A miracle on Oberndorf Street: The remarkable story of ‘Silent Night’
I’m not sure about you but I can’t help but think – as my hairline visibly recedes like a time-lapse glacier owing to yuletide stress – that “all is calm” is one of the most inaccurate lyrics in songwriting history. Even if you go back to the barn-based nativity birth that the Christmas carol depicts, I highly doubt that post-natal scene instantly descended into a state of lulling calm. Messiah or no messiah, that is surely a hectic bloodbath of straw, sinew, screaming child and unwanted visitors. In short, ‘Silent Night’, is a lie, but the story behind it is still somewhat miraculous, and true to life, it is fittingly stressful too.
It was December 1818. Christmas Eve was fast approaching. A midnight mass was looming on the horizon in the small Austrian town of Oberndorf. A 26-year-old musician called Josef Mohr paced around St. Nicholas Church pulling his hair out. He had a huge problem on his hands. Mice had eaten the bellows on the organ rendering it useless. Things looked set for a silent night in the most literal sense this Christmas.
Salzburg was 11 miles away and there was no chance of a repair or replacement. Young Mohr had been tasked with curating this music for the town this year, and it looked like he was to fail in the most spectacular way. He turned to an old friend to dump some of the load of the troubles that ailed him.
That friend happened to be a headmaster and amateur composer himself, Franz Gruber (not to be mistaken with the Xmas blighter Hanz Gruber of Die Hard devilry—in fact, old Franz is the polar opposite). Gruber tried his best to alleviate the stress that Mohr was clearly buckling under. And as thanks for this friendly therapy, Mohr decide he would gift him a handwritten poem which he has completed two years earlier.
As it happens, Gruber was so moved by Mohr’s mellow words, that he instantly wanted to set them to equally melodic music. With the organ cast to the ash heap by three deaf mice, Gruber picked up his faithful guitar and quickly strummed out a basic tune. Just like that, Mohr’s poem, ‘Silent Night’, had found its sonic glass slipper. The town of Oberndorf would have sweet music at midnight mass after all.
That night, Gruber brought his guitar to church and like Simon & Garfunkel nearly two centuries before the fact, they sang ‘Silent Night’ or ‘Stille Nacht’ and made everyone weep. Now it has been translated into 300 languages around the world and remains a staple of Christmas. Thank god, for greedy mice I suppose, even if it does plaster over the carnage of the craziest time of year.
