Favourite Music

SILENT NIGHT

Words

1 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,
sleep in heavenly peace.

2 Silent night, holy night.
Shepherds quake at the sight,
glories stream from heaven afar,
heav’nly hosts sing alleluia:
Christ, the Saviour is born,
Christ, the Saviour is born.

3 Silent night, holy night.
Son of God, love’s pure light,
radiant beams from thy holy face,
with the dawn of redeeming grace:
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.

Background Information

In 1818 the church organ at Oberndorf, Austria, had broken down on Christmas eve, so the assistant priest, Joseph Mohr, jotted down the poem ‘Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht!’ in six stanzas, and asked the organist, Franz Gruber, to write a tune for it. It was sung that day, with
village girls singing the melody, Mohr playing guitar and singing tenor, and Gruber singing bass.

Unfortunately, the weakness of this hymn is that it is very much a translation of the original German. In fact there are lots of translations in different hymn books, and this can even make it hard to find in indexes - ‘Still the night’ is very different from ‘Silent night’. The English
words are very much ‘forced’ to fit the tune and even the rhythm is different for some of the different translations. Looking at the above, the third line of the first verse ‘round yon virgin mother and child’ is usually sung as if it is a line on its own, when in reality detached from the second line it makes no sense at all. And what does ‘radiant beams from thy holy face’ mean in the third verse?

These comments not withstanding, it is probably the most popular of all Christmas carols.