Back to: The Twelve Days of Christmas Carols
The story of “Stille Nacht” is one of the most endearing and enduring in Christian hymnody, though highly romanticized. Joseph Mohr (1792-1848) was an Austrian cathedral chorister in Salzburg as a boy. He was ordained into the Catholic priesthood in 1815. He spent most of his life ministering in parishes near Salzburg. Living a simple life, he died in poverty after giving away what little he had to the poor.
Mohr was placed in charge of the music and he even wrote poems and song lyrics for special services. A seemingly tireless and giving man, he spent much of his spare time ministering to children from the area’s poorest families.
In 1816, Mohr penned the original words of the poem that would make him famous around the world when he was assigned to a church in Mariapfarr The six stanzas were inspired on a winter’s walk from his grandfather’s home to the church. The town was very much at peace. Though he had shared the words with a few friends, the priest never sought to have the work published nor attempted to come up with a melody to go with his words.
In 1818, he was now serving as an assistant priest in Oberndorf, a skiing area in the Austrian Alps. Tradition has it that the carol was composed on short notice for the Christmas Eve Mass in Oberndorf in 1818.
It was Christmas Eve, 1818, when the now-famous carol was first performed as Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht. Mohr played the guitar and sang along with Franz Xaver Gruber, the choir director who had written the melody at the request of his friend Mohr. Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863) was an Austrian cantor and school teacher, holding church positions near Salzburg including Oberndorf. While a prolific composer, little was published.
While it was first accompanied on guitar, one story is it was on guitar because the organ didn’t work. As Carl Daw Jr. notes, “the organ at St. Nicholas Church was in chronic need of attention.” That this was due to mice eating the bellows cannot be verified. Closer to the fact is that the instrument was old and simply broke in the extremely cold temperatures. A frantic Mohr struggled with the old instrument for hours, making adjustments, fiddling with keys, stops, and pedals, even crawling behind the console to see if he could find a problem. Nothing would work.
Another story is that the guitar was chosen for the work for aesthetic reasons rather than an organ emergency: the guitar was more appropriate for accompanying this folk-like melody than an organ. Though this was not the normal instrument for the Mass, it was used in this case to great effect. Joseph Mohr’s guitar is housed at the Hallein’s Franz Gruber Museum.
Carl Daw notes that the first performance on Christmas Eve, 1818, was at Mohr’s request to compose a setting for “two solo singers and choir, with guitar accompaniment. . . . Gruber took his composition to Mohr who happily approved it. At the Christmas Eve Mass, Mohr sang the tenor part and played the guitar, Gruber sang the bass part, and the local choir sang a refrain consisting of a repeat of the last four measures.” (Daw. 126). Mohr and Gruber taught the choir members the four-part harmonies to the last two lines of each verse.
Karl Mauracher, an organ builder, traveled to Arnsdorf in 1821, during which time he obtained a copy of the manuscript. The carol was taken to the Leipzig trade fair in 1831 and first published in 1838 in an adapted version where its popularity spread as a “Tyrolean Folk Song.” The melodic version that we now sing is somewhat different from Gruber’s original, having taken on more of the characteristics of an idyllic folk song of this region. This adaptation has contributed to its reception and continued popularity.
During the nineteenth century, Austria and Germany had scores of traveling folk singers. Most of the groups were composed of family members who not only sang but worked specialized jobs to earn their keep as they journeyed from town to town. In 1832, the Stasser family folk singers appeared in a small community where Mauracher had recently installed an organ. During their stay, the family of singing glovemakers learned “Stille Nacht!” A few weeks later, at a concert in Leipzig, the Stassers performed the carol in front of a large crowd that had gathered for a fair. Moved by the song’s deep spiritual message, King William IV of Prussia requested his nation’s Cathedral Choir sing “Stille Nacht!” at his annual Christmas celebration. Due in part to the king’s favor, “Stille Nacht!” stormed across much of Eastern Europe and pressed west to Great Britain.
In December of 1839, another Austrian family group, the Rainers, traveled to New York. As part of one of their performances, the family sang “Stille Nacht!” in English for a huge crowd at Trinity Church. It was such a popular number that other local groups began to sing it in churches. By the Civil War, “Silent Night” had become America’s most popular Christmas carol.
In 1994, an original manuscript was found in Mohr’s handwriting, with Gruber named as a composer. In the only surviving autograph of the Mohr-Gruber collaboration at the Carolino Augusteum in Salzburg, one can see the difference between Gruber’s original melody and the popular adaptation in use today. The manuscript here, discovered in 1995, dates from 1821. It contains six stanzas from which we sing stanzas 1, 6, and 2, in that order. The accompaniment is in the facsimile of the musical score, is idiomatic of the guitar, and would not work on the organ. The inscription in the upper right reads, “Melodie von Fr Xav Gruber.”
In 1905 the Haydn Quartet cut the first recording of “Silent Night.” This first trip up the popular hit parade was just the beginning; literally, thousands of others from around the world would record the simple carol in years to come. By 1960, the carol was recognized as the most recorded song in music history.