This setting of In dulci jubilo was one of the first tunes I ever wrote. I was brought up singing Anglican hymns in school assemblies, and as a boy I would leaf through the words edition of the New English Hymnal and invent new melodies for the hymn texts I found there. In a similar way, this intriguing old German macaronic carol in the famous version by Robert Pearsall must especially have fired my imagination, though in typical schoolboy fashion, my original attempt was in a slightly turgid 4/4 – it works much better in a lilting, vibrant 6/8! I have dedicated this final version to Dr David Price and the Choir of Portsmouth Cathedral, who recently commissioned my Portsmouth Service in memory of Trevor Owen, a beloved member of their choir who had been respectively chorister of Westminster Abbey, choral scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, lay clerk of Worcester Cathedral for 15 years, and deputy lay clerk of Chichester Cathedral and lay clerk of Portsmouth Cathedral for 25 years. It was estimated that Trevor must have sung in excess of 8,000 evensongs! Thomas Hewitt Jones