Premiere: Piffaro: The Renaissance Band, at Source Song Festival, August 7, 2026 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN

 

Duration:  ca. 20 min

 

Program Note:

​

Accounts of a Lost World borrows texts from historical descriptions of natural landscapes and flora and fauna, primarily from journals from the major exploratory journeys of the New World and the American frontier from the 15th to 19th centuries. Many European explorers saw the “New World” as a vast, empty wilderness, yet they had limited understanding of ecology and the natural systems of the earth. Many simply saw landscapes as places for economic exploitation and colonization. Their depictions are wrapped up in stereotypes of Indigenous populations as living in pristine, untouched nature. Other than the robust oral histories of indigenous people, which were disregarded by the colonists, there were no written descriptions of these places other than the biased accounts mostly interested in the land’s potential economic use. This perspective is compounded by the fact that many places Europeans visited were once densely populated by Indigenous people, but only recently had been decimated by disease and thus appeared “wild.” I am drawn to the haunting, stark, surreal, simple, awkwardly humorous, and liminal quality of some of these descriptions of empty landscapes and have highlighted that in the music.

 

In this piece, these colonialist accounts are contrasted with more sympathetic approaches, such as Bartolomé de las Casas’s Account of the Destruction of the Indies, as well as the Indigenous perspectives found in Chief Simon Pokagon’s writings. The piece closes with the writing of Charles Darwin, who plainly describes the effect of earthworms in leveling a landscape to become something aesthetically pleasing, gesturing toward the unseen forces and ecologies of which most colonial Europeans were unaware.

​

“A far-reaching musical excursion… [it] showcased many of the ensemble’s wide range of musical colors… infused with a sense of wonder. The cleverly rendered economy of music was both powerful and impactful. …An engaging variety was showcased in the shifting score palette of 'Disappeared.' …as its musical strains slipped away, a whispered ‘That was terrific' was heard in the hall."

— Basil Considine, Twin Cities Arts Reader​