Advent calendar was written by Philip Ledger (Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, from 1974 to 1982) as a memorial to George Guest, who died in 2002. Guest was intensely proud of his Welsh heritage, so it was appropriate that Ledger chose a poem by another Welshman, Rowan Williams, for this short carol. Williams’s evocative four-stanza text inspired another modified strophic form. However, the sharp contrasts of Williams’s final stanza led Ledger to insert a caesura after ‘toss him free’, and the piece ends peacefully with a brief reverie on ‘He will come like child’. When asked once about the qualities he most prized in choristers, Ledger claimed that he looked for ‘good pianissimos, perfect intonation and texture; not stabbing staccatos or long-sustained fortissimos.’ This setting of ‘Advent calendar’ seems designed to draw these qualities from a choir.

from notes by Martin Ennis © 2023