In 2021 the Resol Quartet asked me to consider writing a piece for one of their winter tours. The suggestion was that I might use seasonal themes related to Christmas. At first I was unsure about this idea, as I didn’t want to create a ‘Christmas Medley’. However, it struck me that the idea might work if I were to use just two different carol melodies, and vary each of them in turn to produce a set of ‘double variations’ (a form that seems to have been invented by Haydn). The next step was to find a Scottish carol and an English carol that might lend themselves to this approach.

Finding the Scottish carol wasn’t easy: it seems there are far fewer carols in the Scottish tradition than in the English. However, I quickly found a strikingly beautiful melody known as Talàdh Chrìosda – the Christ Child’s Lullaby – and I have paired this with the English melody ‘A Virgin Most Pure’. Although the two melodies are quite different in character, they can also be combined, and this does happen at the end of the piece. However, each melody has to be adapted slightly to make this work: you could say that each has to be willing to take on some of the characteristics of the other. Perhaps this is the ideal ‘crossing point’: a border between traditions and, by extension, nations, which is characterised by mutual respect, and a willingness to collaborate.

Of course, borders can also be terrible places, and the beginning of my quartet is an evocation of the plight of refugees walking for hours, days, weeks, to escape persecution, hunger and war. This melancholy opening idea is only slightly related to the two carol melodies. It returns twice before the music reaches a more tranquil crossing point where the two melodies can finally be combined.