One Equal Music: the choral works that share the name
One Equal Music is the title of several choral works. Most of them take their words from John Donne: a passage of a sermon he preached at Whitehall on 29 February 1628, "no noise nor silence, but one equal music", or the prayer Bring us, O Lord God, which Eric Milner-White adapted from its closing words.
Below are the ones we have checked against a publisher's or retailer's own listing on 29 October 2026. Listings change, so check the current one before you buy or programme a piece.
The works
- James MacMillan, One Equal Music. Mixed choir (SATB, divisi), unaccompanied, about 5 minutes. Commissioned for Selwyn College, Cambridge, and published by Boosey and Hawkes on 4 June 2019. The publisher's note calls it MacMillan's second setting of Donne's "Bring us, O Lord God". Source: HeBu Musikverlag listing of the Boosey and Hawkes edition.
- Carol Barnett, One Equal Music. Men's chorus (TTBB, divisi), 2001. Source: list of her works on Wikipedia.
- Geoff Cottrell, One Equal Music. SATB, about 3.5 minutes, described as a tuneful and dramatic anthem for choir of John Donne's famous sermon. Available as a download through Hal Leonard's ArrangeMe. Source: Sheet Music Direct listing.
- Nicholas Weininger, One Equal Music. Treble voices (SSAA), about 3 minutes, described as a serenely numinous setting of Donne's prayer. Source: J.W. Pepper listing.
- Richard Rodney Bennett, Introit: One Equal Music. SATB, published by Hal Leonard Europe. The listing does not name a text. Source: Sheet Music Direct listing.
The label that took the name
The record label and sheet music publisher 1equalmusic, founded by Antony Pitts in 2011, took the same line as its name. What is One Equal Music? explains how, and the Journal tells the story of the sermon and the prayer.
Antony's own setting of the prayer, Bring us, O Lord God (one equal music), is a free score for choirs: free to read, with a free sign-in to download the PDF. He has also set a fuller text from the sermon in They shall awake, part of Requiem for the Time of the End.