The Story of Silent Night Read Free

lockigten Haar,
Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh.
    “Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb’ aus Deinem gottlichen Mund
Da uns schlägt die rettende Stund,
Jesus in Deiner Geburt.
    “Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Alleluja
Tönt es laut bei fern und nah:
Jesus der Retter ist da!”
    What gripped him was the simplicity of its narration of the story told and retold every Christmas Eve of that starlit night in Palestine when all Bethlehem was asleep, and only the Holy pair Joseph and Mary kept lonely watch on their Newborn in the manger. Mary sang to Him as mothers always have—“My darling, my curly-headed boy; sleep in heavenly peace.”
    Yet he could not linger too long. Gruber tried to collect his musical thoughts and sounds he had been hearing ever since he first read the verses, but he was still in too much of a state of agitation. He touched several chords on his instrument, played half a melody and ceased in irritation as a loud peal of bells from the tower of the neighbouring church broke in upon his reflections.
    He arose and went to the window to look out upon the snow, the stone crucifix outlined in white rising from the churchyard and down the village street some children pelting one another with snowballs. As if in echo to the peal now ended, borne upon the winter wind Gruber heard the bells of the Church of St. Nikola in Oberndorf, but rendered soft and gentle by distance. In place of the unrelated jangle of clapper upon bronze they seemed to convey a rhythm that was peaceful and soothing.
    Three mummers in the guise of the Three Kings passed by below, but Gruber did not even see them, for lost in meditation he was gazing across the whitened, flat lands with prosperous farms and fat, peak-roofed houses. Smoke drifted upwards from a chimney, a few desultory snowflakes fell from the sky and his lips framed the words, “Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh” —“Sleep in heavenly peace”.
    No more than a dozen years before fires from burning homes and hayricks had illuminated the night, gravestones had sprung up over the countryside like weeds as the armies of Napoleon ravaged the land. The French had fought the Austrians and when the invaders had gone, the Austrians had made war upon the Germans.
    But that, too, had come to an end and one could sleep now, child and man, in heavenly peace. Once more he heard the faint strains of the bells of St. Nikola. He knew so well the tone of each one, their sequence and their rhythms. Yet now, blending in with his reverie and feelings, they seemed to hold the suggestion of a melody. And as he turned from the window to the spinet on which lay Mohr’s poem, it was as though he saw clearly for the first time. He discarded all the grandiose musical ideas he had been fermenting and murmured:
    “How stupid of me! What pompous thoughts I have been having. Why, it’s only a lullaby— Sleep my child and rest; I am watching over you this silent and peaceful night—the kind of song to which cradles have been rocked and restless infants quietened to sleep for centuries.”
    He had found the key now to the composition, the simplicity needed to match the words. No complicated harmonies or exalted effects were called for but only the unadorned melodic line to bring to the minds of the listeners something of the mood of that December eve in Bethlehem in the long ago.
    Soon a sheet of paper was covered with a rough score. Gruber played the notes and sang them to himself, then took his guitar from the wall and transcribed the accompaniment. It was all done swiftly and easily since what musician worthy of the name was not capable of putting together a plain, homespun, cradle song? Gathering up his papers and slinging his guitar over his shoulder, Gruber set forth on the return journey to Oberndorf, hoping that Mohr would think he had done the right thing with his unpretentious setting to the poem.
    “What, back so soon, Franz?” Mohr