Hymn Story: Silent Night

Luke 2:16

 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

 

It was December 24, 1818, and in Oberndorf, Austria, the assistant priest went to the home of his friend, the organist of the small church. He brought the words of a poem that he had written two years earlier and asked him to write a tune to it, to use at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. The organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, reminded Fr. Joseph Mohr that the organ wasn’t working and so they would not be able to have music for the service. Fr. Mohr went in the other room and got a guitar. Gruber strummed a few chords, then started humming. He exclaimed, "The song, it sings itself." A few hours later, he had composed the tune, and the two men presented the carol for the first time that Christmas Eve.

 

When the organ repairman, Carl Mauracher, later heard the carol, he took a copy of it with him. He presented it to two groups of traveling singers, who then performed it in their Christmas repertoire, and thus it began its journey around the world. The Strasser and Rainer families travelled and performed all over Europe, and they sang "the Tyrolian folk carol". The Rainer family brought the carol to the United States, first performing it in German in New York City in 1839.

A publisher heard the carol sung near Innsbruck, Austria around 1832. He liked it and published it for the first time, claiming the source to be a "Tyrolian folk song." The songwriters were not known at that time, and the tune had been changed somewhat from the original. That printed version is the melody that is still widely sung. However, in 1995 a copy of "Silent Night" was found, written in Fr. Joseph Mohr’s own hand, which gives the origin of this carol, along with proof of its creators.
"Silent Night was translated into English in 1863. Who translated it is not clear, John Young is reported by some to have translated stanzas 1 and 3. Jane Campbell also could have translated it. It was first published in an American hymnal, Charles Hutchins’ Sunday School Hymnal.

"Silent Night" has been translated into nearly every language on earth. We, in the U.S. hear it early and often in the Christmas season, but the people of Austria consider it a national treasure, with an organization formed to protect it from commercialization, and to convince people to learn the original melody. A visitor to Austria can visit museums and memorials in Oberndorf and other places significant to this carol.

There are many stories of the origin of this carol, that the organ didn’t work due to mice nibbling at the bellows, or that, due to frequent flooding in the church, the organ had rust and mildew in the workings. It was even suggested that Gruber himself had something to do with the organ not working, due to strife between Fr. Mohr and a traditionalist priest recently assigned to the church. Mohr, with the previous priest, had arranged mixed German-Latin masses, which the people appreciated, as they could finally understand what was being said in church. The new priest, sent by a disapproving archiepiscopal consistory, rejected the use of German in the church and brought back the traditional mass. However, with the organ out of commission, the priest was forced to accept the alternative service with the guitar rather than not have music on Christmas Eve.

Whatever the circumstance, the world is grateful to the two friends who gave us this simple, yet beautiful picture of the night that Christ was born.

Listen to it here: Silent Night