Commissioned by the Kings College Choir to write the carol for their celebrated Christmas Eve service A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, Watkins, who studied at King's as an undergraduate, has set part of the Welsh Plygain carol Carol Eliseu by Thomas Cilwern Davies for SATB choir. Watkins writes that the experience of setting a Welsh text has unlocked an indefinable Welshness in my music. I wanted to write something pure, and somehow artless, and all the time I've had that glorious acoustic in my head.