About the CDs: After a couple of mood setting introductory pieces including an excerpt from ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ (thought to be the first time the supernatural story was attached to the Christmas season), the first CD is largely dedicated to early plainsong Gregorian chants (from the Monks of the Abbey of Saint Pierre De Solesmes) and music from the Middle Ages. It aims to create the feel of the Latin medieval world at Christmas that Monty would have been well acquainted with. This CD brings together a selection of recordings that the listener can enjoy and immerse themselves in, or they can provide a suitable background for reading to oneself (one of the masters, or his contemporaries, short stories). After this the material becomes much more varied, bringing in the 16^th century, troubadour ballads and courtly dances, the old European, haunting Victoriana music boxes and the lyrically (and morally) revised carols of that same era. There are the carols that barely conceal their threads of Pagan pastoral imagery/allusion in the words and their original folk carol origins in the music. The distinctively atmospheric sounds of field recordings made at cathedrals, churches and institutions are represented by Ely Cathedral, London’s round Knights Templar church, Christ's Hospital, New College in Oxford and naturally, King’s College, Cambridge. The choir of King’s features on four recordings including ‘Past Three O’clock’ with its lyrical refrain lending itself nicely to the ghost story. The melancholy of Christina Rossetti’s “In Bleak Mid-winter” and its allusion to spirits (angels) that make visitation at Christmas. An aura of folk horror can be glimpsed in the merriment of the ‘Wassailing’ songs, a public house field recording of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ that lyrically nods to its rustic origins and the hostelry beginnings of singing of carols in general, and a children’s choir singing the horrific narrative of “La Legende de Saint-Nicolas”. Delius’ orchestral soundscape picture of a not entirely sleeping autumn/winter English landscape is heard on two pieces taken from “North Country Sketches”. The supposed stillness of the ground is undermined by the stirrings of activeness and the unforgiving weather that roves over the stark landscape. Vaughan Williams’ My Bonny Boy (from the “English Folk Song Suite”), in an alternative Adrian Boult recording to the one used in 1973’s Ghost Story for Christmas “Lost Hearts” provides a pleasing orchestral interlude. There is also acknowledgement of the folk horror elements and musical references in television and radio productions ‘The Box of Delights’ (a version of Hely-Hutchinson’s ‘Romance’ from ‘A Carol Symphony’) and ‘The Children of Green Knowe’ (an evocative and authentic boys choir version of ‘A Coventry Carol’. Depicting Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and used as a universal allegory to those who left life during childhood). The set is cased in a double cardboard sleeve (made with 100% recycled card) and comes with a small booklet that reprints an essay (Christmas Eve at an Old Hertfordshire Farmhouse) taken from an 1853 Christmas edition of ‘The Illustrated London News’. Please note that at times the sound quality will be noticeably reflective of the age and technical limitations of the recordings.