Michael Buck

Michael Buck started composing as a member of Rudsambee company of singers. He is a retired librarian and a lover of poetry, which is the main inspiration for his music.

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Ballad

SATB
Words: William Soutar (1898-1943)

'O! Shairly ye hae seen my love doun whaur the waters wind?' A short, stark ballad...

Ballad of lost ladye

SATB
Words: Helen B. Cruickshank (1886-1975)

A mysterious and chilling story, allegedly based on a true incident...

Go on, sweet bird

SATB with descant
Words: Robert Burns (1759-1796)

A sweetly melancholy song about the consolation of birdsong. A lovely descant graces the second half....

My love is like a red, red rose

SATB with tenor solo
Words: Robert Burns (1759-1796)

One of Burns' most famous songs, and his original melody, in a strophic arrangement with spare harmonies....

Regina Coeli

SATB
Words: Anon

(Words in Latin) 'Queen of Heaven, rejoice. Alleluia!'...

Sea buckthorn

SATB divisi
Words: Helen B. Cruickshank (1886-1975)

A song in Scots about facing hardship, with weather sound effects...

There was a sang

SATB
Words: Helen B. Cruickshank (1886-1975)

A song in Scots about remembrance of past love, set with stark simlpicity....

Three Helen B. Cruickshank songs

SATB
Words: Helen B. Cruickshank

Three very different settings of poems by this “Scottish renaissance” poet....

To a ladye

SATB
Words: William Dunbar

The ladye in question has 'everie virtew that is held most deir' - except only that she is 'mercyles' (merciless)....

Villanelle de Noël

SATB
Words: Tom Scott

A Christmas fable, beautifully told in the Scots language, of how the robin got its red breast...

When day is done

SATB
Words: Ian Crichton Smith

'Sorrow remembers us...it sits in its old chair, gently rocking.' A pensive through-composed setting of a 20th-century Scots poem....