THERE are just six weeks left for young composers to submit their compositions of choral works inspired by the Hawick Missal Fragment for the Fragments Composition Prize.

The competition, which closes on February 28, was announced last year before what is believed to have been the first performance in at least 450 years of the music.

The 12th-century medieval manuscript, known as the Hawick Missal Fragment, would have been part of a missal - a book which contained the texts and chants for a Mass. It was discovered in 2010 at the Heritage Hub, Heart of Hawick.

Dr Matthew Cheung Salisbury, lecturer in music at University College, Oxford University, said: "The winning composition will be between three and twenty minutes long. It can be for any combination of voices, accompanied or unaccompanied and could be performed in a historic venue.

"Submissions should reflect or explore some aspect of the Fragments Project, which aims to help participants create new work on the theme of art and music as representations of the divine.

"As a surviving witness to the worship of the medieval Church the fragment is already helping us to better understand how Mass would have been celebrated in the Border Abbeys." The two year music and arts project is unique to Hawick and the Scottish Borders and is called Fragments. It is a partnership between Historic Scotland and Scottish Borders Council's Archive Service supported with funding from Creative Scotland.

Those aged 35 and under are eligible to take part in the competition. The value of the prize is �500 and three performances will be given as part of the Project's programme. The Prize will be awarded at one of these performances.

This project is being supported by Creative Scotland's Culture & Tourism programme. Over �1.7 million has been invested in forty-two innovative collaborations between the tourism and culture sectors to promote Scotland's creativity on a global platform and raise the country's profile as a tourist destination.

For more information on the project, please visit www.fragmentsproject.co.uk