Programme note:

The short duration of this Christmas work invited the challenge of having some structural fun:

The music is based on the Coventry Carol – one of my favourite carols. The Coventry Carol

is transformed into 3 melodies by the processes of inversion (the melody upside down), retrograde (the melody backwards) and retrograde inversion (the upside down version played backwards). These three forms, used at different speeds, become the three layers of my carol. The 2 treble choruses (one echoing the other) counterpoint the inverted melody, the low strings play a chordal version of the retrograde line and the brief violin fanfare (colouring

the word ‘immaculate’) uses the retrograde inversion. I liked the idea of my carol being ‘embraced’ on all sides by the original 16th Century version.

The text is a palindrome acrostic: the initial letters of each word spell out "Christ is Born", both backwards and forwards. The first line refers to the journeys made by the Holy Family and the Magi through that hot, dusty land, far from the snowy images invented by Victorian Britain.