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©istockphoto: Florea Marius Catalin
Among all the hymns proclaiming Christ's arrival, no other captures the serenity of his birth like the Austrian carol, “Silent Night.” Written by Father Joseph Mohr and composed by Franz X. Gruber, two Catholic musicians in the early 19th century, “Silent Night” elicits a stirring reverence for the Savior's birth with angelic purity.
Much like the story of the Nativity, the story of “Silent Night” provides limited accounts to historians other than a few recorded details.
For Latter-day Saints, “Silent Night” is a song that has long been a fixture in the church's hymnal text. The song's composition – in the years 1816 and 1818 -- came just a few years before a new dispensation dawned with the first vision of Joseph Smith.
But more relevant to today is the song's inspiring connection to Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who died Dec. 1 at age 91. As a young missionary in Salzburg, Austria, prior to World War II, Elder Wirthlin's Christmas Eve visit to the town of Oberndorf , where the song was first performed in 1818, became a testimony building experience in his own life. Elder Wirthlin bore witness – including recently, just days before his passing -- of the hymn's deep impression leading him to consecrate himself to the Lord and His restored church.
The Story Begins
The story begins with Joseph Mohr, a charismatic priest born and raised in the heart of Salzburg. Located on the Salzach River below the Austrian Alps, Salzburg was the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the gifted composer and child prodigy who performed for kings' courts of Europe, and became arguably the greatest composer ever before his early death in 1791 at age 35.
This restored house at Steingasse 31 in Salzburg includes the small apartment where Joseph Mohr was born in 1792.
Mohr was born one year later, Dec. 11, 1792. Like Mozart, he possessed early musical gifts, but in notably different surroundings. He was one of four illegitimate children born to a seamstress mother, Anna Schoiber. She was abandoned by the child's father, Franz Joseph Mohr, a musketeer who fled the army. With no money and standing, the boy's talents would lie dormant in abject poverty.
One of the few portraits available with a likeness of Joseph Mohr, from the Silent Night Chapel.
Mohr grew up in the historic cobblestoned alleys of Salzburg 's Steingasse, with his mother, grandmother and siblings. One side note of the family's poor social standing was the story of the man who volunteered to serve as godfather at Mohr's baptism -- Joseph Wohlmuth – also known as the executioner of Salzburg. Wohlmuth's association with the family is unknown, but he was probably trying to provide some good deed at the end of a morbid career. Yet because his trade was reviled in the eyes of the church, he was unable to enter the chapel for the ceremony. Instead, a random church bystander was chosen to be the infant's godfather. 1
The city of Salzburg, with the Dom Cathedral in foreground and the Festung Hohensalzburg fortress above it.
Mohr eventually was befriended by the Salzburger Dom cathedral choirmaster, Johan Nepomuk Hiernle. Hiernle saw talent in the child and became a father figure who could nurture the boy's musical acumen. With this one social connection, Mohr's knack for music was allowed to intertwine with a religious education. It was agreed between the teacher and the boy's mother that he must have more training to develop his gifts.
The Silent Night Chapel in Oberndorf was constructed after the original St. Nicholas Church was destroyed in the 1900s. A young Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin visited this memorial chapel the first Christmas Eve after its completion in 1937.
After attending prominent grammar and religious schools, Mohr entered the seminary of Salzburg to prepare for the priesthood. Because he was considered a fatherless child, special dispensation from the pope in Rome was necessary for Mohr to become ordained after his graduation in 1815. 2 Although blessed with a strong tenor voice and the ability to play violin, organ and guitar, Mohr also suffered from poor respiratory health, limiting his chance to take a faraway assignment. 3 But his ability to connect to the poor, the young and the infirm would make him and his musical talents popular throughout his ministry.
The narrow cobblestone streets of the Steingasse of Salzburg was the home of Joseph Mohr, a poor child who became a priest, and wrote the classic hymn “Silent Night.”
It was while in this first assignment in Mariapfarr, sometime in 1816, that the young priest began penning a poem about the night of Jesus' birth. His words were put to paper, with the title “Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!” What led Mohr to write the unpretentious and serene verses has always been historical speculation. No journals from Mohr have ever provided an explanation. But his lyrics are true to the word and spirit of scriptural accounts from the New Testament:
Silent Night! Holy Night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin, mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Silent Night! Holy Night!
Shepherds quake at the sight!
Glories stream from heaven afar;
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ, the Savior, is born!
Christ, the Savior, is born!
Silent Night, Holy Night,
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy holy face,
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord at thy birth;
Jesus, Lord at thy birth. 4
For many years, historians believed Mohr wrote the carol in 1818, just days before it was performed in Oberndorf. But the 1995 discovery of a written copy of the song, in Mohr's own hand with a composition date of 1816, affirms that the song was written during his first parish assignment. Mohr left his post as curate in Mariapfarr in 1817 due to a respiratory illness. He recovered in Salzburg then reported to Oberndorf a few miles away to serve as assistant pastor.
The Silent Night Chapel, church tower and Silent Night Square of Oberndorf, the town that was the origin of the Christmas hymn Silent Night.
It was in this charming, quaint hamlet that the hymn's legend officially would be born. Mohr was assigned to St. Nikolai Kirche (St. Nicholas Church) on the bend of the Salzach River. The river became an almost ubiquitous force in the story, since flooding was common right up to the foundation of St. Nikolai. Legends were written that flooding in the summer months of 1818 had damaged the church's organ. More creative minds provide a fictional tale that church mice “gnawed a hole during the night” in the leather bellows of the organ, leaving the instrument in disrepair and unavailable for use on Christmas Eve. 5
No one is certain whether it was the absence of an organ, or a simpler reason, that led Mohr to turn to his own prose. But in December 1818, during the preparations for Christmas Mass, Mohr approached his friend Franz Xaver Gruber, a music teacher and composer from the nearby town of Arnsdorf, and asked him to compose music for the poem.
A portrait of Franz X. Gruber in the Silent Night Chapel.
Gruber needed very little time to pen an arrangement that could be played on the guitar to accompany Mohr's poem. Gruber used a standard tenor, soprano and choir composition tune, which resembled the common vocal music found in the Tyrolean region of Austria.
On Dec. 24, Christmas Eve of 1818, before a small Oberndorf congregation of villagers and boatmen from the Salzach, Gruber and Mohr performed the song for the first time, softly heralding the newborn Redeemer's birth, the frightened shepherds, the angelic hosts and the venerating sense of peace. The fact that it was written in German instead of Latin, made it an endearing and personal connection to the small parish. In a region still unsettled from the wake of the Napoleanic wars, the tender song spoke deeply about the desire for peace that can only come from the Son of God.
This plaque is surrounded by stones that are all that remain of the original St. Nikolai Kirche, where Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber wrote “Silent Night.”
Then, without any aid from the carol's two unassuming authors, the song's popularity began to spread – eventually across Europe and then to America . Their arrangement gained its largest audience among folk choirs in Austria , and spread to concert halls in Leipzig of Saxony in 1832. Some years later it even appeared in a new arrangement in New York City .
All of this was virtually unknown to Mohr, who gave credit throughout his life to Gruber for his arrangement, telling friends that the winter of 1818 was among the most precious of his life.
“The two of us did something for the Holy Night,” he was recorded as saying. “I transcribed the words and Franz Gruber the melodie.” 6
A plaque in the Steingasse of central Salzburg. “Silent Night, Holy Night. Joseph Mohr was born 11 Dec. 1792 in this house. The people of all the world sing his written words of 1818. In gratitude and memory from the sons of Salzburg – 24 Dec. 1968.
Neither Mohr nor Gruber made money from their enduring, classic carol. Mohr left Oberndorf one year after the song's debut, and eventually served in 10 more small parishes before his death in Wagrain, Austria, on Dec. 4, 1848. Gruber's path also took him elsewhere, as he gained more notoriety as a successful choir teacher and composer. He died in 1863 in Hallein, Austria, thinking the song was merely a “simple composition” of no major significance.
As for St. Nicholas Church, flooding of the river ultimately damaged the structure so severely it was torn down in the early part of the 1900s. But efforts began in 1924 to build a smaller memorial chapel to honor the two men and their musical gift to the world. That new chapel, next door to the Oberndorf building where Mohr lived, finally opened in August 1937. 7
Inspiring a new Joseph
The same year the new chapel opened, a new Mormon missionary had arrived in the Salzburg area. Elder Joe B. Wirthlin, then close to 20 years old, had left behind a promising college and athletic career in Salt Lake City the previous winter. His lifelong ambition to serve as a missionary was hastened by his father, Joseph L. Wirthlin, and his bishop Marion G. Romney. Recognizing how world powers were inching toward war, the father told his oldest son that now was the time to go or else the opportunity to serve could be lost.
The young Elder Wirthlin was called to the German-Austria region where his father served, and arrived in what he later described as an overwhelmed, short-handed mission. His first assignment was Salzburg , but the people were consumed with fears and worry as rumors of war clouded over them. Hitler's Third Reich sat in a threatening position just across the border. Then the work took an even tougher turn, as Elder Wirthlin's first companion was called to another district. In a faraway land, speaking a foreign language, Elder Wirthlin was left alone to his daily missionary labors for a six-week period in 1937.
“I remember those days well,” said Elder Wirthlin in a talk to college students in 1999. “I don't suppose there has been a time in my life when I felt more discouraged, more lost. The mission was a difficult one; no one seemed to have time for me or the message I brought. I wondered if there would ever be enough members in that city to make a ward.” 8
Elder Wirthlin toiled through the solitude, and when a new senior companion finally arrived, his spirits picked up. Together they did what was possible to teach the people in the dire atmosphere of the times.
Then, for Christmas Eve of 1937, they chose to take a long walk to Oberndorf to visit the Silent Night festivities. According to the dates given by Elder Wirthlin, he and his companion, Elder Staker Olson, went to the village in what would have been the inaugural Christmas Eve celebration for the new Silent Night chapel.
A stained glass image of Franz X. Gruber shines in the Silent Night Chapel. Gruber was the chorister of Oberndorf who wrote the music to “Silent Night” in 1818.
“We walked under a canopy of stars, across the smooth stillness of new-fallen snow to a humble little church where a familiar melody beckoned with its message of hope and peace.”
From that performance in a spectacular winter setting, Mohr's words and Gruber's music stirred the testimony of the young missionary. In the choir's voices both missionaries found a new source of inspiration in their callings.
“As we listened to the choir's harmony while standing in the very same church where the first rendition of this sacred song was sung, we were spiritually moved. We were filled with the true spirit of Christmas.
A stained glass image of Joseph Mohr, the priest who penned the lyrics of “Silent Night” in a poem, then asked his friend Franz Gruber to use the guitar for a musical accompaniment.
“As we left Oberndorf and walked about 15 miles to our humble lodgings in old Salzburg, we spoke of life more confidently,” Elder Wirthlin would write in a Church News article, just days before his passing. “Our goals and aspirations were clear, and we were both focused as to our direction in life.” 9
On that long walk home, the two elders spoke of things to accomplish – both in the short term as missionaries and in the distant future as priesthood holders. Most of all, they spoke of the Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. The seeds of diligence and dedication that would be the hallmark of Joseph B. Wirthlin's ministry as a father, church leader, general authority and apostle, were sown within him on a silent Christmas Eve in the Austrian Alps.
The Salzach River flows from the Bavarian Alps and around the village of Oberndorf, Austria.As he wrote, “[I]t wasn't just the hymn that had such an impact on us. It was the song's message of the ‘dawn of redeeming grace.'
“We felt closer to Him that Christmas Eve. As we savored that sense of God's love for us, we also felt an outpouring of His love toward all mankind. Even with the threat of war hanging heavily over Austria and the rest of the world, for one night, at least, ‘all [was] calm, all [was] bright.' It was truly, a ‘holy night' a Christmas that we will never forget.” 10
Speaking at Elder Wirthlin's funeral services, President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve counseled the Wirthlin family “that you make this testimony a part of your Christmas tradition. Have it printed in such a way that members of the Wirthlin family yet unborn will come to know the great man who was their grandfather and was an apostle.” 11
While Joseph Mohr's words brought him no wealth and little recognition in his lifetime, the Christmas hymn he composed with Franz Gruber changed Christmas forever. Even today, the tender melody defines the stillness of the season in hundreds of translations, for millions across the globe.
Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, who found himself spiritually invigorated by the song and its message, fulfilled his promises made that Christmas Eve. After serving an honorable mission, raising a family and numerous callings in the church, he and his wife Elisa would return to Europe as an area president in the early 1980s, helping the work progress – especially in German-speaking nations where the gospel would emerge beyond the long shadow of world war and into nations behind the Iron Curtain. To many Latter-day Saints, his life was a testimony of humility, diligence, and tireless effort for the Lord's kingdom.
In the words of President Thomas S. Monson, “He not only followed through on every assignment given him. He always went the second mile. His integrity could not be questioned.” 12
It is in the lives of men such as Father Mohr and Elder Wirthlin that the testimony of the living Christ continues to change the world. Whether through inspired songs of mortal men, or in the powerful testimonies of his prophets and apostles, the Savior's teaching stands eternal:
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be afraid.” 13
May it be so everywhere this Christmas and always.
A nativity carving in the Silent Night Chapel of Oberndorf, Austria.
Notes
1 Stille Nacht Gesellschaft (Silent Night Association), http://www.stillenacht.at/en/mohr.asp
2 Stille Nacht Gesellschaft (Silent Night Association), http://www.stillenacht.at/en/mohr.asp
3Christian History Institute, “Father Mohr's Famous Silent Night Carol”, 2007
4 Hymns, No. 204. “Silent Night”; English translation; Mohr's original text had six verses.
5 “The Story of Silent Night”, Paul Gallico; Crown Publishers, Inc. 1967
6 Quoted in Salzburg Chronik, Salzburg Museum .
7 http://www.visit-salzburg.net/surroundings/silentnightchapel.htm
8 Church Educational System fireside at BYU, Nov. 1999; “Lessons Learned in the Journey of Life,” Liahona, May 2001, 35
9 Church News, Nov. 29, 2008 ; “Silent Night, Holy night”
10Ibid. Church News.
11 Funeral services, Dec. 5, 2008 .
12 Ibid.
13 John 14:27
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