Sheet Music by Women Composers for Mixed Choir: Extensive Selection

This is a lilting take on the Elizabethan lute-song full of smooth Stanford-like nineteenth-century harmonies, exquisitely tempered with modal effects.

A medieval English carol for solo baritone and unaccompanied ATBarB. The setting is full of gentle hemiola and canonic effects, and makes much use of parallel sixths and thirds.

This is an appropriately aching setting of Sir Philip Sidney's poem of unending desire and longing. There are gorgeous chromatics and enharmonics and a masterful use of a triplet pattern which becomes...

Weep you no more, sad fountains is a modern take on the Elizabethan lute-song, integrating the characteristic alternations of minor and major, fondness for cross-relations, and vivid word-painting. Th...

Music, when soft voices die combines aspects of nineteenth-century English pastoral style with some of the tonal adventurousness of Vaughan Williams's Shakespeare settings. This is an exceptionally be...

Commissioned by King's College, Cambridge, for the 2021 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, Cecilia McDowall's setting of this well-known fifteenth-century macaronic text is expressive and ethereal....

The three movements of A Winter Breviary are entitled: 'We look for you', 'The year's midnight', and 'The unexpected early hour'. The movements are each based on an Indian classical Raag: Raag Hamsadh...

This imaginative setting of the well-loved text O little town of Bethleham, by Phillips Brooks, displays McGlade's characteristic rich and expressive harmonies, with their jazz inflections. Opening wi...

Characteristically sung on Christmas Day, this Catholic chant depicts mystery and wonder at the birth of Jesus, as witnessed by the animals. The second half of the text relates to words spoken by Eliz...

The O nata lux text is taken from a 10th-century anonymous hymn that uses the concept of light to symbolise hope, a particularly pertinent theme for Advent. Throughout this setting the sopranos intert...

A reflection on the plainchant antiphon 'Pulchra es et decora', this hauntingly beautiful piece was commissioned by ORA100 for Suzi Digby and ORA Singers. The original antiphon has been transcribed an...

On the Air (Dear Vaccine) discusses the optimism for a post-COVID world and, particularly, the desire to sing together again. For the text, poet Seán Street drew inspiration from 'Dear Vaccine', which...

A Gaelic Blessing was commissioned by the University of Edinburgh, McDowall's alma mater, for performance by the Edinburgh University Singers conducted by Calum Robertson. This meditative, folk-style...

A powerfully emotive setting that contrasts moments of reflection with declamatory exultation, Psalm 57 uses passages from the eponymous psalm in the King James translation. Written in 1972, it is ded...

Two stanzas of emotive verse by Christina Rossetti are set to music of touching directness in this a cappella offering, whose graceful melodies are often adorned by caressing rhythmic patterns. Offpri...

McDowall brings to life a mystical, brooding nativity text by Nicholas Dakin with dramatic octatonic melodies and parallel movement in fourths and fifths. The propulsive 6/8 metre is decorated with du...

McDowall brings to life a mystical, brooding nativity text by Nicholas Dakin with dramatic octatonic melodies and parallel movement in fourths and fifths. The propulsive 6/8 metre is decorated with du...

Becky McGlade has set this well-known Christmas hymn with textures both rich and restrained. The original English language hymn was based on a 19th-century English translation of Prudentius's 4th-cent...

Written in an a cappella style with scat accompaniment, "A Tree is a Song" is a joyful celebration of the connections and affinity found in nature and how wisdom and knowledge can be passed on 'as a m...

This glorious, heartfelt, and at times agonizing work sets a prescient text by Nicholas Andreas Vrenios, a victim of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. McDowall employs vocal embellishments, harmonic diss...

This glorious, heartfelt, and at times agonizing work sets a prescient text by Nicholas Andreas Vrenios, a victim of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. McDowall creates a haunting sound-world through voca...

Setting a collect from the Book of Common Prayer, this introit plays on McDowall's characteristic use of dissonance and modal inflections to create a hypnotic and slightly unsettled soundworld that re...

Setting a collect from the Book of Common Prayer, this introit plays on McDowall's characteristic use of dissonance and modal inflections to create a hypnotic and slightly unsettled soundworld that re...

Lucy Walker's thoughtful setting of There is no rose flows between swells of emotion and warm chromatic inflections in the Latin refrains. This piece captures the natural emphases of the text, seamles...

echo is musical celebration of human connectivity. It is singable, powerful, rhythmic, and contemplative. Wong reflects in her music and text the idea that 'the coming-together of many singers to a si...