The National Centre for Early Music has announced the winners of its NCEM Composers Award 2012 in association with BBC Radio 3 and The Tallis Scholars. Alex Woolf, aged 16, has topped the under 18 category with his Lux Aeterna and Benjamin Rowarth, aged 20, is the winner of the 19 to 25 category with Where is Thy God?

Both works will be premiered by The Tallis Scholars in Durham Cathedral as part of its Diamond Jubilee celebrations on June 2. The concert will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show on July 1.

The competition asked young composers living in the UK to write a work of between three and four minutes in length for The Tallis Scholars, based upon the 'In Nomine' theme from John Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas. Seven finalists were selected to attend workshops at the National Centre for Early Music in York with the Ebor Singers and Brunel University music professor Christopher Fox, and to have their works performed at a public concert in front of a panel of judges.