Shop for Music

About the Composer

Dale Trumbore

Dale Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer and writer whose music has been praised by The New York Times for its “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies.” Her music has been widely performed in the U.S. and internationally by ensembles including the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pacific Chorale, Pasadena Symphony, The Singers...

Learn More About Dale Trumbore

Dale Trumbore

What Are We Becoming

Name: What Are We Becoming
SKU: DT0039
Availability: InStock

Dale Trumbore

Given an uncertain present, how do we create a better future?

Choral

mixed choir

organ

Difficulty: 4

Duration: 10+ min.

DT0039

Add to cart

SATB Chorus & Organ

“What Are We Becoming” was commissioned by Choral Chameleon (Vince Peterson, conductor) for a concert of secular music for chorus and organ titled Deus ex Machina.

The two texts for this piece ask us to consider: even in a world where a god-like figure could potentially swoop in and right every wrong, would it even be possible to find an immediate resolution for huge issues like climate change or mass shootings? Abigail Welhouse’s poem “What Is” asks us to consider our own accountability, asking “what else could we be.” Lynn Ungar’s “The Last Good Days” emphasizes that any answers we do find will be “complex” and “demanding,” then encourages us to wake up, give thanks, and sing while we live out these answers.

Composer’s Notes

When I listen to the organ, I can’t help but associate the instrument with the presence of any—real or imagined, uppercase or lowercase—god. In What Are We Becoming, the organ functions as a sort of omniscient narrator or omnipresent god-like figure as the chorus contemplates our best path forward. If there’s any resolution to the kind of big-picture questions the piece is asking, it’s this: we have to take personal ownership of what we can do right now, rather than waiting for anything else to intervene and save us. -Dale Trumbore

Text

WHAT IS What is a balm What is this place We’ve been here before What is a salve What is it that opens What have we become What is a human What is a wound What are we becoming What else could we be —Abigail Welhouse THE LAST GOOD DAYS What will you do with the last good days? Before the seas rise and the skies close in, before the terrible bill for all our thoughtless wanting finally comes due? What will you do with the last fresh morning, filled with the watermelon scent of cut grass and the insistent bird calling sweet sweet across the shining day? Crops are dying, economies failing, men crazy with the lust for power and fame are shooting up movie theaters and engineering the profits of banks. It is entirely possible it only gets worse from here. How can you leave your heart open to such a vast, pervasive sadness? How can you close your eyes to the riot of joy and beauty that remains? The solutions, if there are any to be had, are complex, detailed, demanding. The answers are immediate and small. Wake up. Give thanks. Sing. —Lynn Ungar

$8.00 per licensed PDF