Silent Night – a song for the world

Silent Night, a song which is in everybody’s DNA, was originally a poem, written in 1816 by a young priest, Joseph Mohr, in a time of bitter desperation and need. Two years later his friend, Franz Gruber, a school teacher and musician melodised the poem. Stille Nacht was first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, a small village in the Austrian Empire.

While Franz Gruber wrote in his diary that the composition wasn’t very important, both made history on 24 December 1818. The original manuscript got lost but this simple composition stood the test of time, to the point where it was declared an intangible cultural heritage by Unesco in 2011. The song has been recorded by many thousands of singers across many music genres. The version sung by Bing Crosby in 1935 became a world hit. But until it became a song for the world, Silent Night had to take a long journey around the globe.

Re-enactment of Joseph Mohr writing Stille Nacht

Over the years, because the original manuscript had been lost, Mohr's name was forgotten and although Gruber was known to be the composer, many people assumed the melody was composed by a famous composer, and it was variously attributed to Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. However, a manuscript was discovered in 1995 in Mohr's handwriting and dated by researchers as c. 1820. Today we know the songs compelling history making story.

According to Gruber, Karl Mauracher, an organ builder who serviced the instrument at the Obendorf church, was enamoured with the song, and took the composition home with him to the Zillertal in Tyrol. From there, two travelling families of folk singers, the Strassers and the Rainers, included the tune in their shows. The Rainers were already singing it around Christmas 1819, and once performed it for an audience that included Franz I of Austria and Alexander I of Russia, as well as making the first performance of the song in the US, in New York City in 1839 at the Trinity Church on Broadway.

The Rainers, a travelling family of folk singers.

From there the song was spread all over the US through monasteries and eventually 116 years after its creation, in November 1934, a missionary priest, Father Richard Ranaghan, came into the office of Bing Crosby Enterprises. Ranaghan asked Bing, at the time already the most successful singer in the world, if he could sing one two songs for a film soundtrack to raise funds for the mission. Bing agreed and recorded Silent Night and arranged for the profits from the record to be donated to charity. The rest is history: it became the fourth bestselling single of all time and sold more than 30 million copies. Today the song has been recorded and performed by literally every prominent artist on the planet.

Doubtless like many people, I sang the song for the first time with the family when I was a kid, first under the Christmas tree and later in the Christmas Mass. Then in school in choir and in 1998, being already an established film composer I have been asked by the German ZDF to arrange a new version for a Christmas special – which I did – and 16 million viewers at the time listened to my version including the Vienna Boys Choir, the French Opera Singer Jo Ann Pickens and Lionel Richie.

Again, a decade later I arranged it for a Christmas TV movie and when the bicentennial for the composition came closer I envisioned to tell the compelling story of the songs genesis and history until to date in a music film documentary. I conceived a mix of reenactments with actors like John Rhys-Davies impersonating Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, telling the incredible story of the Christmas truce of 1914 between the British and the Germans caused by singing Silent Night, each in their trenches, and the origin of the song in Salzburg, its travel to Los Angeles and how it became so globally popular until to date.

And last but not least I asked a number of world known singers and producers to work with me on different versions of the song in different languages, which wasn’t easy but worked out brilliantly in the end. Eleven new versions in several languages and personal stories are showing exactly why this carol, this simple song has such a meaning, nowadays even more than 200 years ago. And all that narrated by the great Hugh Bonneville, who makes you love to listen to the true story of the song.

Silent Night is available in the UK to own or rent on digital HF from today, 30 November 2020, on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, itunes, Microsoft Films and TV and Sky Store. More info here.

Hannes Michael Schalle, director of Silent Night – A Song For The World, is an Austrian director, writer, producer and film composer. He has produced more than 50 fictional and non-fictional film productions, composed more than 70 film scores, produced hundreds of music videos for BMG, Sony Music, Warner Classics including his own music TV show Classic Cuts for ZDF/3sat. Next to his feature productions Schalle directs commercials such as UBS, Deutsche Telekom, Chanel, Samsung and the Star Wars Made GREAT in Britain campaign. Hannes is also an elected member of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.