5 facts about 'Silent Night'
1. Silent Night is 201 years old
Picture the scene in the snowy Austrian village of Obendorf on Christmas Eve, 1818.
Father Joseph Mohr is preparing the music for midnight mass and asks his friend Franz Gruber, a schoolteacher, to write an accompaniment for a poem that he had written two years earlier.
That night, the two men sang their brand new song at St Nicholas church and one of our best-loved Christmas Carols was born.
2. Confusion reigned over the song鈥檚 authorship until 1995
Although Franz Gruber has long been credited as the composer of the music, the original manuscript was lost and it was widely assumed that a famous composer wrote the melody for Silent Night – in the past it has been credited to Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart.
Then in 1995, a manuscript surfaced that contained Joseph Mohr’s handwriting and showed he wrote the poem in 1816 with the music being composed by Franz Gruber in 1818.
3. The version we sing today is a translation
As an Austrian German speaker, Joseph Mohr naturally wrote the lyrics to Silent Night in his native language – the original title being ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht’.
As the popularity of the carol spread, it was translated into many different languages.
The English version was translated and published in 1859 by John Freeman Young, a priest in New York, who translated hymns as a hobby.
4. It was originally composed for guitar
Although Franz Gruber was an organist, he composed the music for Silent Night on guitar.
A commonly held myth is that this was because the church organ was broken – possibly because of flooding from a nearby river.
However, nobody knows the true reason why it came to be composed on guitar – perhaps it was because Joseph Mohr also played the guitar.
It is thought that the 'broken organ' version of events stems from a fictional account in a 1930s American story.
5. It is the third best-selling single of all time
A version of Silent Night recorded by Bing Crosby in 1935 sold a whopping 30 million copies.
Christmas must have been a very welcome time in the Crosby household as Bing also holds the top spot with his 1942 version of ‘White Chiristmas’ sitting at number 1 with over 50 million copies sold.
Watch the story of how Silent Night was written
The story of Silent Night
The story of how the carol was composed and performed on Christmas Eve, 200 years ago.
