Where the name One Equal Music comes from

25 October 2026

The name of our label comes from a sermon. John Donne preached it at Whitehall on 29 February 1628, and near its close he describes heaven by what it lacks and what it has instead: "no noise nor silence, but one equal music". (Early printed editions spell it "noyse" and "equall musick"; we give it in modern spelling.)

The words reached most people by another road. In the twentieth century Eric Milner-White adapted the closing words of the sermon as a prayer, Bring us, O Lord God, and it is that prayer, read at funerals and set by composers such as William Harris, that many of us know. So the prayer is Donne's sermon, edited, and not a prayer Donne wrote as one.

When Antony Pitts founded the label in 2011, he took the phrase as its name, because it holds together music from many sources and in many forms of expression, always with eternity and human destiny in the long view. His own setting of the prayer, Bring us, O Lord God (one equal music), is one of our free scores. He has also set a fuller original text from the sermon in They shall awake, part of Requiem for the Time of the End, and that score is free to read too.

Read the prayer setting, with a free sign-in to download the PDF: Bring us, O Lord God (one equal music)

Read the fuller setting: They shall awake

More about the label: What is One Equal Music?