This parcel of six pieces gifted to Lawrence Baigent and Leo Bensemann opens with jubilant bells and a quasi-Russian psalm: entitled 'Christmas 1812', it seems to be summoning Napoleon's retreat from Moscow as a hopeful war-time message (had Lilburn been reading Tolstoy's account in War and Peace of Muscovites returning to their ruined city 'like blood rushing back to the heart' and listening to the Home Service broadcasts of war-torn Moscow in November 1943?). The set also includes a transcription of music Lilburn originally composed for the Players' mime in Ngaio Marsh's 1943 production of Hamlet and a pseudo-lute piece entitled 'Lady Wood's Fancie', which was written as a private joke occasioned by Olive, Lady Newall, wife of the governor-general, asking Lilburn at a party 'How beautifully the bellbirds sing – why haven't you used them in your music?': a caption under the title reads: 'Don't you think Mr – that the New Zealand scenereh/ has rather a melancholeh beauteh?'). The second prelude is an earlier version of the one published by Caxton in 1945 and later in Occasional Pieces.