The universal message of “Silent Night”
by Fred Plotkin
“Silent Night,” one of the most famous and beloved songs of the holiday season, was composed and first performed on the same day, December 24, 1818, which means it is now approaching its bicentennial. The original version, “Stille Nacht,” is a setting of a six-stanza poem written in German in 1816 by Joseph Mohr (1792–1848), a Catholic priest who, in 1818, was assistant pastor of the parish church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, Austria, near Salzburg.
On Christmas Eve 1818, Mohr showed the poem to his friend Franz Xaver Gruber (1787–1863), who was inspired to write and complete on that day the melody known round the world, and now sung in most every language. The organ in the St. Nicholas church was broken, so the two men performed “Stille Nacht” at evening Mass as a song for two voices, with Mohr singing tenor and playing guitar accompaniment while Gruber sang bass. The chorus repeated the last two lines of each verse. Here is a performance that approximates what might have been sung the very first time:
Many people everywhere may have first encountered the song in German through a performance by the Vienna Boys’ Choir, which has a simple beauty to it, though I have become partial to the original guitar accompaniment. Both versions capture the essential element of the music and lyrics: our yearning for peace in a troubled world.
Mohr wrote the poem in his previous parish, Mariapfarr (near Salzburg), as the seemingly endless wars (1803–15) that affected most of Europe, including Napoleonic France, Great Britain, Russia and the Austrian Empire, were finally coming to an end. The largest and bloodiest conflict, called The Battle of Nations, took place just outside of Leipzig (in Saxony) in October, 1813. This was the first time Napoleon was defeated (by a coalition of allies) after a decade of victories. Some 600,000 troops fought for four days and estimates are that at least 75,000 people died.
One of these was the father of Richard Wagner, who was born in Leipzig five months before the battle. His widowed mother moved with her children to Dresden, where Wagner grew up. Like most every European in the first half of the 19th century, Wagner had these wars as a legacy and a burden. Afterwards, some empires (Britain, Austria, Russia) expanded, while small duchies struggled to free themselves from imperial domination and unite to form the nations of Italy and Germany in the 1860s.
In 1816, there was extreme cold in and around Salzburg and a poor harvest that led to famine and disease. As Bavarian troops left their occupation of Mariapfarr to the Austrians, they gratuitously did considerable damage to the town. Mohr’s response was this poem. The fourth stanza was his particular expression of a desire for peace:
Stille Nacht! Heil’ge Nacht! Silent Night! Holy Night!
Wo sich heut alle Macht By his love, by his might
Väterlicher Liebe ergoß, God our Father us has graced,
Und als Bruder huldvoll umschloß As a brother gently embraced
Jesus die Völker der Welt! Jesus, all nations on earth!
In 1818, fires destroyed a large part of Salzburg, adding woe to a population that — like much of Europe — had suffered for years. “Stille Nacht,” was created in that context. The song was immediately popular and became part of Christmas services in Austria and other places where German was spoken. Soon, families began to sing it at home. This tradition was especially strong in the Tyrol region of western Austria. One family, the Rainer Singers, toured and sang (much like the von Trapp family in the 20th century, whom you might know from The Sound of Music), and “Stille Nacht” was their most popular song.
In 1839, the Rainers crossed the Atlantic and arrived in New York City. On Christmas day they stood in front of the Alexander Hamilton memorial in the graveyard of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan to sing “Stille Nacht” for the first time in the Americas. The song was adopted by German speakers in New York until 1859, when John Freeman Young, an assistant minister at Trinity Church, translated three verses of the song into English, including the famous “sleep in heavenly peace” that concludes the first verse.
These events were celebrated this year on November 28 when the Kroell Family Singers, three sisters from Tyrol, came to New York along with Christiane Schober, a soprano from Salzburg who, with the Trinity Church Young Person’s Chorus, sang the song in German and English in front of the Hamilton memorial, and then sang several songs and carols inside the church. I gave a talk on the history of the song, which contributed to some of the information included in this article.
The connection of “Silent Night” with issues of war and peace have always been attached to the song, most famously during the First World War, a battle of nations that lasted four years and in many ways mirrored what happened exactly a century before. Millions of people died in the war and from disease and famine. In Flanders on Christmas Eve 1914, German, French and Scottish troops laid down their weapons, removed their helmets and had a brief respite from war. These events were depicted in the 2005 film Joyeux Noel, whose characters included two opera singers with their singing voices dubbed by Natalie Dessay and Rolando Villazón. More famously, these events became a splendid contemporary opera, the Pulitzer prize-winning Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell.
Many opera singers have performed the song, including The Three Tenors, with Carreras singing it in German, Domingo in Spanish and Pavarotti in Italian, before they joined together to sing it in English.
The beautiful melody accommodates itself readily to countless languages and styles, which has contributed to its universal appeal. Many Americans think of the song in terms of the 1935 recording by Bing Crosby, whose simple directness mirrors the Austrian original. Younger people often associate it with the soulful a capella performance by Boyz II Men. I first learned it in the version by Mahalia Jackson, which I still think is the best English-language performance in the way she invests the music and words with genuine feeling.
In my research, I have delighted in listening to the song in many languages. The fact that this melody can be sung so many ways symbolizes the true universality of music. Some of my favorites are Japanese (called “Kiyoshi kono noru”), Hawaiian (“Po La’i E”), French Creole, Arabic, Swahili, Tagalog, Gaelic (“Oíche chiúin”), and Welsh (“Tawel nos”) as sung by Bryn Terfel. It is quite moving in American Sign Language.
Two hundred years after the song was written, we are still a turbulent world that resists learning from the brutal examples of past conflicts and disasters. Hatred and prejudice still often find ways of trumping kindness and love. May this song be an example of ways to transcend ideology, religion and language to find that which all humanity shares and should treasure. May we not only have heavenly peace, but peace on Earth.