Choir & Organ Composition Competition 2013
Choir & Organ is pleased to announce the Composition Competition 2013 in partnership with St Albans International Organ Festival.
The composer of the winning entry will be interviewed in the July/August 2013 issue of Choir & Organ and the score will be published on the Choir & Organ website as part of its New Music series.
The premiere will be given in St Albans Cathedral during St Albans International Organ Festival (IOF) in July 2013.
Eligibility
The competition is open to composers of any nationality who are under the age of 35 on 30 June 2013.
Entry requirements
- Entrants are invited to submit an original work for solo organ, lasting c.5-6 minutes (based on the composer’s metronome or tempo mark).
- Scores must be typeset to a professional standard on A4-size pages.
- The specification of St Albans Cathedral organ can be found on the IOF website, www.organfestival.com/organs/cathedralorgan.shtml
Applications and closing date
Four copies of the score must be sent, one copy of which should have the composer’s name, address, telephone number and email written on the back of each page; the remaining three copies should have no identification markings on them.
Scores must be sent to:
Composition Competition 2013, Choir & Organ,
Rhinegold Publishing Ltd, 20 Rugby Street,
London WC1N 3QZ, UK
Closing date: 31 March 2013
Jury
The jury comprises David Titterington (artistic director, St Albans International Organ Festival), John McCabe (composer) and James O’Donnell LVO (Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey), chaired by the editor of Choir & Organ.
Terms and conditions
- The composition must be an unpublished original work written after 1 April 2012.
- The work must not have had a public performance, a recording that is publicly available (whether commercial or not), or a broadcast of any sort.
- The competition will be judged by the jury during April 2013.
- The jury reserves the right to withhold the first prize.
- The winner will be notified by 30 April 2013.
- Choir & Organ will publish an interview with the winner in the July/August 2013 issue.
- The composer will retain the copyright of the work, but will grant the right to Choir & Organ to publish the score on the Choir & Organ website from the on-sale date of the July/August 2013 issue and to keep it on the website as a free download for six months.
- Scores are sent at entrants’ own risk. We cannot acknowledge receipt of scores, nor return any material submitted.
- Scores are sent at entrants’ own risk. We cannot acknowledge receipt of scores, nor return any material submitted.
- In all matters relating to the competition the decision of the jury is final and correspondence will not be entered into. Submitting an entry for the competition indicates the entrant’s unqualified acceptance of these terms.
Further information
Full details of St Albans International Organ Festival can be found on www.organfestival.com

St Albans Cathedral
David Titterington, artistic director of the International Organ Festival at St Albans, comments:
‘In 2011, Valentin Villard won the first Choir & Organ/IOF Composition Competition with Joute for organ & trumpet, which received its first performance in St Albans Cathedral during the closing Prizewinners Concert of the 26th St Albans International Organ Festival. We are delighted to repeat this collaboration for 2013 in what will be the 50th anniversary year of the founding of the IOF. Young musicians have always been at the very heart of the festival, so an opportunity to present a new work for organ in this special year is particularly appropriate. The recently rebuilt organ in the cathedral is widely admired and has an impressively large dynamic range and tonal colour perfectly suited to the performance of contemporary music. Do apply!’

