Woman Composer Sunday 2025

This coming Sunday, 09 March, marks Woman Composer Sunday.  This initiative, which encourages choirs to perform music by women composers on the Sunday closest to International Women’s Day, was launched in 2021 by the Royal College of Organists and the Society of Women Organists, of which our Assistant Director of Music, Alana Brook, is a prominent member.  This year all the choral and organ music across the three Sunday services has been composed by women, and includes music in a wide variety of styles, and ranging from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century.

At the 09:15 Eucharist, the Cathedral Voluntary Choir will lead the congregation in movements from mass settings by Margaret Rizza and Bernadette Farrell, and a responsorial psalm written for the occasion by our own Alana Brook.  They will also sing the anthem ‘Love bade me welcome’ by Kathryn Rose.

It’s our tradition at Wakefield to start the 11:00 Eucharist during Lent by singing the Litany from the Book of Common Prayer in procession.  One of our Lay Clerks, Janette Fraser, has composed a new setting of this text which we will be singing for the first time on Sunday.  We think this is probably the first setting of the Litany composed in several hundred years, and almost certainly the first setting by a woman!  The Cathedral Consort will also be singing the Mass in A minor by Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav Holst (of ‘The Planets’ fame), and a setting of ‘Miserere Mei’ by Raffaella Aleotti, an Italian Augustinian nun who lived from about 1575 to 1620.

At Evensong in the afternoon, the Cathedral Consort will be singing the psalm to chants by Sarah MacDonald, currently Director of Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, Director of the girls’ choir at Ely Cathedral, and President of the Royal College of Organists, and a setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by Ruth Gipps, a highly respected English composer, conductor and educator from the twentieth century.  The anthem will be ‘The Pilgrimes Travels’ by Judith Bingham, setting a text by Emilia Lanier, the first woman in England to assert herself as a professional poet.

The organ voluntaries throughout the day have also been composed by women, including Sarah MacDonald’s ‘Trio on Attende Domine’, Jeanne Demessieux’s ‘Attende Domine’ and Judith Weir’s ‘Tree of Peace’.

Wakefield Cathedral is committed to diversity in the range of composers and music performed, and we are particularly keen to promote music by women.  Looking further ahead this term, every service during Holy Week will include at least one piece written by a woman, as do many more services over the coming weeks.  In the meantime, we’re thoroughly looking forward to performing such a wide range of fantastic music by women composers on Sunday – please do come along to hear it all!

Music for Sunday 09 March   First Sunday of Lent

08:00    Holy Communion   Book of Common Prayer

09:15    The Eucharist   Modern Language
sung by the Cathedral Voluntary Choir
Hymns:   AM 123, 304, 76
Kyrie:   Mass of the Bread of Life   Margaret Rizza
Sanctus & Agnus Dei:   Bernadette Farrell
Gradual Psalm:   91 vv. 1-2, 9-16
Anthem:   Love bade me welcome   Kathryn Rose
Voluntary:   Trio on ‘Attende Domine’   Sarah MacDonald

11:00    Sung Eucharist   Traditional Language
sung by the Cathedral Consort
Litany:   Janette Fraser                Hymns:   304, 76
Setting:   Mass in A minor   Imogen Holst
Gradual Psalm:   91 vv. 1-2, 9-16
Anthem:   Miserere Mei   Raffaella Aleotti
Voluntary:   Attende Domine   Jeanne Demessieux

15:30    Choral Evensong   sung by the Cathedral Consort
Responses:   Plainsong               Hymns:   507, 60 ii, 434
Canticles:   Ruth Gipps Psalm:   119 vv. 73-88
Anthem:   The Pilgrimes Travels   Judith Bingham
Voluntary:   Tree of Peace   Judith Weir