Each of the composers has written a programme note to accompany their Composeher work. Read about Ailie’s piece, Margaret’s Moon, below.

It is an unusual luxury to receive a vocal commission where the choice of text is left open to the composer. I knew from the start, particularly given the nature of the Composeher remit, that I wanted to use text from a female writer and preferably a Scottish one, so I spent several days trawling through the Scottish Poetry Library resources.

I stumbled upon the poem Margaret’s Moon by Jackie Kay and as soon as I read it I couldn’t get it out of my head. It’s an incredibly beautiful poem, full of vivid imagery, which creates a sound world subtle enough to juxtapose ‘regret’ with ‘Margaret’. Whilst I was immediately sure I wanted to set the work in some way, I had some reservations about whether this would be the right project for it. The poem is so intensely personal, and therefore I hesitated about whether a choral setting would be the right way to honour the text. I realised, however, that the reason I am drawn to the topics I choose to write about is almost always this juxtaposition of the personal and the universal. Whilst the text is intensely personal, the theme of complicated grief is shared by many. I think there is therefore something potentially very powerful about performing such an individual text with such a large number of people. In some ways, perhaps, it acknowledges that in the moments when we feel most alone, we never truly are.