‘Silent Night’, and what’s the story of the Christmas carol?
4 December 2024, 16:56
Simple but moving, ‘Silent Night’ is a perennial favourite among carollers. But who composed the carol, and what are the original lyrics?
‘Silent Night’ is one of the world’s most famous melodies. The story goes that the carol (originally ‘Stille Nacht’) was first performed on the evening of Christmas Eve in 1818.
Joseph Mohr, a young Catholic priest at St Nicholas Church, Oberndorf bei Salzburg in Austria, was in despair: the at his church had been incapacitated by mice, and the chances of fixing the instrument before the evening service were looking slim.
But young Joseph had an idea. A few years before, he had written a rather beautiful poem called ‘Stille Nacht’. So, he asked Franz Xavez Gruber, a schoolmaster and organist in a nearby town, to set his six-stanza poem to music.
That night, the two men sang ‘Stille Nacht’ for the first time at the church’s Christmas Mass, while Mohr played and the choir repeated the last two lines of each verse. Good thing they didn’t call an engineer…
