England: the new commission and its historical partner-piece
Night Shall Hide Thee by Janet Oates is a response to - and conversation with - Lover, go and calm thy Sighs by Elisabetta Gambarini (1748). Rather than writing a separate piece, Janet wove her new sections into the original, making the whole into a narrative of a night-time tryst with all its attendant emotions - expectation, excitement, contemplation, memory of the event. The Gambarini comprises a lovely aria (which in performance could be sung by a separate singer, though that might take away from the intimacy created, or played) followed by two contrapuntal variations and a lively giga. Janet's new sections are mysterious, dramatic and/or lively, and include a little bit of theatrics (stroking the strings inside, knocking the wood), references to the counterpoint and also to the unmeasured prelude genre, and a little bit of (easy) humming. A second version of the piece omits the Gambarini, allowing it to be a stand-alone work.
Left: Despina Homatidou performing the work in Cardiff University, 2026.
RECORDING
of Night Shall Hide Thee and Lover, go and calm thy sighs, performed by Despina Homatidou in Cardiff University, 2026
SCORES
Night Shall Hide Thee by Janet Oates - free to use
Lover, go and calm thy sighs by Elisabetta Gambarini (public domain facsimile). A lovely modern edition is available within '18th century women composers for the harpsichord or piano' vol. 1, edited and published by Barbara Harbach.
Elisabetta Gambarini
1731 (Middlesex) – 1765 (Westminster). Composer, harpsichordist, conductor, painter and singer who performed in many of Handel’s oratorios. She was the first female composer in Britain to publish a collection of keyboard music, The Six Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord, which was published when she was still a teenager, and which was dedicated to Viscountess Howe of the Kingdom of Ireland. She also published songs and small-scale instrumental works.
Lover, go and calm thy Sighs is a simple song in the typical style of the day, such as written by William Jackson (Jackson of Exeter) and, in the generations before them, Daniel Purcell. The tune is light, the accompaniment simple, and the whole is accessible to domestic musicians and audiences wanting light entertainment such as at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The song is followed by a gavotte based on the song, and two variations upon that, finishing with a whirling giga (gigue) as a final variation.
Janet Oates
Janet is a composer and performer based in London, UK, with a PhD in composition from the University of London. Alongside composition she has a varied musical career including conducting, teaching, performing in groups ranging from early music to contemporary, and classical to jazz. She has written 2 chamber operas and an opera for amateurs, prize-winning songs, and an oratorio for baroque forces. She is the director of an experimental vocal ensemble, the CoMA Singers, and of the vocal ensemble Philomel, specialising in 17th century works and new commissions, with a focus on female composers; for this group she has written several works including a cantata for sopranos, theorbo and bells. She recently edited two publications for Contemporary Music for All (CoMA), commissioning 24 new pieces for vocal ensemble, and contributing a piece in each volume. She recently contributed a chapter to the book Self-Accompanied Singing, to be published by Routledge in 2027. One current composition project is experimental music for choirs and for children, with the aim of taking accessible, creative vocal music into mainstream choirs and schools; another is ‘Theorbo Today’, writing and commissioning new music for the theorbo and other baroque instruments, with its sister project for solo harpsichord, Inventions: the harpsichord across time and borders, which commissions and celebrates new and historical music by female composers from the British Isles. A common strand in her musical thinking is to allow as many people as possible access to and participation in contemporary music.