Talk:The Three Kings

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A fact from The Three Kings appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 January 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Epiphany anthem "The Three Kings" describes the visit of the Biblical Magi to the baby Jesus (pictured)?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2017/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Three Kings.

Wikipedia

Awful mistakes

This article gives the clear impression that it has been written by one or more people who have never heard the piece and so consequently fail to understand the sources. The version commonly heard today is actually two carols sung at the same time, and the article completely fails to grasp this. I recommend looking at a copy of the original score at IMSLP (section IIIb) and looking for a performance on your music supplier of choice / YouTube.

"It was translated by H.N. Bate and set to music by Ivor Atkins." No, Cornelius set "The Three Kings" (Die Koninge) to music for a soloist with piano accompaniment. The accompaniment is "How brightly shines the morning star", an older piece. What Atkins did was to arrange the piano accompaniment for choir. Atkins didn't write either the music for Die Koninge or How Brightly - he simply turned a piano part that used a 16th-century carol into a choir accompaniment.
Incidentally, why does Ivor Atkins become "John Atkins"?
"The music was based on Philipp Nicolai's "How Brightly Shines The Morning Star" - see above. The choir sings this music. Cornelius's music for the soloist is not based on Nicolai's tune.
"During their performance of the carol, the first three verses are sung as a solo with the final verse being performed as a chorale by the congregation." - Err... During *every* performance of the Atkins version, the solo is sung and the choir sings *at the same time*. The congregation most certainly doesn't sing along with the choir (one looks in vain for the word "congregation" at the relevant part of the King's College service booklet). The "final verse" is actually the other carol, not something that happens after the solo. Quite why we need to mention that King's College sings this, though, I don't know. It's hardly unique to them.

I started to rewrite this but gave up because it's getting late. Please fix this. Bencherlite ^Talk 23:57, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a go and removed/rewritten the inaccurate items that have been left after some minor changes were made in response to my earlier comment. The "Music" section went because after removing the irrelevant and inaccurate passage about King's College there was nothing that couldn't be included in the previous section. I don't see why the fact that it's included by Nick Hern Books in something is of any relevance - particular as it's only sourced to Nick Hern Books (and I couldn't find other references to it elsewhere on the web). But I'll leave it for now. Bencherlite ^Talk 20:12, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have also added links to this article from Carols for Choirs, Ivor Atkins, Peter Cornelius and Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern. There is no point in writing an article and not linking to it from relevant existing articles, is there? And I have fixed the incorrect incoming links, some of which were due to this article being written on top of a long-standing redirect (best to check for unintended links in such instances). Bencherlite ^Talk 20:17, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

Is this work a Christmas carol? It is an art song, part of a song cycle.
Can we say that Cornelius composed this piece, using an English title? Isn't rather an arangement, or arrangements, of a German Lied that Cornelius composd?
Do we have a source for the fact that Cornelius erronously thought that "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" was a hymn for Epiphany? Could be that any allusion to star was good enough for him, no? Also that he didn't even think in liturgic terms, no?
Shouldn't the content be mentioned a bit sooner, certainly before such speculations?
I am not sure that readers searching for "The Three Kings" want to end up here, and could imagine to have the title for a redirect to Biblical Magi in general. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:43, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]