Myths and legends
On the traces of “Silent Night”
SilentNight
The Christmas song “Silent Night” captivates the imagination and thus it comes as no surprise that there are countless myths and legends surrounding it: Some of them — like the story of the hungry mouse that took a bite off the church organ — stubbornly persist. Perhaps that is so because they seem so heartfelt. Others, on the other hand, are based on simple ignorance. After all, historical research on the song — as well as on its origin and dissemination — continues and new insights are brought to the light of day on a regular basis.
The organ was defective and the mouse was to blame
There are particularly many legends and stories about the first time that the song was performed. The question is often raised why Franz Xaver Gruber’s melody for the song includes two solo voices and a guitar accompaniment. After all, guitars were mainly used at inns and taverns at the time and had no business inside a church building. A well-known and popular explanation for the guitar is the story of the mouse, which is still told to this day. Supposedly, a little mouse had been so hungry that it started nibbling at the old bellows of the church organ. As a result, the instrument was damaged so badly that it could not produce a single sound on Christmas Eve and the melody of “Silent Night” had to be performed with the guitar. The story about the defective organ has been going around since 1909, when Josef Gottlieb wrote an essay about it. The story about the voracious mouse, on the other hand, began with Hertha Pauli in 1954.
What is actually true is that although the organ was playable, it was also in dire need of repair. In the following year, organ builder Carl Mauracher from the Zillertal valley was called to Oberndorf in order to examine the instrument.
Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber could have decided to perform the song with the guitar from the very beginning, as they planned on singing the song after the Christmas mass in front of the nativity scene.
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“Silent Night” was composed by Michael Haydn
For many years, the names of the authors of “Silent Night” — Joseph Mohr, the poet, and Franz Xaver Gruber, the composer — had been forgotten. In order to sort out the song’s authorship, the Royal Court Orchestra in Berlin made a request to St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg. It was thought that the composer Michael Haydn, who was closely involved with the abbey, had been the author. The request was then probably directed to Franz Xaver Gruber in Hallein through his son Felix, who was a choirboy at St. Peter’s Abbey at the time. In response, Gruber wrote a document which clarified the authorship of “Silent Night” and also described the song’s true origins.
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