Good King Wenceslas

About this arrangement

A marching carol, arranged in C major, with the thumb on the G below middle C and finger 4 on middle C. The first two lines are crotchets and minims and stay between G and D. Line 3, “Bright-ly shone the moon that night”, starts on the G above middle C, so the hand moves up into C position and walks down G, F, E, D; it comes back down to the thumb on G in bar 11, and bars 15 and 16 move up again for G F E D, then F. The left hand plays an oom-pah in C for the opening bars and then block chords in C, F, G, G7 and A minor.

Practice tip: Bars 1 to 8 are the same four bars twice, so the first half of the piece is learnt in one go. For “Bright-ly shone” put finger 5 on the G above middle C and step down a finger at a time.

The words

Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, when a poor man came in sight, gath-'ring winter fu el.

A short history

The words are by John Mason Neale, an English clergyman and hymn writer, and were published in 1853 in Carols for Christmas-tide. The tune is far older: it is a 13th-century spring carol, “Tempus adest floridum” (“The time of flowers is here”), which Neale found in Piae Cantiones, a collection of Latin school songs compiled for the cathedral school at Turku in Finland and printed in Greifswald in 1582. Critics have grumbled ever since that a cheerful spring song was wasted on a wintry story, but the pairing has never been undone.

Wenceslas was a real person: Václav, Duke of Bohemia, who ruled from Prague in the 920s and was murdered by his brother Boleslav in 929 or 935. He became the patron saint of the Czech lands, and the story of the king carrying food and firewood through the snow to a poor man on the Feast of Stephen (26 December, Boxing Day) is a legend built on his reputation for charity.

Quick facts

Tune

Traditional (Tempus adest floridum, 13th century; printed 1582)

Words

John Mason Neale, 1853

Key

C major

Time signature

4/4

Length

17 bars

Tempo

Marching, crotchet = 112

Difficulty

Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 30 of 201)

Type

Carol

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers