Zipoli’s Rediscovery
The Non-existent Composer
At the end of the 1930s when the musicologist Francisco Curt Lange first took a critical interest in Domenico Zipoli, he still had doubts as to whether “a certain brother Domingo Zipoli, organist of the Jesuit Church of Córdoba, was the same Zipoli who composed the Sonate d’intavolatura… The first step in his exciting rediscovery was the discovery of Zipoli’s birth certificate in 1941 (there were even doubts as to Zipoli’s existence), which confirmed his birth in Prato in 1688. Then in 1957, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, a Zipoli scholar and performer, came across Father Martini’s musical-biographical dictionary, which after providing information relating to his European itinerary, concludes with the phrase “in ultimo si fece gesuita”. This statement corroborated the fact that the two individuals, for many years thought to be two different people, were in fact one. The slow establishment of Zipoli’s true biography and his European-American periods took their course until the organisation of a Conference to mark the third centenary of Zipoli’s birth, held in Prato in 1988 and organised by Institute for the Study of Latin-American Music during the Colonial Period. The conference was a meeting point for numerous specialists who had been working on the topic, who spelt out their conclusions in the book Domenico Zipoli, itinerari ibero americani della musica italiana del Settecento.
Imaginary Music
Once Zipoli’s existence and his trip to Jesuit America were confirmed, his American period continued to represent an absolute mystery. The music he composed in Argentina was thought to be lost, until at the beginning of the 1960s Dr. Robert Stevenson located a mass for three-part choir (without bass), soloists, two violins, organ and continuo in the Archive of Sucre. The score reads: “copied in Potossi, in the year 1784”, that is 58 years after the composer’s death. The fact that over half a century after Zipoli’s death his works were still performed in Argentina and in Higher Peru clearly reflect the importance and endurance of his output, as well as its transmission outside the normal channels of circulation. In 1972, the Swiss architect Hans Roth discovered 5000 pages of manuscript music in the missions of Chiquitos (in east Bolivia). Roth, who accidentally came across the most important part of these manuscripts in the Church of Santa Ana, tells of how they were used as toilet paper in the bathroom of the church sacristy! During the 1980s, thanks to the hard work of a team of researchers a large number of complete works by Zipoli were located and catalogued in these archives.
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