José de Orejón y Aparicio

José de Orejón y Aparicio was a composer and organist born in Huacho in 1706 and who died in Lima between 7 and 21 May 1765. His career shows how religious music was organised at the Lima cathedral in the mid-eighteenth century, when colonial tradition coexisted with the Italian tastes that arrived through the maestros de capilla.

His precocity was remarkable. The son of Esteban de Orejón and Victoria de Aparicio y Velasco, he was judged fit to succeed an adult singer who had died at Lima cathedral when he was barely nine years old. In 1715 the archbishop set his annual salary at 100 pesos, which he would receive until he lost his voice. By around 1724 he was still on the payroll, now as a contralto. He is thought to have studied with Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco, a Spaniard by origin, and to have trained as an organist under Juan de Peralta, the chief organist, who died in 1725; this is not known for certain, though it is likely. After Peralta's death he briefly served as interim organist, but the post went to Joseph de la Madre de Dios.

The arrival of Roque Ceruti, a Milanese who had settled in Peru for two decades, at the chapel in 1728 changed the cathedral repertoire with works of a violinistic character and an Italian taste that Orejón absorbed. In 1730 he unsuccessfully applied for the post of sacristan major at Pisco. However, in 1742 nobody dared to compete with him for the post of principal organist of Lima, and the cabildo declared him elected after a solo examination. His salary rose from 500 to 550 pesos in 1745 and to 630 in 1754, the year in which he first appears with the title of licenciado. The canons praised his punctuality and his workload.

Following Ceruti's death, he was appointed maestro de capilla in December 1760, although the appointment did not take effect until April 1764, delayed by reconstruction after the earthquake of 1746. He dictated his will in September 1764 from the infirmary of the convent of San Francisco, being unable to sign it. The post of organist was declared vacant in May 1765.

His reputation endured after his death. Toribio del Campo y Pando praised him in the Mercurio peruano of 1792, and his religious works, such as the Pasión para Viernes Santo for triple choir and orchestra of 1750, continued to be performed. His music, with its expressive melody and often minor tonality, circulated as far as Sucre, where pieces by him appear in twentieth-century archives. His legacy today is a valuable testimony to the colonial Hispanic-American Baroque.