Christmas Choral Music by Female & Non-Binary Composers

A short introduction to some of the choral music written by female and non-binary composers, suitable for the Advent and Christmas period. Each piece has a link to buy the sheet music from a UK site (generally direct from the publisher) and a link to listen to the music on Spotify, YouTube and/or Soundcloud. You can hear a much larger selection of pieces (over 100 songs) of Christmas choral music by female and non-binary composers on our Spotify and YouTube playlists.

spotify playlist

youtube playlist

**Now May We Singen by Cecilia McDowall**

Published in 2013 by Oxford University Press
SATB unaccompanied
4:00 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate
YouT ube / Spotify / sheet music
Setting a 15-century English text containing some short Latin passages, this is a joyful, dance-like carol with a medieval feel. The spirited, lilting melody begins in the sopranos and altos but is passed round the choir, while the other voices add stirring harmonies and bell-like drones to the texture.

**Peace on Earth by Errollyn Wallen CBE**

Published in 2006 by Peters Edition
Unison voices and accompaniment
4:00 minutes
Difficulty: *Easy*
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
Wallen writes: “*Peace on Earth* is a contemporary carol and a setting of my own words: the bleakness of winter in a turning, troubled world conveyed through a slowly spinning ostinato over which the voices sing (as they themselves hear other unseen voices sing) of the hope for light and peace.”

**Adam and the Mother by Kerry Andrew**

Published in 2011 by Oxford University Press
SSATB (with optional soprano solo)
5:00 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
Soundcloud / Spotify / sheet music
Combining a number of early lullaby texts in one setting, *Adam and the Mother* is a haunting carol recalling the fall of Adam. It combines irregular melodic lines with lilting ostinato passages and will appeal to experienced choirs looking for a unique addition to the Christmas repertory.

spotify playlist

**A Simple Gloria by Libby Larsen**

Published in 2019 by Oxford University Press
SATB unaccompanied
2:30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
Originally published in the anthology *An American Christmas*, this is a serene setting of a macaronic text by M. K. Dean describing the song the angels sang for the birth of the Christ-child.

**Song for Snow by Florence Price**

Published in 1930 by G Schirmer
SATB Chorus & Piano
1:30 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
The song’s text comes from a poem of the same name by American author, Elizabeth Coatsworth. Price’s vocal lines emulate falling snowflakes with an overarching descending melody, and a delicate piano accompaniment. Soft staccato homophony later evokes an icy landscape, before returning to the sweet, laid-back melody.

**See amid the winter’s snow by Becky McGlade**

Published in in 2021 by Oxford University Press
SATB
4:30 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
This setting of Edward Caswall's well-known text shows all the hallmarks of McGlade's characteristic style, with changing time signatures, beguiling chromaticisms, and a beautiful, fluid melody. Changing metres give a sense of fluidity, while a scintillating climax on 'Peace on earth' forms the centre of the work.

**In the Stillness by Sally Beamish**

Published in 2022 by Peters Edition
SATB
2:30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
A short contemporary Christmas carol for unaccompanied SATB choir. With original words by Katrina Shepherd, this short carol beautifully captures the hushed rapture of a small parish church in a snowbound landscape, just before Christmas.

**Christmas Eve by Tansy Davies**

Published in 2011 by Faber Music
Mixed choir
6:00 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
YouTube / sheet music
‘Christmas hath a darkness/Brighter than the blazing noon’: in her imaginative and thoughtful response to Christina Rossetti’s *Christmas Eve*, Tansy Davies has created a beguiling 6-minute carol. Premiered at the 2011 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, this modern but accessible work for unaccompanied SATB choir would make an interesting pairing with the better known Rossetti setting *In the Bleak Midwinter*.

**God would be born in thee by Judith Bingham OBE**

Published in 2008 by Peters Edition
SATB & Organ
3:30 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
This Christmas carol sets poetry in Latin and English by the priest Angelus Silesius. Written for and first sung at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge in 2004.

**This endris night by Sarah Quartel**

Published in 2019 by Oxford University Press
SSAA (with optional handbells, percussion and piano)
2:30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
Sarah Quartel brings a fresh take on a familiar fifteenth-century text in this enchanting carol. The dialogue between Mary and the infant Jesus is woven to a beguiling folk-like melody, in 6/8 metre, through each of the voice parts, with each verse ending in the lilting refrain 'Lully, by by, lullay'.

**Creator of the Stars of Night by Diana Burrell**

Published in 2002 by United Music Publishing
SATB, Cor Anglais & Organ Pedals
6:00 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
Burrell's setting combines SATB chorus with the unusual textural pairing of cor anglais and organ pedals, providing both an intense lyricism and a range of glistening starburst possibilities.

**There Is No Rose by Cheryl Frances-Hoad**

Published in 1995 by Cadenza Music
SATB
3:00 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
*There is No Rose*, for unaccompanied SATB choir, is among the earliest works that Frances-Hoad acknowledges (she was only 14). Winner of the Bach Choir Carol Competition of 1995, it was premiered at the Royal Albert Hall during their Christmas Concert of that year. Despite its immediate attractiveness, this is no simple carol but a partsong that meditates upon its text. Frances-Hoad's control of diatonic harmony, sometimes with modal, sometimes with slightly bluesy implications, and the deft way she negotiates between the poem's English and Latin elements is undeniable.

**Minstrels by Helen Neeves**

Self published
Vocal Octet (SSAATTBB)
2:00 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate
YouTube / sheet music (email through site)
Christmas carol with words by William Wordsworth. Neeves writes: “For me this poem creates a very ‘folky’ traditional story, Christmas music, good cheer, a crisp winter’s night etc I set it with that in mind, keeping to a traditional folk-like sound world.”

**Ding Dong Diggety! By Janet Wheeler**

Published in 2015 by Maze Music
SATB with body percussion
3:00 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music (email through site)
A jazzy arrangement of the well loved Christmas carol *Ding Dong Merrily on High*, with body and vocal percussion.

**Drop down, ye heavens by Judith Weir**

Published in 1984 by Novello and Co.
SATB
1:40 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate
YouTube / Spotify / sheet music
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.

**The Children’s Eye by Caroline Shaw**

Published in 2023 by Oxford University Press
Mezzo Soprano Solo and SSAATTBB
6:30 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
Spotify / sheet music
This strikingly effective carol for alto solo and a cappella choir combines verse by Robert Louis Stevenson with an ancient Latin antiphon text in music of great spaciousness and lyricism.

spotify playlist

Hannah Fiddy26 November 2024books