Silent Night – A Global Carol
Even though “Silent Night” has been recorded more than any other song in history, the fact that we know it at all is a miracle. Created out of necessity and performed in a tiny village on a solitary Christmas Eve by two ordinary Austrians and a tiny choir, this incredibly beautiful and simple carol owes its debut to an organ that wouldn’t play and a priest who wouldn’t hold a Christmas mass without special music. Later, just weeks into the new year, the beloved carol’s march to worldwide popularity was begun by the man who came to fix the faulty instrument.
Started as a Poem by an Inspirational Priest
In 1817, twenty-five-year-old- Joseph Mohr was assigned to the position of assistant priest at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. A lover of music since his boyhood in Salzburg, Mohr was placed in charge of the music used at the small church and he even wrote poems and song lyrics for special services. A seemingly tireless and giving man, he spent much of his spare time ministering to children from the area’s poorest families. In his desire to serve and inspire, if ever a man fulfilled the full description of the word pastor, it was Mohr.
In 1818, during a particularly cold winter, Mohr was making last-minute preparations for a special Christmas Eve mass, a service he had been planning for months. Everything from music to message was in place. But as he cleaned and readied the sanctuary, the priest encountered an unfathomable dilemma: St. Nicholas’s organ wouldn’t play. A frantic Mohr struggled with the old instrument for hours, making adjustments, fiddling with keys, stops, and pedals, even crawling behind the console to see if he could find a problem. In spite of his efforts, the organ remained silent, its voice as still as dark winter’s night.
Realizing he could do nothing else, the priest paused and prayed for inspiration. He asked God to show him a way to bring music to his congregation on the year’s most meaningful day of worship. Mohr would find the answer to his prayer born from events initiated almost two years before St. Nicholas’s organ played out.
In 1816, while assigned to a church in Mariapfarr, Mohr had written a Christmas poem. The six unadorned stanzas were inspired on a winter’s walk from his grandfather’s home to the church. Though he had shared the words with a few friends, the priest never sought to have the work published nor attempted to come up with a melody to go with his words. When Mohr was transferred to the church in Obernddorf, he had brought the poem along with his few personal possessions.
Digging “Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!” from his desk, Mohr read over the words two years later. UP until the moment the verses hadn’t seemed very important to the priest, but as he read them again, it was as if the Lord was tossing him a lifeline of hope. Bouyed by new and unfolding expectations, he shoved the worn paper into his coat pocket and rushed out into the night. Only hours before the Christmas Eve midnight mass, the priest fought his way through snow-covered streets.
Mohr Teams with Musician Gruber
On the same evening, thirty-one-year-old schoolteacher Franz Gruber was struggling to stay warm in his drafty apartment over the schoolhouse. Though he had once studied organ with noted teacher Georg Hardobler, he now played the instrument only for St. Nicholas’s modest services. As he went over notes from one of his lessons, Gruber musth have been surprised to hear an insistent knock at his door and find Father Mohr on the other side. By that time, the priest should have been at the church preparing for services, not making rounds, visiting old friends and colleagues.
After a quick “Merry Christmas,” the obviously agitated priest pulled the teacher to the apartment’s small table and signaled for Gruber to sit down beside him. In a distressed tone, Mohr explained the problem they faced. After he convinced Gruber nothing could be done to fix the organ, Mohr showed Franz his poem.
“Franz,” he begged, “can you write music to these words that can be easily learned by our choir? Without the organ, I guess the song will have to be played on a guitar.” The priest glanced at the clock on the table, and added, “The time is so short!”
Studying the poem, Gruber nodded his head. The look in his eyes and the smile on the schoolteacher’s face showed that he felt up to the challenge. Confident again that God somehow had a special plan for this Christmas Eve, Mohr raced back across the snow to the church, leaving Gruber alone with his thoughts, a ticking clock, and a prayer for inspiration.
Silent Night is Quickly Written
A few hours later the two friends met at St. Nicholas. There, in a candlelit sanctuary, Gruber shared his new music with Mohr. The priest approved, and after learning the guitar chords, rushed it to the choir members, who were waiting for their scheduled rehearsal. What should have taken weeks was accomplished in hours. In the little time they had, Mohr and Gruber taught the choir members the four-part harmonies to the last two lines of each verse.
Just after midnight, Mohr and Gruber stood in front of the main altar and introduced their simple little song. As they sang, they couldn’t have guessed that “Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!” would be remembered not only the next Christmas in their small village, but almost two hundred years later, around the world.
The Song Spreads Through Europe
A few weeks into the new year, Karl Mauracher, an organ builder and repairman from the Ziller Valley, traveled to Oberndorf to fix St. Nicholas’s organ. While Karl worked, Mohr shared the story of how he and Gruber had used a guitar and an original composition to save the Christmas Eve mass. He sang the song he considered and answered prayer. Impressed, the repairman jotted down the words and learned the melody. Over the next few years, as he went about his profession, Mauracher introduced “Stille Nacht!” to many churches and towns.
During the nineteenth century, Austria and Germany had scores of traveling folk singers. Most of the groups were composed of family members who not only sang but worked specialized jobs to earn their keep as they journeyed from town to town. In 1832, the Stasser family folk singers appeared in a small community where Mauracher had recently installed an organ. During their stay, the family of singing glovemakers learned “Stille Nacht!”
A few weeks later, at a concert in Leipzig, the Stassers performed the carol in front of a large crowd that had gathered for a fair. Moved by the song’s deep spiritual message, King William IV of Prussia requested his nation’s Cathedral Chori sing “Stille Nacht!” at his annual Christmas celebration. Due in part to the king’s favor, “Stille Nacht!” stormed across much of Eastern Europe and pressed west to Great Britain.
In December of 1839, another Austrian family group, the Rainers, traveled to New York. As part of one of their performances, the family sang “Stille Nacht!” in English for a huge crowd at Trinity Church. It was such a popular number that other local groups began to sing it in churches. By the Civil War, “Silent Night” had become America’s most popular Christmas Carol. During the battle between the Union and Confederacy, it was not unusual for hostilities to cease for four days starting on December 25, with troops from both sides laying down their arms to come together to worship, share gifts, read Scripture, and sing “Silent Night.”
As the carol’s popularity spread, so did the legends about its origin. At various times music publishers gave composition credit to Beethoven, Bach, and Handel. It was only when Franz Gruber began a letter-writing campaign to newspapers and publishers, producing a copy of one of his first arrangements, that the true origin of “Silent Night” was finally recognized. Yet even with the melody’s rightful history secured, fanciful stories about the song’s lyrics continued to spread.
Joseph Mohr died penniless in 1848, before being recognized as the carol’s writer. Without the priest alive to refute the story, it became generally accepted that the song’s lyrics had been written in haste after it was discovered that mice had chewed through the organ’s bellows and disabled the instrument rather than the fact that it was old and simply broke in the extremely cold temperatures. Though a wonderful story and still accepted by millions, it is one of fiction much more than fact.
By the late 1800s “Silent Night” had been translated into more than twenty languages and was a vital part of Christmas celebrations all around the world. And by the twentieth century, like the celebration of Christmas itself, “Silent Night” had moved out of the church and into the mainstream.
In 1905 the Haydn Quartet cut the first recording of “Silent Night.” This first trip up the popular hit parade was just the beginning: literally thousands of others from around the world would record the simple carol in years to come. By 1960, the carol was recognized as the most recorded song in music history.
Despite its popularity, “Silent Night” remains in most minds what it was written to be – a simple, direct ode of praise. Created to make a Christmas service more meaningful, the old Austrian carol is as powerful and fresh today as it was on that first Christmas Eve it was sung at St. Nicholas Church. An answer to prayer, few words have better captured the story of a Savior born in a manger than “Silent Night.”
