About us

The Composers’ Group offers a forum for composers of liturgical music to meet and to share and discuss their work with each other. The meetings are not designed as workshops where instruction is given, though the process of sharing each others’ work can be most informative. We write primarily for the Roman Catholic liturgy, but have members from other denominations too. Anyone is welcome to attend our meetings, whether they belong to the SSG or not. Teachers in UK Catholic schools are particularly encouraged to bring our meetings to the attention of their GCSE and A Level Music students. Do not be daunted if you feel you are a novice; participants have widely differing levels of expertise, and a range of different skills to offer. We have text writers as well as musical contributors, and those who set words to a melody only, relying on others to provide harmonisation. Whether you’re into sixteenth century polyphony or Graham Kendrick, we hope to give your music a fair hearing. We aim to be friendly and constructive, and to be open to a diversity of styles.

Bring about 10 copies of your pieces with you. We are quite good sight singers — though you cannot rely on four equal parts — and usually have at least one person who can sight-read accompaniments. Each composer presents at least one piece, which we sing or play through. Opinions are given, questions asked about the work and suggestions are made where difficulties with texts or harmonies are found. Then we sing it again. We get some quite lively debates on occasions! Click on the link to see when and where we’re next meeting.

Download Music - Free!

The SSG forum now features an area from which you may download music. (You have to be a registered member of the forum to use this area.) The pieces are all from the SSG Composers’ Group. We’ve started with settings of the Gloria. Presently, there are three settings. Other music is in the pipeline.

Discussion Forum:

We have a discussion forum, talking about all areas of composing music for the Liturgy. At the minute, Martin Foster, from the Liturgy Office would like your views on a core repertoire.

From time to time, music which has been presented at the group meetings is published.
The most recent collection, Baptised with Fire is available from the SSG.