The Lost Language (2024)
for SATB choir and piano
Text: Michael Kiesow Moore (b. 1960)
Duration: 5 minutes
Difficulty: 2/4
Commissioned by The Augustana Choir (Dr. John Wiebe, director). First performed in Camrose, AB by The Augustana Choir in March 2025.
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.
Click here to see the complete score.
Live recording currently unavailable. MIDI available on request.
Full Text
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.
Text from "The Song Castle" © Michael Kiesow Moore, 2019.
Used with permission.