The little-known story of ‘Silent Night’, one of the most famous Christmas carols

On December 24, 1818, the Austrian priest Joseph Mohr asked his friend, organist Franz Xaver Gruber, to compose the melody of a poem he had written two years earlier. I was born like this Stille Nacht, heilige NachtTranslated into more than 300 languages ​​and one of the most famous Christmas carols in Portuguese known as: Happy nights????????

That night, Mohr and Gruber performed the song for the first time in St. Nicholas sang during the church service. Today, the song is nearly ubiquitous at Christmas and has been listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2011 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).

The poem was created in a difficult time for Salzburg. The then-independent church principality was subjected to various invasions during the Napoleonic Wars. The conflicts brought chaos and famine – especially in the Year Without Summer 1816, extreme low temperatures destroyed crops in Europe and North America.

In the same year, Salzburg lost its independence and was incorporated into Austria. “The lyrics to this song were written under these circumstances. They express a longing for redemption and peace,” Peter Husty, the exhibition’s curator, told BBC Brazil. Silent Night 200 – Story. Message. Now (“Happy Night 200 – Story. Message. Today”, free translation), at the Salzburg Museum.

The local context did not prevent the song from becoming a worldwide hit. First, the music spread in the form of a manuscript in the region of the authors. Later, organ producer Carl Mauracher took him to the Zillertal, a valley in Tyrol where he was sung by choirs. From there it spread to Germany, Europe, and the United States.

“Christianity brought this music to the world with missionaries (Protestants and Catholics). From the Silent Night 200 exhibition.

In addition to objects showing the lifestyle of the time the composition was composed, the exhibition offers detailed information about the song being sung by 2 billion people around the world, the signatures of Mohr and Gruber, and the piano used. to play music

Numerous translations and adaptations

spread night in style resulted in translations in several languages ​​that were not faithful to the original text. Many of them are actually adaptations. For example, the title of the Portuguese version was: Happy nightsalthough the original title is something like “Silent Night”.

The first stanza also contains the phrase “poor man was born in Belém”, which is absent in Austrian poetry. “Pseudo-translations are new poems that try to preserve the message of the text, but must take into account the rhythm and rhyme of (language),” Hochradner says.

According to Husty, translations often try to preserve the main meaning of the song: Christmas as a holiday of liberation and a sign of peace. But this is not always the case, as evidenced by the Weihnachtsringsendung, the Nazi version of the hymn.

The Hitler regime had an obvious problem with Christmas: Jesus was Jewish. And anti-Semitism was central to the existence of the Nazi dictatorship. Therefore, his team tried to remove all religious context from the celebration. This included rewriting Christmas carols with no reference to God, Christ, or faith.

In Nazi Germany, the first verse night in style It became a tribute to Hitler. The words are: “All is calm, all is splendid / Only the Chancellor stands guard / Germany’s future will watch and protect / Our Nation is strictly guided.”

The song has also not escaped commercial use in numerous films (Forbes claims it debuted at 295 as of 2015) and commentary by famous singers such as Sinéad O’Connor, Elvis Presley, Etta James, and Kelly Clarkson.

composers

Mohr was born in Salzburg in 1792, where he studied and was ordained as a priest. In 1815 he became curator in the pious, small municipality of Mariapfarr. The following year he wrote the poem that made him famous.

In 1817, Mohr was transferred to Oberndorf bei Salzburg. In the city, the priest met Gruber, who was born in Hochburg in 1787 and played the organ at the local church. They developed a lifelong friendship.

The two of them are so famous in Austria that there are monuments and museums in their honor where they were born, worked and died.

Hochburg, Mariapfarr, Arnsdorf, Hallein, Oberndorf, Hintersee, Wagrain, Fügen and Salzburg have collaborated for a national exhibition to celebrate 200 years of the hit Christmas. “Austrians love and sing the song in its original version, which is slightly different from the most common in the world. It’s more of a tradition than a pride,” says Hochradner.

for Husty, night in style transcends religion. “It tells the story of the birth of Jesus. So it’s both a religious song for world peace.”