Inspired by the Jesuits’ Spanish heritage, the chamber group El Parnaso Hyspano fuses Western tradition and Native American culture

When Roland Joffé made his movie The Mission 35 years ago, telling the story of Jesuit priests arriving in Latin America to convert the native people to Christianity, he asked the celebrated Italian composer Ennio Morricone for a score that would combine Western music evoking the Spanish heritage of the Jesuits with that of the Guarani people. But tucked away in the lofts and crypts of churches across Latin America was evidence that it wasn’t the first time such fusion had been tried. Scores, forgotten for hundreds of years, showed that long before the moviemakers, others had done the very same thing. And over the last few years, with the cobwebs eventually blown, musicologists have found a treasure trove: a wealth of church music woven from a synthesis of Western tradition and American Native culture, created by both European and Indigenous composers.

This remarkable fusion owed much to the Jesuit Reductions: mission settlements and protectorates where the Society of Jesus ran hugely successful economic enterprises. The Spanish Crown thought the Jesuits would help hold out Spanish frontiers against the Portuguese, but the Jesuits had other ideas: they created places where Indigenous people could live safely, enjoy productive lives and the destructive aspects of colonial life – alcohol, prostitution and economic exploitation – could be held at bay. In these territories, from the Andes, through the middle of Latin America, to what became Paraguay and Bolivia, Guarani, Yaqui and Amazon peoples were also encouraged to compose music, while the Jesuits managed to resist marauding bandits and their brutal slave raids.