Near Salzburg, in Oberndorf, a chaplain called Joseph Franz Mohr (1792-1849) was working, who wrote the lyrics of this song in 1816. The melody was born out of an emergency because the church’s organ in Oberndorf was broken – rendered unusable because mice had eaten some of the organ’s parts. However, the church needed music for the Christmas mass in 1818 that could be played without an organ. Thus, Mohr asked the teacher Franz Gruber (1787-1863) to set his lyrics to music. So to these lyrics, Gruber composed a song for two female voices and guitar accompaniment. By and by, this song spread over the whole world, but in the meantime also changed a lot (melody and lyrics). Even Gruber himself composed different versions later on (with organ accompaniment, for instance) that are very different from the original version. For our recording, we used the probably most original version, and we had the second guitar take on the original second voice – the alto part of the choir – in the first strophe. The most obvious change of melody is in the second last part; we used the version that is common today as a coda for comparison. Even today in Oberndorf, on Christmas Eve (December 24), “Silent night” is played for tourists from all over the world.