When, on Christmas eve of 1818 in the Austrian village of Oberndorf, Father Josef Mohr was preparing his church for midnight Mass, he was most upset to discover that the organ did not play. Mice had eaten away part of its bellows!
As it was too late to have the damage repaired, he thought of an alternative way of giving the service solemnity and beauty. He asked Franz Gruber - the local schoolmaster who was also an amteur composer and, like Mohr, played the guitar - to set to music a poem he had written on the theme of Christmas. But it had to be ready that same night.
That is how 'Silent Night, Holy Night' was sung for the first time - as a duet, sung and accompanied on two guitars by the priest and the teacher in that village church. It all came about because of the proverbial church mice!
News travelled fast, and the hymn's beauty and the circumstances of its creation made it popular far and wide. Almost a hundred years later, Bing Crosby's rendition made it even more famous.
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
