Composers Song Writing Competition 2023

Our suggested criteria for what we are looking for –The song should communicate the poem to the audience.

The text should be set imaginatively and intelligently – with an awareness of underlay and word stresses. Good vocal writing with appropriate ranges for the voices chosen.

Good piano writing using figures or textures appropriate to the text and not obscuring the singer.

Well chosen notation, spelling of chords and choice of terms.

Walter de la Mare

Some one

Some one came knocking

At my wee, small door;

Someone came knocking;

I’m sure-sure-sure;

I listened, I opened,I looked to left and right,

But nought there was a stirringIn the still dark night;

Only the busy beetle

Tap-tapping in the wall,

Only from the forest

The screech-owl’s call, Only the cricket whistling

While the dewdrops fall,

So I know not who came knocking,

At all, at all, at all.

The Birthnight: To F

Dearest, it was a night

That in its darkness rocked Orion’s stars;

A sighing wind ran faintly white

Along the willows, and the cedar boughs

Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across

The starry silence of their antique moss:

No sound save rushing air

Cold, yet all sweet with Spring

And in thy mother’s arms, couched weeping there,

Thou, lovely thing.

Full Moon

One night as Dick lay half asleep,

Into his drowsy eyes

A great still light began to creep

From out the silent skies.

It was the lovely moon’s, for when

He raised his dreamy head,

Her surge of silver filled the pane

And streamed across his bed.

So, for a while, each gazed at each

—Dick and the solemn moon —

Till, climbing slowly on her way,

She vanished, and was gone.

John Mouldy

I spied John Mouldy in his cellar,

Deep down twenty steps of stone;

In the dusk he sat a-smiling

Smiling there all alone.

He read no book, he snuffed no candle;

The rats ran in, the rats ran out,

And far and near, the drip of water

Went whisp’ring about.

The dusk was still, with dew a-falling,

I saw the Dog-star bleak and grim,

I saw a slim brown rat of Norway

Creep over him.

I spied John Mouldy in his cellar,

Deep down twenty steps of stone;

In the dusk he sat a-smiling

Smiling there all alone.

Snow

No breath of wind,

No gleam of sun –Still the white snow

Whirls softly down

Twig and bough

And blade and thorn

All in an icy

Quiet, forlorn.

Whispering, rustling,

Through the air

On still and stone,

Roof, – everywhere,It heaps its powdery Crystal flakes,

Of every tree

A mountain makes;

‘Til pale and faint

At shut of day

Stoops from the WestOne wint’ry ray,

And, feathered in fire

Where ghosts the moon,

A robin shrills

His lonely tune.

The Linnet

Upon this leafy bush

With thorns and roses in it,

Flutters a thing of light,

A twittering linnet.

And all the throbbing world

Of dew and sun and air

By this small parcel of lifeIs made more fair;

As if each bramble-spray

And mounded gold-wreathed furze,

Harebell and little thyme,

Were only hers;

As if this beauty and grace

Did to one bird belong,

And, at a flutter of wing,

Might vanish in song.