Imagine the panic that occurred on Christmas Eve of 1818 at St. Nicholas Church in Obendorf, Austria, a rural town 11 miles from historic Salzburg. The church hugged the banks of the Salzach River, and the dampness had rusted parts of the church`s organ, rendering it unplayable on the eve of the most festive religious holiday of the year.
Father Joseph Mohr, assistant pastor at the church, sprang into action. He feverishly penned a six-stanza poem, beginning with the words Stille nacht, heilige nacht, and then brought the verses to Franz Gruber, a schoolteacher who moonlighted as the church`s organist. Within hours Gruber devised a melody arranged for two solo voices, a chorus and guitar. Thus, the parishioners of St. Nicholas were spared from a musically silent Christmas Eve service.
The carol might have sunk into obscurity, as many have through the centuries, if not for a turn of serendipity that spread it far and wide. In the spring of the new year, an organ repairman named Karl Mauracher from Zillerthal came to Obendorf to fix the broken instrument. He learned of the song and took a copy of it home with him. Two traveling singing families, the Strassers and the Rainers, brought the song to more distant locales. The Strassers sang it at the Leipzig Fair in 1831 and in a performance before the king of Prussia in 1834, while the Rainers brought it all the way to New York City in 1839.
Ten years later, an English version, ”Silent Night,” was published. Another English version by John Freeman Young, an Episcopal minister, was written in 1863. The latter took hold and never has been surpassed. It is the simple, soothing carol much known and loved today. Indeed, it is probably the most popular Christmas carol in the world.
The beloved traditions of Christmas, especially familiar carols, lend a sense of continuity to life. They are a comfortable, peaceful presence in a world seemingly gone mad.
William E. Studwell, professor and principal cataloger of the Northern Illinois University Libraries, regards Christmas carols as even more than that. He says they may be the ”most culturally influential group of enduring songs” in Western society.
”How many carols can you rattle off?” Studwell asks. ”Fifty or maybe 100? And that`s not a very big body of songs. The average person knows many, many songs. These 50 or 100 songs are with us for one solid month a year. We`re saturated. We can`t escape them. People who aren`t Christian or have no interest in Christmas, they hear them whether they want to or not.
”So a small body of songs has a great impact. Other songs, except for a few national songs and maybe a few religious songs don`t have that much impact on us. And carols are international, while patriotic music isn`t. Carols are a familiar thing, and they`re not esoteric. No matter what your education or your station in life, carols affect you significantly.”
Studwell`s interest in Christmas carols came about accidentally in the early 1970s when he sought to do his part to support his wife`s family`s wish for everyone to exchange homemade Christmas gifts. Studwell, who says he`s not adept at much except writing, wrote some little booklets about Christmas carols for his relatives. A few years later he began expanding them into articles for professional journals and magazines, and now he is a recognized expert on the Christmas carol.
His book ”Christmas Carols: A Reference Guide” was published in 1985 by Garland Publishing, and his New York agent has been circulating a new book of essays, ”The Christmas Carol Reader,” along with two similar readers that Studwell has written on popular songs and international songs.
It is not surprising that Studwell`s interest was piqued, for the history of Christmas carols and the stories behind many of the songs are fascinating. According to Studwell, the earliest Christmas carol of consequence was the Latin hymn ”Veni, Redemptor Gentium” (”Savior of the Nations, Come”), which was probably written by St. Ambrose in the 4th Century. For the next 10 centuries, relatively few Christmas songs were written, and most are obscure, with some exceptions, notably ”Veni, Emmanuel” (”O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”). Both the lyrics and the melody for that song may have been written in the 12th Century, but Studwell says the words and music were not brought together until the 19th Century.
As the medieval era began to fade, carols in the native language of the people began to appear, and the vernacular eventually replaced Latin and Greek in carols. ”Folk carols were mostly dance carols,” Studwell notes. ”They were a popular recreation at Christmas time. For example, `God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen` and `Coventry Carol` both were dance carols. It was a reaction to the overemphasis on religion in the Middle Ages. The carols became more secular, just as literature did in the Renaissance. Rather than chants in Greek and Latin that the people didn`t understand, this was something they could have fun with and yet still was related to Christmas.”
Studwell calls the 16th Century the ”golden age” of the Christmas carol because so many lasting songs were written then, including ”The First Noel,” ”Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” and possibly ”O Tannenbaum” (”O Christmas Tree”).
Many people think of ”The First Noel” as a French carol, because noel is French for ”carol.” But Studwell says that the correct spelling is
”nowell,” probably derived from the French word nouvelle, which means
”new.” He points out that ”nowell” was an English word used by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th Century and that there`s ”good evidence” the song was created in England`s West Country, near the Welsh border, a region that spawned many carols.
The 17th and 18th Centuries were less productive in terms of Christmas carols, being a conservative era when the English Puritans even banned carols for several years. However, quite a few well-known carols were written during this period, including ”Wassail Song,” ”The Twelve Days of Christmas” and ”The Holly and the Ivy” from England and ”Adeste Fideles” (”O Come, All Ye Faithful”) and ”Angels We Have Heard on High” from France.
When the words and music for ”Away in a Manger” were first published in 1887, the sheet music was printed with the notation ”Luther`s Cradle Hymn”
(composed by Martin Luther for his children and still sung by German mothers to their little ones). According to Studwell, it took nearly 60 years to disprove the myth that the song`s author was the leader of the Protestant Reformation.
Though Luther wrote several hymns, notably ”A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” he did not write ”Away in a Manger.” Its authorship has not been pinned down, though there is the possibility that the lullaby was associated with the German Lutheran community of Pennsylvania. The melody probably was composed by the American James Ramsey Murray.
For the most part, Studwell says, Christmas carols are the ”domain of the obscure.” Most carols are either anonymous folk or mainstream songs. Many Christmas carols have confusing origins, with composite authorship-the words and music written separately by different people, often with great gaps of time in between. Some songs have more than one melody as well.
”Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” for example, is the product of at least five people. It was one of thousands of poems written by Charles Wesley, an influential English preacher and co-founder of Methodism. After its first publication in a 1739 hymn collection, two more poet-preachers revised the words, and two musicians tried their hand at finding a melody for the hymn until some relatively unknown music from the classic master Felix Mendelssohn was adapted for it by William Hayman Cummings.
”These things (tend to) come in parts,” Studwell says. ”Sometimes a song will develop and not be very popular. It could be an anonymous song or a folk song. And then somebody comes along and turns it into a great song by changing the harmonies or the key or a few notes. `The First Noel` is a good example. When it first was published, the first four bars of the refrain were totally different, and it wasn`t a terribly popular carol.”
A new zeal for celebrating Christmas burst forth during the 19th Century, fostered in part by the landmark writings of Clement Moore in America and Charles Dickens in England. Moore`s ” `Twas the Night Before Christmas,”
which in 1822 created the modern myth of Santa Claus, and Dickens` classic ”A Christmas Carol,” published in 1843, are works that still support a nostalgic fantasy of Christmas for many of us.
The Christmas carol featured in the Dickens novel was, in fact, the bouncy yet religious ”God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” which Studwell says may have been composed in the 16th Century but was not published until two centuries later.
In addition to ”Silent Night,” other Christmas songs written in the 19th Century were ”O, Holy Night,” from France; and ”It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” ”We Three Kings of Orient Are,” ”O Little Town of Bethlehem” and ”Jingle Bells,” from America.
The story of ”It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” which Studwell calls
”the first great American Christmas carol,” sounds like something out of a movie. It was written on a cold and snowy December day in 1849 in Massachusetts by the elderly Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears as he kept warm before a blazing fireplace. The music was arranged and rearranged later.
”We Three Kings of Orient Are,” the best-known carol about the Wise Men, was written by the Pittsburgh-born John Henry Hopkins Jr., a journalist, clergyman and designer of stained-glass windows. Hopkins, a bachelor, wrote both the words and music in 1857 as a special Christmas gift for his young nieces and nephews. The song was a big hit at the annual family gathering at the Vermont home of his father, an Episcopal bishop. Eventually it spread far beyond the Hopkins family circle. Despite being criticized for inferior lyrics and biblical inaccuracy, it remains a perennial favorite.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing stories is the one behind the sensitive carol ”O Little Town of Bethlehem.” The words were written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal clergyman from Boston.
Inspired by a trip to the Holy Land, Brooks reportedly wrote the carol to be sung by Sunday school children at his church and then asked a friend-Lewis H. Redner, a real estate broker and the church`s organist-to supply the music. Redner worked on the song but still had not come up with a successful melody by the time he went to bed the night before the Christmas program.
During the night, the story goes, he awoke with ”an angel strain”
filling his ears and immediately wrote down the melody that he called ”a gift from heaven.” The following morning he added the harmony, and a Christmas classic was born.
Sometimes a Christmas song is more than a Christmas song. That is the case with the haunting ”I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” The words were written on Christmas Day 1863 by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in response to the bloodshed of the Civil War, in which his son was severely wounded. It was not until the next decade that the pacifist poem was set to bell-like music by the English composer John Baptiste Calkin.
Another Christmas song was created in the midst of World War II. The nostalgic ”I`ll Be Home for Christmas,” written in 1943, is probably the best-known work of the poet James Kimball (Kim) Gannon and the musician Walter Kent, both New Yorkers.
Bing Crosby recorded this song as well as the song ”White Christmas,”
written by Irving Berlin, which debuted in the 1942 movie ”Holiday Inn.”
Crosby starred in the film along with Fred Astaire. The song then became so popular that it spurred the 1954 technicolor movie ”White Christmas,” also featuring Crosby.
Two other popular Christmas songs emerged from movies-”Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 movie ”Meet Me in St. Louis,” and
”Silver Bells,” composed by Jay Livingstone and Ray Evans and sung by Bob Hope in the 1951 holiday film ”The Lemon Drop Kid.”
A spate of lasting Christmas songs were written in the 1940s and very early 1950s, including ”The Little Drummer Boy” (1941), ”Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (1945), ”The Christmas Song,” or ”Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” (1946), ”Sleigh Ride” (1950) and ”It`s Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas” (1951).
The year 1949 marked the debut of ”Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” a very successful novelty carol and the first important new Christmas character since Clement Moore invented Santa Claus, Studwell says.
It was written by Johnny Marks, but the character actually was created in 1939 by Marks` brother-in-law, Robert L. May, who wrote the story of Rudolph as part of an advertising promotion for Montgomery Ward stores. May published the story of Rudolph in book form in 1947. Marks then adapted it into lyrics, added music and got movie cowboy Gene Autry to record it.
Other novelty songs with characters followed in the postwar period, among them ”Frosty the Snowman” (1950), ”Suzy Snowflake” (1951) and, of course, ”The Chipmunk Song” (1958) with its gimmicky speeded-up recording to simulate the squeaky voices of chipmunks.
Needless to say, religious Christmas songs have been a rarity in the 20th Century, especially in America. ”Virtually every carol that had an effect in the 20th Century was a popular carol or semipopular,” Studwell says. ”Only three or four carols with any religious content were written and none for the last 25 or 30 years, with the exception of `Do You Hear What I Hear?` in 1962. ”To some extent it`s because music has changed. The rock `n` roll era came in and dominated not just the United States but the popular culture of most of the world, including Asia. That started in 1953, about the time carols diminished.
”A few rock carols come to mind. `Rockin` Around the Christmas Tree` is tolerable, and `Jingle Bell Rock` was written in 1957, a hundred years after
`Jingle Bells` and not by accident, I don`t think. It was written by some public-relations people.”
”Jingle Bells” was created by Boston native James S. Pierpont for a children`s Sunday school Christmas program. Studwell calls it the ”first secular carol of any consequence” in the United States, though he allows that ”Up on the Housetop” could have preceded it. He believes ”Jingle Bells”
is the most popular American secular carol today.
Studwell`s own favorite Christmas carol, however, is ”God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” Why?
”The tune is excellent,” he says. ”It`s lively, and it has a sense of mystery to it. It`s a religious carol after the first line, but it`s not preaching any sermons but celebrating Christmas in a nice way. It`s just quaint enough to be delightful. It gives you the old-fashioned feeling (as if) you`re back in the 16th Century when Christmas was a little more fun.”
