Domenico Zipoli

Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726) was an Italian composer from the Baroque period who worked in Córdoba, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Spanish Empire (in modern Argentina). He became a Jesuit in order to work in the Reductions of Paraguay where he taught music among the Guaraní people. He is remembered as the most accomplished musician among Jesuit missionaries. Early training and career Zipoli was born in Prato, where he received elementary musical training. However, there are no records of him having entered the cathedral choir. In 1707, and with the patronage of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was a pupil of the organist Giovani Maria Casini in Florence. In 1708 he briefly studied under Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples, then Bologna and finally in Rome under Bernardo Pasquini. Two of his oratorios date to this early period: San Antonio di Padova (1712) and Santa Caterina, Virgine e martire (1714). Around 1715 he was made the organist of the Church of the Gesù (the mother church for the Society of Jesus), in Rome, a prestigious post. At the very beginning of the following year, he finished his best-known work, a collection of keyboard pieces titled Sonate d’intavolatura per organo e