Dale Trumbore's 'How to Go On'

Synopsis

Following the death of a loved one, American poet Barbara Crooker wrote, “How can we go on/knowing the end of the story?”

American composer Dale Trumbore attempted to answer that question with her haunting choral work, How to Go On, given its premiere performance on today’s date in 2016 in Anaheim, California by the Choral Arts Initiative.

Rather than setting the traditional Latin text of the Requiem Mass like Verdi, or passages from the Bible like Brahms, Trumbore crafted a kind of “secular requiem,” choosing texts by Crooker and two other contemporary American poets addressing fundamental questions of life, love, and loss.

“I have moments of utter panic about my own mortality, and I know many other people do as well, although we may not openly discuss or address our fears about death,” she confessed. “Taken together, the seven poems of How to Go On recognize these fears while also cultivating a feeling of everything ultimately being at peace. Hopefully the music adds to that visceral feeling of reassurance.“

Trumbore, a New Jersey native, studied with the great choral composer Morten Lauridsen at the University of Southern California and her own vocal works are noted for what The New York Times described as her “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Dale Trumbore (b. 1987): How to Go On; Choral Arts Initiative; Brandon Elliott, conductor; CAI 2017

On This Day

Births

• 1858 - Belgian composer, violinist and conductor Eugène Ysaÿe, in Liège

• 1901 - Austrian conductor and composer Fritz Mahler, a nephew of Gustav Mahler, in Vienna. He studied composition with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. He emigrated to America in 1936, where he taught at the Juilliard Summer School and conducted the Erie Philharmonic and the Hartford Symphony.

• 1904 - Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi, in Zagarolo (near Rome)

• 1941 - English composer Geoffrey Burgon, in Hambleton, Hampshire

• 1959 - Scottish composer James MacMillan, in Kilwinning, Ayrshire

Deaths

• 1729 - Burial date of German composer and lawyer Johann David Heinichen, 46, in Dresden

• 1763 - French flutist and composer Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, 89, in Paris

Premieres

• 1782 - Mozart: opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, in Vienna at the Burgtheater

• 1998 - Carol Barnett: Meeting at Seneca Falls, for soloists, narrator, and chamber ensemble, at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, with Apo Hsu conducting