Silent Night

Long before the advent of viral videos, a simple Christmas song by a small-town Austrian schoolmaster became a massive global hit. According to legend, “Silent Night” (or “Stille Nacht” in its original German) was composed in haste by Franz Xaver Gruber on Christmas Eve 1818 in response to an urgent request from Joseph Mohr, as assistant priest in Oberndorf near Salzburg. Alarmed to discover that the organ at his church was unplayable, Mohr retrieved a sheet of words he had written two years earlier and persuaded Gruber to set them for two-part choir and guitar ready for performance later that day at Midnight Mass. Gruber’s lilting melody and harmonisation in consonant thirds, cast as a tender lullaby, capture the grace of Christ’s birth. The song’s story might have ended there but for a visiting organ builder who fell in love with “Silent Night”. He brought a copy home to Tyrol, where it was taken up by two families of singing siblings, the Strassers and the Rainers. Their hugely popular performances ensured that the piece spread like wildfire following its first publication in 1833.