This blog’s second year begins early in the season of Epiphany, and with one of the favourites of the season, popularised (for English audiences at least) in the translated version included in Carols for Choirs as Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar. Prior to inclusion in that venerable volume, it was the second version of the third song in a cycle of Weihnachtslieder (Christmas songs) Opus 8 of Peter Cornelius, composed while he was living in Weimar, existing in the orbit of Franz Liszt. Cornelius had a gift for texts as well as music and wrote his own poems for this, as well as several other song cycles.

Some have, however, suggested that Liszt might deserve credit for suggesting that the second setting of this poem use Nicolai’s Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, which holds the original melody together very well. A first slightly more theological observation to adduce on that point is that, although the star of Bethlehem provides a link the story of the Magi, Wie schön leuchtet is unequivocally a Christmas hymn – fitting obviously into a cycle of Weihnachtslieder – rather than Epiphany.

The two feasts (and their respective seasons) are obviously interdependent in many ways, but since we traditionally distinguish between them it is perhaps worth noting the liturgical mixture. The Morgenstern of the chorale is Christ Himself – as Oriens (which regular readers may recall from the post a couple of weeks ago about the Great Advent Antiphons) – rather than the star that led gentile astrologers to the Christ child. Perhaps there is a theological point here: it is the light of Christ which draws people towards Him, even when He manifests in ways alien to our own cultures and presumptions.

My second main observation takes its stimulus from the German text, in a line which is rather lost in the common English translation. In English we sing “this the quest of the travellers three, where the new-born King of the Jews may be”. The German not only refrains from implying identity between modern Jews and first-century Judeans (by referring to the place rather than the people), but makes the ‘quest’ seem a bit less passive: “In Juda fragen und forschen di drei, Wo der neugeborene König sei.”

The quest of the so-called Kings involves asking and searching, despite the clarity of the stars light mentioned in the following verse. We know from scripture that in this story the Magi go first to Jerusalem and the court of Herod – looking in the sorts of places where a king might most obviously be found. The familiarity to us of the story of the incarnation risks hiding from us how very unlikely it seems that a stable is the place to search for a divine king. Are we, then, searching in the right places; how can we ensure that we surprise ourselves into being surprised by God?