On Christmas Eve in 1818, Joseph Mohr, the Catholic curate of Oberndorf, a Tyrolean village near Salzburg, was preparing for a Christmas service. When he tried to play the church organ, he discovered that it wasn’t working. Mice had chewed through the bellows. Later that day, Mohr was out visiting his flock in the surrounding snowy hills, including a family with a sickly baby. Mohr was awed by the peace that lay over the scene. Back home, aware of the need for music for that night’s service, he dashed off some verses which he took to Franz Gruber, a schoolteacher and organist from a neighbouring village. Gruber quickly composed a melody. “Silent Night” was born, and performed for the first time that night in Oberndorf, with Gruber playing guitar instead of the organ.
If this story sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. Especially the bit about the mice. And the baby. And possibly the guitar, too.
“Silent Night”is a carol whose story has been embellished and sweetened in the 200-odd years since it was written. What we do know is that it was first performed in Oberndorf on Christmas Eve 1818, and that it was written by Mohr and Gruber. In fact, Mohr had written the lyrics as a poem in 1816; at some point in the next couple of years, he presented his verses to Gruber, who set them to music. By 1819 this plaintive carol had spread to neighbouring villages and was taken further afield by two families of itinerant glove-makers and singers who toured the world, singing it for notables such as Queen Victoria and then taking it to the US in 1839.
It was still, however, sung in German; the English version that is widely sung today did not emerge until 1859, when the New York Episcopal priest John Freeman Young translated three of the original’s six verses. Over time the melody has been modified slightly; today, the phrase “Sleep in heavenly peace” is usually sung two notes higher than in the original. The Silent Night Association in Oberndorf has campaigned for a reversion to tradition. (Also, in Austria it is still strict tradition never to sing “Silent Night” before Christmas Eve.)
In 1914 when the Christmas truce descended on the first world war trenches and carols were exchanged across no-man’s land, for many British troops this was the first time they had heard “Silent Night” — or “Stille Nacht”, as the Germans sang it. In The Christmas Truce, a 1962 short story by Robert Graves, one of the characters recalls the “Saxons” singing “Stilly Nucked”.
Recordings proliferated as the century went on. Among the most successful was by Bing Crosby; he recorded the first of several versions in 1928 — though the crooner was uncomfortable with making money out of a sacred song and gave the proceeds to charities.
Crosby's 1935version became the third biggest selling single of all time. Meanwhile the mythology surrounding “Silent Night” solidified: a 1953 US short film, Silent Night: The Story of the Christmas Carol (from an “instructional” film company whose other subjects included dating, book-keeping and communism) reconstructed the tale of the organ and the baby.
In 2011 Unesco declared the carol part of our “intangible cultural heritage”. Today there are more than 20,000 English-language versions of “Silent Night” on Spotify. Among them: The Temptations’1970 version is treacly but still touching, progressing through the voices from basso profundo to falsetto. Al Green(1983) can't help but make it sound like a seduction song. Sufjan Stevens,well known for his devotional Christmas songs, sprinkles it with glitter without cheapening it. The indie band Lowstrip it down to its essence in a tinglingly beautiful recording.
A riposte to the carol’s sweetness came from Christian songwriter Andrew Peterson in a 2004 song sung by Jill Phillips. “Labor of Love”does not follow the melody of “Silent Night” but paints perhaps a more rounded picture of the nativity:
It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town
“Silent Night” was written in troubled times. The Napoleonic wars had just ended, boundaries had been redrawn, and 1816 was when the “year without a summer” caused an agricultural disaster across Europe. Hence perhaps why Mohr’s fourth verse (not sung in the English translation) talks of Jesus embracing “the peoples of the world”.
A century and a half later, in 1966, in similarly turbulent times, Simon and Garfunkelrecorded perhaps the most affecting version of “Silent Night”: over a simple piano, the duo’s immaculate harmonies sing the carol. But that’s not all: alongside their singing, a male voice reads the “7 o’clock news” — a litany of woe that includes the Vietnam War, racial conflict and the death of Lenny Bruce. It gives this wistful, mythologised carol a sombre, sober reality check.
We’d like to hear from our readers. Which is your favourite version of “Silent Night”? What are your memories of the carol?
‘The Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Warner Classics, UMC (Universal Music Catalogue), Polydor Associated Labels, Fat Possum, Asthmatic Kitty, kranky, Rabbit Room Press, Columbia
Picture: Alamy