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Advent Calendar (1976)

by Hermione Harvestman

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about

Hermione mailed me these 24 pieces as daily MP3 email attachments throughout the December of 2003 along with the images you see here. It seems only right to put them up in daily instalments throughout advent, ten years on, in 2013, albeit as full quality WAVS. Each piece is named for the days of advent 1976 when they were composed; as I thought this might prove a little confusing, I've only used the full titles in the track notes.

I include below the single covering email she sent with the first instalment:

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'Sean - As hinted at last week, here's the first instalment of my Advent Calendar 1976, which I made each day to immerse myself in the dread splendours of the onset o' winter with respect of the Various Traditions that focus on The One - certainly in terms of that grand iconographical metaphor of wise astrologers bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh for the virgin birth of a lowly babe attended by shepherds and all the usual gubbins that must surely account for something given their enduring potency in our culture as a whole.

I often wonder what became of those shepherds, feeling that they might have made better disciples than fishermen, or maybe by then they were simply too old to be called from their flocks by night...

Anyway.

Each piece is an improvisation on mostly imaginary Carol Tunes though one or two actual ones have crept in here & there from a sentimental notion I had of doing them ALL like that, but concluded that such a venture might be too obvious. The random verses (mostly from The Faber Book of Carols) inspired the mood of each piece as a daily meditation on the wondrous before getting on with the main business of the day, however so commonplace, for it is only in the commonplace that the wondrous is at last made real, until the final hush of the 24th day that endures until Epiphany, which is, quite literally, another story.

Coming soon : 12 Days of Christmas 1979/80!

Happy Xmas, Hermione, December 1st 2003'

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released December 1, 2013

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Hermione Harvestman UK

'I feel like Wainwright - we are both hermetic ramblers. He made his books for when he was no longer capable of rambling his beloved fells, and I made my music for when I'm no longer able to ramble the by-ways of Albion - but only to listen, and think "Was that really me? That solitary figure who stood in a landscape dreaming of ages past in dread fear of the future."

Hermione Harvestman
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