MUSIC in the JESUIT REDUCTIONS



C.J. McNaspy, SJ:
Before leaving Europe to work in the Reductions, [Anton Sepp] did serious music studies in Augsburg. It was there that he learned the figured bass technique fundamental to the baroque style. His contemporaries refer to his mastery of some twenty instruments, among them the flute, fife, cornet, trumpet, clarinet, viola, other stringed instruments, and the sackbut... Sepp's lost compositions, though probably not of enormous consequence in strictly musical terms, were geared to the needs of his charges. His music ranged from the more popular to the rather elaborately polyphonic...

Sepp had volunteered for the missions as a young Jesuit, but had to wait eight years before he was finally assigned to South America... His specific achievements [include] the founding of the São João Batista Reduction, with documents giving detailed descriptions of techniques used; the discovery and development of iron in this part of the world, as an impressive monument in Santo Angelo testifies; the organization of the economy that brought the Reductions to their greatest state of stability; the creation of the wine and cotton industries in this part of South America; the construction of the first pipe organ with pedal in all of Latin America; many translations into German of the classic works of Antônio Vieira, SJ, recognized as the master of Brazilian prose; authorship of an invaluable book, Gobernio Temporal, a sort of how-to manual about growing corn, vines, maté and tobacco, how to raise sheep and cattle, and how to construct building in adobe and other materials. In addition, Sepp was known as a master of the Guaraní language, despite the age at which he began studying it. Sepp also write original plays in Guaraní with musical accompaniment. He even admitted that he felt more at home preaching in Guaraní than in his native German...
In Reduction literature Anton Sepp is most often referred to as a musical missioner and father of the Paraguayan national instrument, the harp. Music obviously played a major rôle in the evangelization of Latin America. As early as 1527 the Franciscan Pedro de Gante founded a school stressing music in Mexico. Some time before 1553 the Jesuit Leonard Nunes had founded a music school in São Vicente, Brazil.

Manuel de Nóbrega, founder of the Jesuit mission of Brazil, was often quoted as saying that with music and harmony of voices he could win all the gentiles to Christ. The first Paraguay missioners in the Guairá area, Fileds, Oretga and Saloni, already knew from their Brazilian experience how useful music was. They further reported that the Guaranís seemed to be more musically gifted than other Indians.

Even before Sepp arrived, the music tradition of the Reductions had been well established and developed by Fathers Jean Vaisseau and Louis Berger. The latter had been professionally trained in France before he became a Jesuit. Music became very much a part of daily life, and it was especially prominent in the great liturgies described by European visitors as rivaling anything they had heard in the cathedrals of Spain, Italy or France. Much of the music was sung by choirs of forty trained voices with as many as twenty instruments accompanying the vocal counterpoint.

Music was also quite naturally related to drama and dance. Again, both visitors and missioners like José Cardiel go into great detail describing choreography and costuming. And when the Jesuits were dispossessed, inventories of each mission showed an immense range of costumes and scenic properties. Both dances and plays had religious or moral themes, much like the Autos Sacramentales of the period. And they often went on for hours...

Music played a major rôle in the more pedestrian aspects of Reduction life. Groups of workers setting out for the estancias were accompanied by instrumentalists clad in their special garb. Rodeos and processions and receptions for governors and other visitors were always enhanced by music. Even the election of officials was celebrated by an instrumental performance...
The best-trained musician destined to work in the Reductions never actually arrived in present-day Paraguay. Domenico Zipoli, whose music is now well-known to musicologists, organists ad other keyboard artists in Europe and America, was born on 17 October 1688... As a professional organist and composer, Zipoli served in what was then the important post of music master at the Gesú Church in Rome. There he published a classic study of organ performance and a number of keyboard compositions, composed two operas, and came into close contact with Jesuits. This led to his learning something of the romance of the Reductions and eventually to his applying to become a Jesuit.

Like many other aspiring missioners, Domenico Zipoli had a long wait in Seville before he embarked for South America... From Buenos Aires he went on to do theological studies in Córdoba. There he found time to perform and to compose. He wrote music especially for use in the Reductions, but he also did some commissioned work for the Viceroy in Lima. Domenico Zipoli died on 2 January 1726, or consumption.

Zipoli's compositions quickly became the most popular in the Reductions. One missioner wrote that after hearing them he could not be satisfied with any other composer. Even long after his death, Zipoli's music continued to be immensely popular in the missions. His compositions were also widely performed in Bolivia and some of them have been found there in choir lofts or stored away in trunks.

Indeed, the lost compositions of Domenico Zipoli must rank high among the serious cultural losses sustained when the Reduction libraries were destroyed or dismantled.
[Lost Cities of Paraguay: Art & Architecture of the Jesuit Reductions 1607-1767 by C.J. McNaspy, SJ. Photographs by J.M. Blanch, SJ. Loyola University Press: Chicago, 1982]





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