About Alison Bauld’s Music

Her music, almost all of a theatrical genre, is regularly performed in concerts and broadcasts throughout the UK, Europe, the USA and Australia. Banquo’s Buried, her dramatic scena for mezzo soprano and piano is a setting of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene and has been sung in international singing competitions, such as  Cardiff Singer of the World and The Kathleen Ferrier Award Competition. In 2019, the mezzo-soprano, Ema Nikolovska performed Bauld’s unaccompanied The Witches Song at the finals of the Kathleen Ferrier Awards and was awarded the Ferrier Loveday Song prize.

Music Theatre Works 

The first quadraphonic radio music drama, Van Diemen’s Land was commissioned by the BBC for the BBC singers and broadcast in 1977. In 1985, a multi-track, radio music-drama, Richard III was also commissioned by the BBC and broadcast as a scene from Shakespeare by Bauld with the Arditti String Quartet and with the composer as narrator. This work was later reconciled as Farewell Already for soprano and string quartet and recorded on NMC by Jane Manning and her Minstrels in 1995. Her children’s chamber cantata, Once Upon a Time, again a Radio 3 BBC commission, was broadcast in 1986. A chamber opera, Nell, followed, which was commissioned by Midsummer Opera and performed at the Donmar Warehouse in 1987 to celebrate the Australian Bicentenary. A chamber cantata, Pluto, was later commissioned by the Spitalfield's Festival for the vocal and instrumental forces of Holst's Planets and was performed by Jane Manning and her Minstrels as part of the millennium celebrations. 

Bauld has composed a brace of dramatic scenas with Shakespearian settings of which Banquo's Buried for soprano and piano and Where Should Othello Go for tenor/baritone and piano are her most frequently performed. Other settings from Macbeth, The Tempest, Anthony and Cleopatra, Henry VI Part 3 and Merchant of Venice were staged in a concert of her Shakespeare songs, Shakesepeare Sung, given by the Australian soprano, Helen Noonan in Melbourne, 2004. See website page “Shakespeare Settings for Voice and Piano” on this site for a full listing.

These songs and others with a text by Shakespeare may be obtained from the Wise Music Classical (Novello & Co) website or The Australian Music Centre. Jane Manning in her wonderful book, New Vocal Repertory 2, page 231 gives a useful introduction to how the works may be performed from a singer’s point of view.

Alison Bauld’s new song cycle ‘I Shall Not Live in Vain’ had its first performance at the Red House, Aldeburgh on the 7th of May, 2024

The song cycle was commissioned by soprano Mimi Doulton and pianist Dylan Perez with the support of the Vaughan Williams Foundation and the Marchus Trust.

It includes eight poems by Emily Dickinson:
I’m Nobody! Who Are You? - I Measure Every Grief I Meet - The Rat - The Pedigree of Honey - I Felt a Funeral in My Brain - I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died - Wild Nights - If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking.

The poems are a selection of works by Dickinson taken from the collection edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson.

Where to find Alison Bauld’s music:

Please use the contact form on this website to check availability of scores.

A list of works by Alison Bauld are also listed on the Wise Music Classical website (Novello & Co) and The Australian Music Centre.
See ‘Availability of Scores’ above.