Domenico Zipoli, A Jesuit Baroque Composer

The Baroque composer Domenico Zipoli was born on this day in 1688, in the Italian city of Prato, about 12 miles to the north-west of Florence. After his early training at the cathedral of his native city, and brief stints in Florence, Rome, Naples (where he studied with one of the most important composers of the era, Alessandro Scarlatti), and finally Bologna, Zipoli returned to Rome in 1710, and became the organist of one of the city’s oldest and most important churches, Santa Maria in Trastevere, at the age of only 22. About 3½ years later, he moved to the main Roman church of the Jesuit Order, the Gesù, but within a year, he decided to join the Society, and moved to Seville in Spain. As a novice, he was sent to Buenos Aires in what is now Argentina, and from there to Córdoba, where he completed his studies, but was never ordained, since there was no bishop available at the time to ordain him. There he served once again as the organist of the Jesuit church, and continued to write music.

The Jesuit church in Córdoba, Argentina. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Albano Azarian, CC BY-SA 3.0)

His fame as a composer spread throughout South America; the Spanish Viceroy in Lima wrote to Córdoba, which is over 2,000 miles away, to request copies of his works, which are also found in the musical archives of many of the reducciones. (For a sense of perspective, Zipoli himself had less distance to travel to get from Rome to Seville.) After contracting tuberculosis, he died on January 2nd of 1726, at the age of only 38, so this year marked the third centenary of his death.

Here are two examples of his work, a long Mass composed for the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, and a Missa brevis.