Simon’s setting of Rowan Williams’s poem ‘Advent Calendar’ was broadcast by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, on BBC Radio 3 in 2008. The late John McCabe, whose own The last and greatest Herald was premiered during the same broadcast, wrote: ‘I simply found it gripping and moving. I felt your grasp of harmony and harmonic progression was particularly impressive. And the response to the excellent poem was vivid.’

I had wanted to set this poem for a long time. I first came across it when Carol Ann Duffy was made Poet Laureate, in 2009. I had never read any of her work when her appointment was announced, and was pleasantly surprised when I found, on a transatlantic flight, that Juliet Stevenson reading her collection Rapture was among British Airways’ inflight entertainment choices. I was flying to the US for a week, away from home, and the poem resonated—and stayed—with me.