Her name is known throughout the world. Malala Yousafzai – the girl who survived a Taliban asssination attempt and this week became the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

The announcement came with perfect, but completely serendipitous, timing for Crouch End Festival Chorus as later this month it will immortalise the 17-year-old’s name through song in a special one-off performance at the Barbican.

Conductor David Temple, who commissioned the piece back at the start of the year says: “I’m not clever enough to have planned it on purpose but we are really happy she won.

“That this girl, who is basically a child, although she’s a formidable person and in many ways an adult in a child’s body, had the courage to stand up to this dreadful bullying by the Taliban and as a result got shot in the head and neck, that alone is a serious news event. But the fact she’s managed to recover and win the Nobel Peace Prize is nothing short of astonishing.”

The chorus, which last week performed with Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer and has a forthcoming concert with Andrea Bocelli, will be joined on stage at the Barbican by 90 singers from the City of London School for Girls Senior Choir, Hornsey School for Girls Choir and St Michael’s Catholic Grammar School Choir.

David says: “It’s hard to describe how it will sound. A little bit like film music, with a sense of conjuring up images in your head.”

It will round off a trio of projects between David and Surrey-based composer James McCarthy, who says he was almost overwhelmed by the emotions he faced when composing the piece.

“It’s hard for me to talk about even now as I do get choked up.

“I have a young daughter myself and it was very easy for me to relate to the story in a very emotional way.

“That may sound positive initially, but I wrote a lot of music that I then threw away because it was too emotional.

“It was also difficult because although she’s a child still, she isn’t innocent, she’s a very strong woman, and it was hard to get those two sides of her shining through.”

The 34-year-old spent hours researching Malala, reading her blog and book and various news reports, before asking Pakistani writer Bina Shah to write the lyrics for him to compose to and he was astonished when she emailed him back the finished piece the very next day.

James then spent nine months crafting music worthy of Malala’s amazing story and the resulting 30-minute piece starts by evoking the beauty of her home in the Swat Valley and goes on to describe the horrific moment when she was shot at point-blank range on her school bus in 2012. It was her punishment for keeping a written diary about her life under Taliban rule.

Father-of-two James, who has dedicated the piece to his own daughter says: “I sat at the piano and thought ‘what’s the music for someone being shot? Is it a C minor?’ You end up writing things that sound like they are from horror fims for a bit and then realise you have to write new language for expressing it in a meaningful way.

“There are some words spoken by the Taliban in the script and I decided they didn’t deserve to have music so it’s shouted like machine gun fire by the chorus.

“Then at the end there is an outpouring of love, representing all the people around the world who are inspired by her story and want her to be safe and make sure her message is heard.

“But we have to get through the dark stuff to get to that.”

Concert Hall, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS, October 28. Details: barbican.org.uk, cefc.org.uk