Silent night! holy night!

Few hymns or carols have their origins so well documented, or perhaps embellished, as this one. It is one of those compositions to which whole books have been devoted, with such titles as The Story of Silent Night (eg Paul Gallico, 1967) etc. Many other episodes illustrating the subsequent use and value of the song (for such it is) are often added. Even so, perhaps inevitably, the received tale has been widely questioned. In essence, it tells how on Christmas Eve 1818, in the village (RC) church of St Nicholas-in-Oberndorf near Salzburg in Upper Austria, the little organ broke down. Joseph Mohr the assistant parish priest, possibly also prompted by a birth in the village that day, wrote the lines beginning Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht in the church. He showed them to his friend, the schoolmaster and organist Franz Grüber, and pleaded for a tune which they could sing that night, accompanied by Grüber’s guitar. With mind duly concentrated by the need of the hour, the tune STILLE NACHT was born. Mohr sang tenor, Grüber bass, with the hastily rehearsed girls’ choir leading with the melody. So not only was the service rescued from near-disaster (it was sung ‘with some success on that same holy night’ said Grüber), but a permanent treasure emerged which came to be enjoyed in countless languages worldwide. The next step was taken by the organ-repairer from 80 miles away, Karl Mauracher, who introduced it in his home village in the Zillertal near Innsbruck. It was sung at the 1831 Leipzig Fair, and published in the 1838 Leipziger Gesangbuch. But it had already reached America through the folksinging Rainer family. If not featuring in every carol service, it has become a ‘must’ at least for the carol sheets. Of several English translations including one by Stopford Brooke, the most popular was made by the American bishop John F Young c1860 and published in several Sunday School books in that decade and the next, then definitively in Young’s Great Hymns of the Church, 1887. There are many variants and borrowings between versions, but this is substantially the text adopted here. Grüber’s role as composer is now well-established, but was lost sight of for many years because it was regarded as a Tyrolean folk-carol. His tune is also known as SILENT NIGHT or HOLY NIGHT. Musically it has been dubbed sentimental or romantic; but the perfect match of text and tune clearly conveys to millions some of the mighty truths of this festival. In a world of noise (cf 362 and 378) its popularity speaks volumes. This new arrangement is by Linda Mawson.

b Salzburg, Austria 1792, d Wagrein, Austria 1848. Brought up by foster parents including an RC priest, he sang as a choirboy in Salzburg Cathedral. He went on to be ordained (RC) in 1815 and following a period of ill health as a hospital patient in Salzburg he served for 2 years at the new St Nicholas’ Ch in Oberndorf, his first and most famous appointment. After work in several other parishes he became Vicar of Hintersee (from 1828) and finally of Wagrein, where he remained from 1837 until his death. We know him as a singer and guitarist, but most widely for the text of his enduring carol. See also Silent Night, Holy Night, ed A Schmaus and L Kriss-Rettenbeck, Innsbruck, 1968. A great number of English translations are available including a ‘forgotten’ one beginning ‘Stilly night, starry and bright’ by F W Farrar (1831–1903) in 1881. A vividly pictorial memorial tablet commemorates him in the Oberndorf church. No.377.

b Pittston, Maine, USA 1820, d New York 1885. Wesleyan Univ, Middletown, Connecticut. He then joined the Protestant Episcopal (Anglican) Church, training at the Virginia Theological Seminary at Alexandria; ordained in 1845. After parish ministry at Jacksonville and Tallahassee, Florida, he served in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana between 1848 and 1855, then for 12 years at Trinity Parish, New York City. In 1867 he was elected as the 2nd Bishop of Florida, remaining in that post until his death from pneumonia while visiting New York. He was a keen supporter of new church building projects in his diocese and state, and of educational advances such as the schools he founded for boys in Jacksonville and girls in Fernandina. At the end of the civil war he shared in the re-opening of the Univ of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. While at Trinity, New York, he published Hymns and Music for the Young (1860–61); his Great Hymns of the Church appeared posthumously in 1887. But his main claim to distinction rests on his world-famous translation of the German carol included here; see notes. No.377.