Silent Night' performed for the first time - Dec. 24, 1818

Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber performed "Stille Nacht" for the first time at a Christmas Eve mass in Austria on Dec. 24, 1818. There's more detail in the December 24, 2018 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past, one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hi, I'm Holly Fry.
This week I am sitting in for Tracy V. Wilson.

(00:21):
Today is December and it is the day that Silent
Night was performed for the first time in eighteen eighteen.
Steely Knocht, known in English speaking places as Silent Night,
has of course become a standard at Christmas celebrations. This
song was originally written not as a song but as
a poem by an assistant priest named Joseph Moore in

(00:43):
eighteen sixteen. Moore, who was born in Salzburg, was ordained
in eighteen fifteen, and he moved to marry up far
in Lungao in the Austrian Alps the following year. The
words of stelen Nacht were written by More at a
time when the occupation of the area by Bavarian troop
was ending, which may have contributed to the song's themes

(01:03):
of salvation and peace. In eighteen eighteen, More moved to
Obendorf by Salzburg, one thirty kilometers northwest of where he
had been staying on the Austrian border, and he served
at the Church of St. Nicholas there, and the church
of St. Nicholas had an organist named Franz Gruber who
worked primarily as a teacher, but he had other side

(01:25):
jobs in addition to playing music at St. Nicholas, including
as a church caretaker and also as an organist for
another church. More still had this poem that he had
written while he was living in the Austrian Alps, and
he had an idea that it could be set to music,
and he also wanted something that the choir could sing
with a couple of solo parts, preferably accompanied by guitar,

(01:48):
and so to accomplish this task, More asked Gruber to
write music for the poem. He had made this request
on Christmas Eve of eighteen eighteen, and Gruber was very
very pasked. He had this whole thing turned around the
very same day, and so later again that same day
when Gruber showed More the simple composition, as he called it,

(02:10):
of music that he had come up with to go
with the words of Steele Knocht More was really pleased
with it. He thought it was lovely, so much so
that he decided that it should just be part of
the mass that evening. And beyond the fact that the
performance at the Church of St. Nicholas in eighteen was
well received, we really don't know much about it, but
that was the first time it was performed at a

(02:31):
Christmas Eve Mass, and it continued to be performed after
that debut, first in the surrounding area in Austria, and
then slowly spreading through a progressively wider geographical footprint. In
just a little more than a decade after the poem
was first set to song, stelen Nacht was being performed
outside of Austria. From there it traveled with performers not

(02:54):
only across Europe but beyond Europe. It was sung by
a family singing group called the Rayner Family Singers in
North America on Christmas Day in eighteen thirty nine, but
as the song gained popularity, its origin was obscured. After
a number of years. Eventually, at the end of eighteen
fifty four, Franz Gruber, who had heard that attribution had

(03:16):
been lost. As this song took flight and spread around
the world actually wrote down the story of its inception
in a document which he titled Authentic Account of the
Origin of the Christmas carol Silent Night, Holy Night. At
this point, Stele a Knot has been translated into more
than three hundred languages and dialects. It is on UNESCO's

(03:38):
Intangible Cultural Heritage List. More than one hundred years after
Steele Knot was first performed, Bing Crosby recorded the English
language version Silent Night in n that is reportedly the
number three all time best selling single. And it all
started on Christmas Eve eighteen eighteen with a song written

(04:00):
and performed by an assistant priest and a church organist
in Bavaria. If you want to learn a slightly longer
version of this story, you can get that on Stuff
You Missed in History Class, which has a new episode
out called Christmas Triple Feature Steely knockt, st Nick and Scrooge.
Today's episode was researched by Tracy Wilson, who deserves thanks.

(04:21):
It was handled on the audio end by Casey Pegram
and Chandler Maze. Tomorrow you should hang back out with
us because they're going to talk a little bit about
some astronomical fun and if you would like to subscribe
to This Day in History class, you can do that
on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever
you get podcasts.