Come advent and all Christians begin to prepare for Christmas Day. Cribs, stars, Christmas trees, children’s parties are galore. This time of the year people also stop playing all other music and stick to carols, which enhances the Christmas mood. The most popular and best known carol, which we hear during the Christmas season is Silent Night. It was none other than a young humble parish priest by the name of Joseph Mohr and a village school master Franz Xavier Grubber his organist, who are jointly credited for this most beautiful hymn.
The hymn, which is known and sung the world over, was composed on the eve of Christmas about 200 years ago in a little Austrian town, Obendorf, Salzburg. For many years the hymn was supposed to be a folk song but today everyone knows it to be the product of this young priest and his organist.
It so happened that the organ of Obendorf’s church, which was appropriately named St Nicholas, suddenly broke on the eve of Christmas in 1818. With the time for the midnight Mass drawing near, Father Mohr was on the lookout for some hymn which the congregation would be able to sing without the accompaniment of the organ.
The young priest who was now very upset at the prevailing situation, managed somehow to find a poem which he had written a few months ago and immediately passed it on to Grubber who not wasting a single minute set down feverishly to set it to music. The result of their 11th hour collaboration was the beautiful song Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night).
Some days later, an organ builder Karl Meuracher came to this little Austrian town to repair the broken instrument. On arriving there, he heard the villagers singing the new hymn, which he liked so much that he not only learnt it himself but taught it to folk singers in another village.
Some years later the true origin of this hymn became obscured and was all but forgotten. But in 1854, the King of Prussia ordered his Royal Concert Master, Ludwig Erk to find out who had written it. By this time, Fr Mohr was dead, but Ludwig somehow located Grubber in another village called Hallein. Upon Ludwig’s request Grubber wrote down the six stanzas composed by the young priest many years before, which till today people all over the world hear and sing as the Silent Night.
