Given the multi-ethnic nature of Moravian communities, who heard and performed these contrafacts? What identities and meanings did these contrafacts carry for German-born missionaries and indigenous musicians and audiences? And what can these adaptations teach us about the transatlantic reception and performance of Mozart’s music, especially in colonial settings?
Moravian archival records demonstrate that native musicians were adapting Mozart’s musical works to their own tastes as early as the eighteenth century. Multi-lingual, transcultural musical creation like this involved a process of negotiation between missionaries and converts. The complexity of these negotiations is evidenced by the modern-day performance practices of Inuit Moravian musicians in coastal Labrador, where European-derived music, such as “Ave verum corpus,” has been re-texted into Inuktitut and re-interpreted by local Inuit copyists since the late eighteenth century. Inuit singers and musicians have changed this imported repertory to favor blended sonorities, and clear, vibrato-less singing. These changes have resulted in a “Mozart” that is simultaneously European and Inuit, demonstrating the importance of considering the reception and adaptive re-use of Mozart’s music on a global scale.