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The Sarah Leonard Song Writing Competition 2025

We invite composers up to the age of 35 to compose a song to original English words.
Composers must choose texts from one of the eight poems by a variety of poets listed below.
Songs can be for any voice type and piano.

The first and second prize-winning songs will be performed at an AESS Prize-winners concert in September 2025 , date and venue TBC.

INTRODUCTION

Deadline for sending completed song accompanied by entry form is April 19th 2025.

The entry form is at the bottom of this page


Please register your interest by emailing the Co-ordinator, Lynda Morgan at lynda.morgan2@btinternet.com or email info@aofess.org.uk


All applicants should complete the online form on the AESS website and send their compositions by pdf file through the website.

PROSPECTUS

1st prize £500,

2nd prize £300,

3rd prize £200.


The winning song will be performed at an AESS Prize Winners’ concert in London in September 2025, date and venue TBC.


Judging Panel

Professor Robert Saxton

Stephen Gutman

Nigel Foster



Rules of the 2025 AESS English Song Composers Competition

Composers can be of any nationality.

Upper age limit 35

Song can be for any voice type and piano (no other instrument)

Songs must last no longer than 6 minutes.

Manuscript should not contain the composer's name, only their pseudonym.


Completed songs should be sent in a PDF file format together with the application form at the foot of this page.


The results will be announced by May 24th 2025.

All entrants will be given feedback from the judges.


The winning song will be performed at an AESS Prize-winners concert in London in September of 2025


Previous Winners of the Song Composition Prize






THE COMPETITION

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.


The Poems

 

Out of the Morning, Emily Dickinson

Will there really be a morning?

Is there such a thing as day?

Could I see it from the mountains

If I were as tall as they?


Has it feet like water-lilies?

Has it feathers like a bird?

Is it brought from famous countries

Of which I have never heard?


Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor!

Oh, some wise man from the skies!

Please to tell a little pilgrim

Where the place called morning lies!

 

 

Silver Filigree, Elinor Wylie

The icicles wreathing

On trees in festoon

Swing, swayed to our breathing:

They're made of the moon.


She's a pale, waxen taper;

And these seem to drip

Transparent as paper

From the flame of her tip.


Molten, smoking a little,

Into crystal they pass;

Falling, freezing, to brittle

And delicate glass.


Each a sharp-pointed flower,

Each a brief stalactite

Which hangs for an hour

In the blue cave of night.

 

 

Night, Alice Otto

The moon lifts towards the stars

and hangs above the sea,

a watery streak of light

as day slides into night.

 

Thousands of years of hot-white stars

blink against the black sky.

 

Cloud drops before dawn.

 

 

Travel, Edna St Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,

And the day is loud with voices speaking,

Yet there isn't a train goes by all day

But I hear its whistle shrieking.

 

All night there isn't a train goes by,

Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming

But I see its cinders red on the sky,

And hear its engine steaming.

 

My heart is warm with friends I make,

And better friends I'll not be knowing,

Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,

No matter where it's going.

 

 

A Winter Bluejay, Sara Teasdale

Crisply the bright snow whispered,

Crunching beneath our feet;

Behind us as we walked along the parkway,

Our shadows danced,

Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.

Across the lake the skaters

Flew to and fro,

With sharp turns weaving

A frail invisible net.

In ecstasy the earth

Drank the silver sunlight;

In ecstasy the skaters

Drank the wine of speed;

In ecstasy we laughed

Drinking the wine of love.

Had not the music of our joy

Sounded its highest note?

But no,

For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,

“Oh look!”

There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,

Fearless and gay as our love,

A bluejay cocked his crest!

Oh who can tell the range of joy

Or set the bounds of beauty?

 

 

A Snow Man, Anon

Oh, the beautiful snow!

We’re all in a glow—

Nell, Dolly, and Willie, and Dan;

For the primest of fun,

When all’s said and done,

Is just making a big snow man.

Two stones for his eyes

Look quite owlishly wise,

A hard pinch of snow for his nose;

Then a mouth that’s as big

As the snout of a pig,

And he’ll want an old pipe, I suppose.

Then the snow man is done,

And to-morrow what fun

To make piles of snow cannon all day,

And to pelt him with balls

Till he totters and falls,

And a thaw comes and melts him away.

 

 

The Dalliance of the Eagles, Walt Whitman

Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)

Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,

The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,

A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,

Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,

She hers, he his, pursuing.

 

 

The Twilight Turns, by James Joyce

The twilight turns from amethyst

To deep and deeper blue,

The lamp fills with a pale green glow

The trees of the avenue.


The old piano plays an air,

Sedate and slow and gay;

She bends upon the yellow keys,

Her head inclines this way.


Shy thought and grave wide eyes and hands

That wander as they list –

The twilight turns to darker blue

With lights of amethyst.

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