Calling Composers!

Scoring: SATB choir, dividing into SSAATTBB maximum (with two or three singers per part at maximum divisi). An additional baritone solo and/or an organ accompaniment are possible. If a cappella, please provide a rehearsal piano reduction.

Duration: From 4 minutes to a maximum of 8 minutes.

Text: May be sacred or secular, from any source out of copyright (70 years after death) or with permission for use in performances. Any language is acceptable if a translation is provided.

Complexity: The Delius Singers comprises students and young professional singers from the University of Oxford with good sight-reading skills, but rehearsal time is limited to three rehearsals of approximately two hours each. Excessive complexity or over-reliance on extended performance techniques is therefore discouraged.

Theme: The composition should connect to the broader theme of ‘Nature’s Voice’, interpreted as the composer chooses. Delius’s An Arabesque will also feature in the concert, and the composition may respond directly to this work but is not required to do so.

Vocal Ranges:

Soprano: Bb3 – C6

Alto: F3 – G5

Tenor: D3 – A4

Baritone: G2 – E4

Bass: Eb2 – D4

Please note that extremities should only be used sparingly.

Score PDF and MP3 file (digital voices are fine) submitted via email to deliussingers@gmail.com. Please ensure that your score is anonymised. Please also complete this application form and attach to the same email.

Entries are limited to a maximum of one per person.

Applicants must be aged 18 or above.

The deadline for applications is Monday 5th January 2026

First Prize £500, with the possibility of Second and Third Prizes of £250 each

Prizewinning compositions will be performed in early 2026 by The Delius Singers in a concert in Oxford. The concert will be recorded professionally and a copy sent to the composer.

There will be opportunities for prize-winners to receive feedback from the judging panel, and to workshop ideas with the singers in rehearsal.

Listen to the orchestral version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHU3k92pBG0

Hast thou in gloomy forests wandered?

Knowst thou Pan?

I too have known him,

Not in gloomy forests,

When all the silence spake;

No, no, him have I never known,

Only the Pan of Love have I endured,

Then was hushed all that speaketh.

In a sunbathed meadow grows a wondrous herb;

Only in deepest stillness

Under the beams of the burning sun

Its blossom unfolds itself

For a fleeting moment.

It gleams like the frenzied eye

Of one enchanted,

Like the glow of a dead bride’s blushes.

It is this flow’r I have gazed on

As a lover.

She was like the Jasmin’s sweet-scented snow,

Red blood of poppies circled in her veins,

Her death-cold hands and white as marble

In her lap reposed

Like water-lilies in deepest lake.

And her words they fell as softly

As petals of appleblossom

On the dewladen grass.

But there were hours,

When they rose upleaping cold and clear

As the jet of a silvery fountain.

Sighing was in her laughter,

Gladness was in her pain;

By her were all things vanquished –

And naught e’er dared gainsay her

But the spell of her own two eyes.

From the poisonous lilies’ dazzling chalice

Drank she to me,

To him too that hath perished

And to him who now at her feet is kneeling,

With us all she drank.

And her glance then obeyed her

From the bowl of troth to eternal plighting

From the poisonous lilies’ dazzling chalice.

All now is past!

On the bleak heath snow-bestrewn

In the bare brown wood

Stands a lonely thornbush,

The black winds they scatter its leaves

One after another,

One after another,

Shedding its blood-reddened berries

In the cold white snow,

Its glowing red berries

In the cold white snow

Knowst thou Pan?

Text by Jens Peter Jacobsen, translated by Peter Warlock