and then in South America than anything he played in Italy. (Is it too fanciful to imagine that the ship carrying Zipoli from Genova to Seville in April 1716 might even have called at Palma?) The Caimari organ as built in 1702 had no reeds, the famous Spanish reeds being a Castilian fashion started about the middle of the 17th c. and which in the early 18th c. had only begun to spread to other parts of Spain. Later in the 18th c. the instrument was retrofitted with reeds by an unknown builder, but they are not used in this recording. It seems probable that organs that Zipoli knew at Seville (and in South America?) similarly dated from the pre-reeds period of Spanish organ building. Certainly the organ at Seville cathedral as Zipoli knew it had been built in the 1550s by a Flemish builder, being only replaced by the splendid great new instrument whose case you see there now in 1724, when Zipoli was already at Córdoba.

• published: 29 Dec 2014
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