Flowing, gently irregular, as if barely containing great passion.
Duration: 1m50
2019
[ Buy digital download on SMP ]
Something a little filmic. I was indeed quite inspired by Michael Nyman ‘The Piano’ score.
Author Archives: sara-garrard
Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite
“Come again, sweet love doth now invite” is a song with music John Dowland, anonymous lyrics. This is not that song. That is a great song though–very over the top sad and also very cute and catchy! This is music I wrote for those same lyrics.
Come again!
Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.Come again!
That I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.All the night
My sleeps are full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams.
My heart takes no delight
Her smiles, my springs that makes my joys to grow,
Her frowns the Winters of my woe.Out alas,
My faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue
Nor yield me any grace;
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom neither tears nor truth may once persuade.
The first of a bit of a project of setting old/Elizabethan era lyrics/poetry to music…
Dowland, and others of the era, but Dowland was RENOWNED for it, wrote such enjoyably, beautifully, over-the-top melancholy tragic songs. This was super trendy and they were really POPULAR.
So, if there’s a concept here, it’s that I’m setting the words with the same kind of melancholy and sincerity despite their excessiveness, but in a more modern folk-pop-idk idiom, a sort of parallel.
‘Home Away From Home’ (FFVII Remake) oboe and piano
I did a quick transcription of another pretty piece from the Final Fantasy VII remake. This piece is by Takafumi Imamura, using themes by Nobuo Uematsu from the original game (Main Theme and Holding Thoughts In My Heart). And I played it on piano and oboe 🙂
Home away from home (in Bb) score on musescore
Easter Night
[ Buy and download on SMP Press ]
SATB [SSAA also available]
Unaccompanied (with rehearsal piano part)
Duration: ~ 2 minutes
Difficulty: Moderate (some close/clustered harmony)
This quietly emotional anthem with text by the poet Alice Meynell focuses on an unheard, hidden moment at the very centre of the Easter story.
All night had shout of men and cry
Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
The shutter’d dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone,
He rose again behind the stone.
Missa Brevis
[ Buy and download on SMP Press ]
Female choir unaccompanied | Duration: 17 minutes | Difficulty: Moderate
- Kyrie Bristol University Schola Cantorum 4:45
- Gloria Bristol University Schola Cantorum 3:46
- Sanctus Bristol University Schola Cantorum 1:50
- Benedictus Bristol University Schola Cantorum 3:10
- Agnus Dei Bristol University Schola Cantorum 3:42
A setting of the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei for women’s voices (or upper voices). This piece takes inspiration from medieval chant as well as other traditional and modern styles to create an experience that is meditative, moving and exciting. Missa Brevis is suitable for either church use or concert performance. It can be sung as a whole piece or sections performed individually.
The Kyrie is built around a sevenfold repetition of a single line and set of wordless chords. The Gloria and Sanctus are fast and upbeat, influenced by traditional Estonian work-songs to emphasise how the glory of God fills the heavens and the earth. The Benedictus is warm and peaceful, and the Agnus Dei the most emotionally charged and containing the most dissonance.
The choir is divided into SSAA with further divisi in the Benedictus and Agnus Dei, but often uses a unison or two-part texture. There are several opportunities for soloists or small groups to shine.
Performances: St Paul’s Church, Bristol, 28 March 2018, Bristol University Schola Cantorum conducted by Emma Hornby
Bristol Cathedral, as part of A Service of Celebration of Women’s Priestly Ministry, 12 March 2022, University of Bristol Schola Cantorum conducted by Emma Hornby
+ The Gloria performed at various Christmas carollings and TreeFest @ St Mary Redcliffe
St Paul’s Knightsbridge, London, 19 September 2025, The BBC Singers conducted by Martyn Brabbins
Mass, sacred, choral, mass ordinary, short mass, church, liturgy.
Prayer and Epitaph (Give us grace)
SATB unaccompanied | Duration: 2m30 | Difficulty: Moderate (needing good breath support)
Texts by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Two separate texts appearing on his memorial in St. Giles Cathedral. The first part is flowing, irregular, folk-like; the second a solemn but joyful hymn.
2019
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere.
Give us courage and gaiety, and the quiet mind.
Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.
Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours.
If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come,
that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath,
and in all changes of fortune,
and down to the gates of death,
loyal and loving to one another.Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland, prayer, thanksgiving, memorial, funeral, remembrance, folk, anthem.
wide and starry sky visualiser
Here’s another video from ‘wide the starry sky’ — the title track (just about!) in fact.
Four more ukulele songs
More short songs I wrote as I learn ukulele. I noticed a few of these have a theme of being sung to/about women or girls (as they’re originally from a book of children’s poetry).
Words by Kate Greenaway (1846 – 1901) from her beautiful books, Marigold Garden and Under the Window — also where the thumbnail art is from. This is another sort of jam session with three songs, one sort of work tape………. and some bonus dog content!
- The Little Queen
- Susan Blue
- Mary
- Out of Wonderworld
Jessie’s Theme
Jessie is a character in Final Fantasy VII, and the recent remake. She was always my favourite! The new composers gave her some theme music in the new game — this is my arrangement, making the new music sound more like Nobuo Uematsu’s original game score.