Silent Night
Joseph Mohr and Franz Guber
No other Christmas carol creates a sense of mystery and wonder like Silent Night.
Written nearly two hundred years ago as a musical stopgap for a desperate priest, it has become one of the world’s best known and cherished songs. The iTunes store alone lists some five hundred different recordings, performed in a multitude of languages. Yet, perhaps the most remarkable renditions of all were never recorded. Occurring, as they did, during the unofficial Christmas ceasefi res of World War One.
Silent Night was composed in December 1818 in somewhat unusual circumstances. For, as folklore would have it, a young Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr faced a dilemma after mice destroyed the bellows of the parish church organ, rendering it unplayable. With Christmas mass fast approaching, the increasingly desperate Mohr asked the church organist Franz Gruber, to add music to a poem he had written a few years earlier. Gruber arranged the song, as requested by Mohr, for two solo voices with choir and guitar accompaniment. The congregation approved and the song retained in subsequent years as part of the church’s festive repertoire.
Although the role of the mice has never been corroborated, an account, written by Gruber some thirty years after Silent Night’s debut, confirms the fundamental aspects of the song’s origins. Along with the discovery, in the mid 1990s, of a musical score by Mohr, historians have been able to compile a detailed picture of how the song was first performed. What is surprising is how little it has changed over the centuries, with only minor alterations to the melody and chords. Most significantly, the tempo of the song has slowed, shifting the mood from one of celebration to meditation.
Likewise, the lyrics of Silent Night remain faithful to the English translation of 1859 by bishop, John Freedman Young. Young translated all six verses of ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’ from the original German but only three are commonly performed. The words, together with the song’s evocative melody, combine to create a supernatural atmosphere in which time stops and the earth stands still in awe at the birth of Christ. It’s the sort of powerful proclamation, achieved with just three simple chords, that every songwriter strives for.
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace
Silent Night’s journey from a small church in the Austrian village of Obendorf to global domination began with the church’s organ repairer, Karl Mauracher. Having been called to restore the ailing instrument, Mauracher is thought to have taken a fancy to the ‘Christmas Song’ as it was then known and distributed copies of the music score to the surrounding parishes. In one of those parishes were the Rainer Family Singers, a small travelling group of singers akin to the Von Trapp Family of The Sound of Music fame. The Rainers took the song with them when they emigrated to America in 1839 and from there it began its expedition through the new world.
Silent Night rode a wave to popularity, both in Europe and abroad, during the golden age of Christmas carols in the mid 19th century. By then, knowledge of the song’s authorship had been lost, inspiring the King of Prussia to track down the original writers of the song. Unfortunately, Mohr had died in the late 1840s but Gruber remained to write his account of the song’s origins for the king and the two were formally acknowledged as co-authors of the tune.
The song’s modern reputation was made in the muddy trenches of the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, when German soldiers began erecting Christmas trees and singing carols. The allied English and French troops responded in kind, joining their enemies in a tri-lingual sing-along of Silent Night – one of the few carols known to all. An extraordinary, spontaneous ceasefire ensued, during which both sides downed weapons and exchanged gifts of brandy and buttons before, inevitably, hostilities resumed a few days later.
The short hiatus still testament to the enduring power and glory of the song.
Phil Kakulas is a songwriter and teacher who plays double bass in The Blackeyed Susans.
