One carol is heard around the world
Christmas music varies in different countries, but Silent Night is sung by Christians everywhere.
ALMOST 200 years ago, the carol ‘Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht’ was heard for the first time in a village church in Obendorf, Austria.
The congregation at that Midnight Mass in St Nicholas Church listened as the voices of the assistant priest, Father Joseph Mohr and the choir director, Franz Gruber, rang through the church to the accompaniment of Fr Mohr’s guitar. On each of the six verses, the choir repeated the last two lines in four-part harmony.
Some stories tell of mice eating the bellows of the organ, creating the necessity for a hymn to be accompanied by a guitar.
You can read claims that Silent Night was sung on Christmas Eve in 1818 and then forgotten by its creators. The latter are easily discounted by manuscript arrangements of the carol by both Fr Mohr and Herr Gruber which were produced at various times between 1820 and 1855.
The German words for the original six stanzas of the carol we know as Silent Night were written by Fr Mohr in 1816, when he was a young priest assigned to a pilgrimage church in Mariapfarr, Austria. He was transferrred to Oberndorf the following year.
On December 24, 1818 he journeyed to the home of musician-schoolteacher, Franz Gruber.
He showed his friend the poem and asked him to add a melody and guitar accompaniment so that it could be sung at Midnight Mass.
Later that night, as the two men, backed by the choir, stood in front of the main altar and sang Stille Nacht for the first time, they could hardly have imagined the impact their composition would have on the world.
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