The Ritual Master Welcome to the second day of our Austrian Advent Calendar !
Let’s talk Christmas music.
It’s probably the first element that starts the season, before the windows of department stores get glittery, before the streets light up with twinkle lights, you’re walking through the isles of your supermarket and either Frank, or Bing, Mariah or Elvis surprise you with a few notes that inevitably make you smile.
One of the best known carols, translated into more than 300 languages, is…
Yes, Silent Night unites the entire Globe every winter, but did you know the history of this beloved carol ?
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht was composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. Gruber was a teacher turned organist and choirmaster. On Christmas Eve of 1818, Mohr, an assistant pastor at St Nicholas Church, showed Gruber a poem he had written in 1816 and asked him to set the poem to music. The church organ had broken down so Gruber produced a melody with guitar arrangement for the poem and the two of them sang Stille Nacht for the first time at Christmas Mass in St Nicholas Church while Mohr played guitar and the choir repeated the last two lines of each verse.
The legend goes to say that the organ builder who came to service the broken instrument, loved the song and took it home where he sang it to some travelling folk singers. In just a few years, the carol had reached Emperor Franz Joseph and Tzar Alexander I of Russia, and from then on, the whole world.
With the original manuscript lost over the years, the melody was attributed to a famous composer, some said Haydn, others Mozart or Schubert. But in 1995, a manuscript in Mohr’s writing, dated around 1820, was discovered, with all the details we know today.
So maybe without even knowing it, we all carry a piece of Austrian tradition with us every year. The first language I learned this carol in was English, and later on, the French and Romanian versions came along, but as always, the earliest memories, like a mother tongue, are the most intense, so the English lyrics are the ones I prefer.
I would love to know if your native language has a translation of the lyrics, so while we all sing together in spirit, let me know in the comments below what your song sounds like.
Until tomorrow, happy caroling !
