History of Silent Night.
The most widely sung Christmas carol in the world began as a poem called, “Stille Nacht” by Austrian priest Josef Mohr in 1816. two years later, preparing for the Christmas Eve service in Oberndorf’s St. Nicholas church, Mohr discovered that the organ was not functioning. Legend has attributed the failure to mice gnawing through he bellows, but it is more likely that the organ in the riverside church suffered from excessive moisture and rust in its works. Mohr asked the organist Franz Gruber to compose a guitar setting for his poem and the resulting composition was sung at the midnight service.
The song would probably have been performed only on that single occasion and forgotten had a visiting musician not seen the music in the church in the early 1820’s and taken it away with him. It was played throughout Austria and Germany for the next few years, growing in popularity. The authorship of the piece remained a mystery until 1854, by which time Josef Mohr was dead. The carols had been attributed to many different composers but the director of the Royal Court Choir of Berlin, where “Silent Night” had become the favorite of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, researched the origins of the carol and succeeded in having its true creators credited for their work.
The song has been translated into over 300 languages. American Episcopal priest John Freeman Young wrote the English version in 1863. Select this link to view our Christmas Ornament Sets.