Winchester Cathedral Choir - The Three Kings
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- Winchester Cathedral Choir and Jonathan Lemalu sing Peter Cornelius' wonderful The Three Kings. The words depict the journey of The Magi from the east to Bethlehem in their quest to worship the infant Jesus. The choir sing the short counter melodies.
Three Kings from Persian lands afar
To Jordan follow the pointing star:
And this the quest of the travellers three,
Where the new-born King of the Jews may be.
Full royal gifts they bear for the King;
Gold, incense, myrrh are their offering.
How brightly shines the morning star!
With grace and truth from heaven afar
Our Jesse tree now bloweth.
The star shines out with a steadfast ray;
The kings to Bethlehem make their way,
And there in worship they bend the knee,
As Mary's child in her lap they see;
Their royal gifts they show to the King;
Gold, incense, myrrh are their offering.
Of Jacob's stem and David's line,
For thee, my Bridegroom, King divine,
My soul with love o'erfloweth.
Thou child of man, lo, to Bethlehem
The Kings are travelling, travel with them!
The star of mercy, the star of grace,
Shall lead thy heart to its resting place.
Gold, incense, myrrh thou canst not bring;
Offer thy heart to the infant King.
Thy word, Jesu, Inly feeds us,
Rightly leads us, Life bestowing.
Praise, O praise such love o'erflowing.
What a voice! It gives a huge depth in contrast to the choir. I can listen it over and over again.
Great job my friend, you did well
When we sang this piece at school (a long time ago!), the solo part was sung by the soprano section of the choir and the counter melodies by the altos, in an all-girls school. As I remember it, this worked pretty well.
But my abiding memory of it is of our highly temperamental Portuguese music teacher bullying perfection out of us!
OMG IM FROM COUNTY HIGH TOO! BEST HYMN EVER!
Love it, my favourite song:)
The choir does not sing "counter melodies." They are singing the Lutheran Chorale "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern." The solosit is doing the countermelody.
Learnt this at secondary school (1969) and was forced to sing in the choir though I can't sing to save me life This is lovely.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !!!
Jonathan seeing and listening to you singing makes me so proud to be a Samoan and New Zealander. Malo lava uso, ia manuia. Soifua
In fairness, his ethnicity is the main reason he got the honour.
The soloist is only asymptotically approaching being in tune.
This is one tough crowd. There are a couple of very short instances where the soloist got lost resulting in an unsteady pitch but, for the most part he is in tune. And to the commenter saying this is too low: this original melody was written when the concert A pitch was one half step lower than it is today. It is conceivable that the Cornelius composition was also written during a period of lower A concert pitch This key is likely closer to how the original composers heard this piece despite the fact that G major (was perhaps the originally written key. The G major version in use now is a half step up as a result of A = 440 rather than the 415 or so of hundreds of years ago.
He's not a bad singer. He's not doing it right, but he's not bad. That doesn't mean he's near good enough to be honoured with this solo. Are you going to tell us next that it was written for a voice in constant vibrato? Or maybe that the soloist has to be selected on the basis of his virtue-signalling skin shade? Because that, like in almost everything in England, is what happened here.
There's nothing wrong with selecting someone who happens to be from a minority ethnicity. What usually happens though is that they are selected over someone who is better and more deserving. Every selection displaces someone else. So it is the duty of decision-makers to select based on merit alone.
They may never do that in this country, due to the class system. But the selection of this singer is hardly worth defending.
No, it was Chelmsford County High School for Girls - you mean to say that other schools experienced this as well??
I still love the song, but rarely hear it, so I was pleased to find it on UA-cam
Funny how people can miss the message and appreciation of a song, losing it in "perfectionistic" tendencies & not seeing a much bigger picture.
Hmm; 30 singers perfectly in tune & one soloist deciding to choose his own key
Dear me! One of the Lay Clerks of the Cathedral choir (men singers) would have been far better. The soloists voice is totally out of character with the perfection of the choir.
I totally disagree, what a voice.
It gives a huge depth in contrast to the choir. I can listen it over and over again.
I totally agree, the lay clerks were so much better.
Amazing that you should be so critical because this presentation does not meet your preconceptions. Why not celebrate a different version. I have head and sung this since the mid-60s and enjoy most versions for what they are.
Wycombe Abbey...?
And Nonsuch High School
Sang this too at school one of my favourite hymns Sadly did not enjoy this soloist.
Big fan of Winchester, but to my mind this doesn't work. The wonderful, deep, full voice of the soloist is too heavy, too powerful. It's not about the volume, but about the way that a lighter bariitone voice would allow the glorious choral parts to be an equal partner in the music. KCC was not my old choir, but I like this version: ua-cam.com/video/YDJIh8YbaTU/v-deo.html
Very interesting.I am not familiar with this carol.
In addition to the poor pitching from the soloist - appears to have weak breath control as well! Listen at 2:07 He sings "-breath- Gold Incense Myrr -Breath- Thou canst not bring - breath-" . Can he not get through 7 words on a single breath? It is less than two bars!
I muted my PC immediately. Like most I just cannot take that intensely ugly vibrato. I wonder if it used by men and women who are not quite sure they can hit the right note. Hadn't heard this carol before. I must try and find some other rendition.
You must, it's beutiful. This guy butchered it right until the last 4 notes, which were lovely. I mean, I've sung it better than him and I ain't all that. King's College do it every year, plenty of amazing versions on youtube. Enjoy.
I hate this. Way to low and he is lacking pronunciation. But he sang it well!
Politics Politics Politics.
Can't we for once in this country select people based on merit?
This isn't sung in constant vibrato. In fact vibrato is only subtly used in this solo, if at all.
It's hard to do perfectly, so a couple of faults are OK in my book. It was live, and you'll probably get it almost perfect when no one's filming. What's not OK is selecting the only person with a darker skin shade in the whole choir to virtue-signal how 'non-racist' you are, to the exclusion of a better native-ethnicity singer. And then letting him sing the whole thing in a different key and vibrato.