Do we yearn, openly or in secret, for a simpler age we've had to leave behind?  Back in the spring of 2003 I invented an alter ego, the zany musicologist Peter Ceniti, and he in turn began "discovering" works by an imaginary 19th c. composer he called Heinrich von Ofterdingen.  Ceniti established a goofy Gesellschaft, and  its members developed the theory that Ofterdingen's work has leaked from another universe, parallel to ours - a world with a happier history, including a musical heritage rich and strange.  
Through these masks (Andreacchi become Ceniti, Ceniti become Ofterdingen) it became possible again to aspire to the beautiful, to sing of love, while the transparency of the endeavor is a source of humor, a humor that acknowledges the limits of art and of ourselves.
But this is more than a nostalgic indulgence: in conceiving an alternate past we loosen the bonds of a dark inheritance, enabling a brighter future, while, paradoxically, it's in the midst of (even a fabricated)  tradition that I find my singular voice.