Dobrinka Tabakova is a Bulgarian-British composer. She was born in Plovdiv and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and King's College in London. She writes music of glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures [which] convey a huge emotional depth (The Strad).

Written in 2008, the St John of Rila Troparion starts as an approaching procession. Unison writing, grace notes, drones and changing time signatures create an austere but delicate and flowing invocation.

A troparion is a short religious hymn used in Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Christian worship. St Ivan Rilski (876-c.946), also known by St Yoan, St Ivan or St John of Rila is the patron saint of Bulgaria and the founder of the Rila Monastery in the Rila Mountain in Bulgaria. The monastery is regarded as one of the country’s most important cultural, historical and architectural monuments. 19th October is marked nationally in Bulgaria as the day of St Ivan Rilski.

Покаяния основание, прописание умиления,
образ утешения, духовнаго совершения
равноангельное житие твое бысть, преподобне.
В молитвах убо и в пощениих и в слезах пребывавый,
отче Иоанне, моли Христа Бога о душах наших.

Foundation of repentance, symbol of tenderness
Image of consolation and spiritual perfection,
We revere your angel-worthy life.
Resided in prayers, fasting and tears,
Father Yoan, pray for our souls.

Translation by the composer

German abbess, mystic, and polymath Hildegard von Bingen was born in 1098 in Bermersheim, near Alzey, in the Holy Roman Empire, now modern-day Germany. She was the tenth child in a noble family and as such destined for the church. "O virtus Sapientiae" (O strength of Wisdom) is one of her most famous musical and theological works, a powerful, visionary antiphon dedicated to the Divine Wisdom (Holy Wisdom or Sapientia). Hildegard's music stands out from standard medieval Gregorian chant by featuring dramatic leaps and an expansive melody, designed to evoke the soaring feeling of the Three Wings of the text.

Cheryl Lynn Helm (born 1957) is an American composer, arranger, and musician best known for her choral arrangements of traditional and sacred music.

The Three Wings: the text famously visualises Wisdom as a cosmic force with three wings. One wing soars into the heavens, the second drips, or sweats, into the earth (bringing life to creation), and the third flies everywhere, encompassing the universe. It portrays Wisdom as the ultimate unifying force that encircles and binds everything together in a single, living path.

O virtus Sapientie,
que circuiens circuisti,
comprehendendo omnia
in una via que habet vitam,
tres alas habens,
quarum una in altum volat
et altera de terra sudat,
et tercia undique volat.
Laus tibi sit, sicut te decet,
O Sapientia.

O strength of Wisdom, who circling, circled, encompassing all things in one path that has life, having three wings: one of which soars on high, and a second sweats from the earth, and the third flies everywhere. Praise be to you, as is fitting for you, O Wisdom.

Born in 1951, Cecilia McDowall, a long-time collaborator of Artistic Director Dominic Ellis-Peckham, has been described as having a communicative gift that is very rare in modern music. Ave Regina, a hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary, is the first of a group of three Latin motets (Ave Maria and Regina Caeli) all specially commissioned for the Canterbury Chamber Choir and was first performed in 2004. It is a gentle and lyrical response to the “Queen of the Heavens, from whom the light came into the world”. Ave Regina is one of 44 anthems included in the Choirbook for the Queen, commissioned by Prince Charles for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

Ave Regina caelorum,
Ave Domina Angelorum:
Salve radix, salve porta,
Ex qua mundo lux est orta:
Gaude Virgo gloriosa,
Super omnes speciosa:
Vale, O valde decora,
Et pro nobis Christum exora.

Hail, Queen of heaven,
hail, Mistress of angels.
Hail, root of Jesse, hail, gate of heaven
from whom the light came into the world.
Rejoice, most glorious virgin,
favoured among all women;
farewell, O truly glorious one
and intercede with Christ for us.

Elizabeth J. Atkinson (b. 1951) is an American pianist, teacher and composer. She has a great love and respect for hymnody and the history of church music. A gentle, Taize chant-like setting for unaccompanied upper voices of Mother Teresa's poem 'A Simple Path', Fruits of the Selfless Heart was written as a benediction for use within the Mass, and has been performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe.

The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Dame Judith Weir is a British composer. She served as Master of the King's Music from 2014 to 2024. Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II, she was the first woman to hold this office. This very short setting of a text associated with the Matins service at Advent was written in 1983 and first performed by the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, as part of the very beautiful Advent Carol Service held every year in Trinity College Chapel. The music has a plainsong-like shape (although not based on any real plainsong) and swells from unison to 8-part harmony and back again within a couple of minutes’ music.

Drop down ye heavens from above,
And let the skies pour down righteousness.
Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people;
My salvation shall not tarry.
I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.
Fear not, for I will save thee;
For I am the Lord thy God,
The holy one of Israel, thy redeemer.
Drop down ye heavens from above,
And let the skies pour down righteousness.

This recent (2024) secular work is 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 melody from tree to tree'. Cecilia McDowall's setting of Heather Lane's text embodies the theme of connection as the parts imitate and respond to each other, sharing in the heartwood's song.

The trees, they bind their whole horizon,
Recordings ring on ring
Sunlight, shadow, and wind, and wonder
Autumn and the spring

The seeds, they gather their wisdom
Enfolding all they know
Of bird and breeze, the world ash tree
The summer, and the snow

The roots, they stitch their web of meaning
Passing on the tune
A melody from tree to tree
A hymn to sun and moon

A tree is a song from root to crown
And since the world was young
Oak and hawthorn, beech and rowan
All sing the heartwood's song

Heather Lane (b. 1960)

Eleanor Daley (b1955) is a Canadian composer of choral and church music. She lives and works in Toronto.

This is a very heartfelt, flowing arrangement of the 17th Century text by Phineas Fletcher originally made famous in a setting by Orlando Gibbons.

Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet
Which brought from Heaven the news and Prince of Peace.
Cease not, wet eyes, his mercy to entreat;
To cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
Nor let His eye see sin, but through my tears

Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650)

Susie Hill graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge in June 2019. While at university, she was a Choral Scholar with the Choir of Trinity College. She was also active with Sing Inside, an organisation that leads music workshops in prisons. She has also taught Theory and Musicianship for the Stringmoves programme in Cambridge and worked on residential courses with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain.

This beautifully indulgent and immersive arrangement of the popular folk song was written at the age of 15!

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Remember me to one who lived there.
She once was a true love of mine.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Without no seams, nor fine needle work.
Then she'll be a true love of mine.

Tell her to find me an acre of land
Parsley sage rosemary and thyme
Between salt water and the sea strands
Then she'll be a true love of mine.

Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather
Parsley sage rosemary and thyme
And gather it all in a bunch of heather
Then she’ll be a true love of mine

Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953) was an American classical composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher. She is the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. She composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, as well as choral works, art songs, chamber music, and music for solo instruments. In 2009, a substantial collection of her works and papers was found in her abandoned summer home.

Resignation is an art song, originally composed for solo voice. It is an intimate, restrained, and quietly powerful piece that reflects on the end of a difficult life and a profound longing for peace. The drudging, solemn weight of the music echoes Price’s own real-life struggles as a multiracial woman, single mother, and domestic abuse survivor. Though not a traditional African-American spiritual, Resignation heavily utilizes the musical idioms, melodic intimacy, and raw emotional intensity of the spiritual tradition.

My life is a pathway of sorrow;
I’ve struggled and toiled in the sun
with hope that the dawn of tomorrow
would break on a work that is done.
My Master has pointed the way,
he taught me in prayer to say:
“Lord, give us this day and our daily bread.”
I hunger, yet I shall be fed.
My feet, they are wounded and dragging;
My body is tortured with pain;
My heart, it is shattered and flagging,
What matter, if, Heaven I gain.
Of happiness once I have tasted;
‘Twas only an instant it paused
tho’ brief was the hour that I wasted
For ever the woe that it caused
I’m tired and want to go home.
My mother and sister are there;
They’re waiting for me to come
Where mansions are bright and fair.

Florence Price

Amy Beach (1867 – 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. She was one of the first American composers of her era to succeed without the benefit of European training, and was known as one of the most respected American composers. Peace I Leave with You is the third movement of the 3 Choral Responses, Op. 8. Published in 1891 a year before her best known choral work, the Mass in E flat, the responsary is quiet and devotional, featuring gentle dynamic shifts and a calm, flowing tempo.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.
Not as the world giveth give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled.

John 14:27

Mia Makaroff (b.1970) is a Finnish composer, arranger, music teacher and a choir conductor. Mia Makaroff's work includes devising song-writing projects for young people. Finnish folklore and poetry are great sources of inspiration in her compositions.

Mia said of her best known work, Butterfly: I wrote it many, many years ago... It was actually my self-therapy song quite a long time before that, because I was just experiencing a divorce and life was still a bit rough then... I found myself just playing this song, it just came out of nowhere. This was a very special song because the lyrics and the melody came like a flash... little did I know that it was going to be so successful

Sweet is the sound of my new-born wings
I stretch them open and let them dry
I haven't seen this world before but I'm excused I'm a butterfly
Sweet is the touch of your new-born wings,
we fly in circles, we play with the sun
We haven't seen this world before, so fair, so bright, so blue the sky.
Love me, love me on the leaves before we say goodbye
Love me, kiss me with the breeze, you will be my lullaby.
Tomorrow I'll die and you'll be my lullaby.
Sweet is the wind as it gently blows the day away and the night time comes
Great are the wonders that silence shows,
I fall asleep and I dream of the sun and my butterfly.

Mia Makaroff

Anna is a multi award-winning Composer from Dorset, based in South East London. Having studied Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, she has recently completed an MA in Opera-Making at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, having collaborated with librettist Olivia Bell on a new chamber opera. Anna's work traverses a multitude of genres, from vocal works and pop songs to electronic soundscapes and multimedia pieces. She's also an accomplished singer and face painter!

The Way Through the Woods was written for the National Youth Choir and published in March 2023. It is set to Rudyard Kipling’s much loved poem of the magic of place and memory. The immersive opening soundscape of birdcalls and forest murmurs is quickly replaced by a driving, syncopated ostinato rhythm echoing both the abandoned road and nature inexorably reclaiming the woodland .

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

Rudyard Kipling