Silent Night
Franz Gruber, arranged by Jonathan Rathbone
Ensemble Altera
directed by Christopher Lowrey
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The melody of Stille Nacht (Silent Night) was long considered so elegantly beautiful that it was spuriously attributed to Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. In fact it was composed by Franz Gruber, a schoolmaster and organist in Arnsdorf, Austria. Gruber was commissioned by the priest Joseph Mohr - who wrote the text as a meditation in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars - to devise a melody with guitar accompaniment when the organ at St Nicholas Church, Obendorf was destroyed by flooding. Over the years, the piece was translated into many languages and had become so beloved that by the time of the Christmas Eve truce on the battlefield of World War I, one could hear it being sung by soldiers in German, English, and French.
This stunning arrangement of the piece was written by Jonathan Rathbone, a former tenor (check out the tenor solo by our very own Andrew Brown) in the Swingle Singers, who arranged much of their music and continues today as a prolific composer, conductor, and all-around advocate of choral music.