“Silent Night” & The Case of the Broken Organ
This favorite carol was composed on a real ‘Silent Night.’ This famous carol might not have been written without a broken organ.
Possibly, it was the stillness of the moment that moved the Reverend Joseph Mohr to write those legendary verses in 1818. At the time, he was most likely motivated by sheer desperation as opposed to inspiration.
The Reverend Mohr was arranging the details for the Christmas Eve Mass in his parish within the tiny Oberndorf Village of Austria when he discovered the old church organ was out of order. With just a short time to go for the performance and the closest repairman days away, it seemed as though the Mass would have to go on without the arranged music.
Desperate to pull off a notable Christmas, Fr. Mohr ventured off to execute another arrangement. This all happened in the middle of his normal parish responsibilities as well as being asked to go out and bless a new baby. In the middle of this visit, Fr. Mohr was instantly hit by what the words to “Silent Night,” or “Stille Nacht” in German, really mean. He ended his conversation and rapidly made his way home, because he did not want to forget the lines that were quickly accumulating in his head.
In the English language the first four stanzas of Silent Night are: Silent Night, Holy night, All is Calm, all is bright, round yon’ virgin, mother and child. Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in Heavenly peace.
When he wrote the words down, he called his friend Franz Gruber, the parish choir director. In addition to his talent on the organ, Gruber was also an expert guitar player. Gruber forcefully told him that he was not a very good guitar player. Unfazed, Mohr offered his new verses of poetry to Gruber. Getting an old guitar, the two gentlemen wrote the music that would be known as the score for Oberndorf’s Christmas Mass.
Surely neither Mohr nor Gruber were aware of their future impact on history. For close to ten years, in fact, the song fell away into obscurity. It was, in fact, the Strasser family of Zillertal Valley that took the song “Silent Night” to a whole new musical level.
The talent of the Strasser children brought much business to their parents’ glove-making company. Not different from today’s talent scout finding a musical prodigy in the most precarious of places, the Strassers were presented with “Silent Night”. After being redone in four-part harmony the song catapulted the Strasser children to instant stardom. Because the Strasser children sounded so much like a choir of an angels the song was renamed “The Song From Heaven”. Because of their beautiful singing the Strassers were invited to perform in front of royalty.
It was possibly a king who prompted “Silent Night” to become a Christian standard. Twenty-two years after the Strasser children started performing it, King Frederick William IV of Prussia heard it and declared it should “be given first place in all future Christmas concerts” under his rule. The accuracy of the story has not been substantiated. What is clear, is that in spite of everything, “Silent Night” became a worldwide hit.