The Lost Language
for SATB choir and piano
Commissioned by The Augustana Choir in Camrose, Alberta, directed by Dr. John Wiebe
Approximate Duration
5 minutes
Program Note
Michael Kiesow Moore’s beautiful poem “The Lost Language” was written in response to the growing violence faced by the trans community in the US in particular, the numerous murders of trans women of colour. The text imagines a language with no words for war or violence, but infinitely many words for love. My setting uses colourful piano writing and lush melodies, building to an ecstatic climax: “for when you speak of your fellow beings with love, how could you ever harm one?” As we see a resurgence of hateful bigotry and intolerance in Canada, particularly in Alberta, my hope is to amplify a message of love, safety, and community.
Complete Text by Michael Kiesow Moore
I dream of finding a lost language, a language that has no words for war or any kind of violence a human can make against another. This old, forgotten language will be wise in the use of gender, not binary. This language won’t even have the word for binary. And this will be a language that has more words for love than the colors of a large box of crayons, each word a new shade of care, and so vast that dictionaries fill to the brim with every different hue. And all the colors of the human clan will be described by those words of love, for when you speak of your fellow beings with love, how could you ever harm one? If we cannot find this long, lost language, then let us make it now.
Music©StuartBeatch,2024. Textfrom"TheSongCastle"©MichaelKiesowMoore,2019.Usedwithpermission.
Soprano
Alto
Tenor Bass
This
language
language
willbea lan-guage thathasmorewords for
that
hasmorewords for
dic
fill
for when f you speakof your
speak,
speak, ff I dream of finding - a lost lan guage -
speak, ff Idream of finding - a lost lan guage -