The National Trust has invited the public to experience dawn together next month with an original live music score.

Musicians across the country will perform from their homes at sunrise on Saturday 16 May. Broadcast of the performance commences from 3.43am.

The National Trust has partnered with the artists’ group non zero one and the composer James Bulley in a collaboration with Heritage Open Days.

The performance will mark “a moment of unity” as the UK is likely to remain in lockdown, the trust said.

Viewers will be welcomed by a narrator as the first morning light hits John o’Groats in Scotland at 3.43am. The five musicians will then each begin to play their part as dawn reaches their location – the performance building from a solo to a quintet when the last musician, in Cornwall, joins in at 4.59am.

The event is part of the National Trust’s year-long campaign to help people connect with nature as part of its 125th anniversary.

The trust hopes the project, DAWNS, which was developed before the Covid-19 lockdown, will be a moment of mass participation across the UK.

John Orna-Ornstein, the trust’s director of culture and engagement, said: “In these uncertain times, as so many of us are restricted in our travel, and with social distancing or self-isolation, DAWNS offers a moment of celebration, a time for us to feel we are together even when we are apart.

“Dawn is a magical time to experience the natural world. It’s an opportunity to notice nature awakening, to see and listen to what’s around us, as night passes into day.”

Cat Harrison, the lead artist for the project, said: “In creating this piece, we have been inspired by the words of one of the trust’s founders, Octavia Hill, who said: ‘The need of quiet, the need of air … I believe the sight of sky and of things growing seem human needs common to all.’”

Bulley said: “In the pieces that I have made, whether it be landscape compositions focusing on the organisms of the forest, or outdoor installations driven by realtime conditions, dawn represents a period of renewal, of difference, when nocturnal creatures disperse amongst the dawn chorus and the sun rises over the horizon, cloaking the landscape in light.”

The composer described the break of day as “a special moment to witness” that is both precious and fleeting.