GRUBER Franz (G-86)

Austrian primary school teacher and church organist. The author of the music of the popular Christmas hymn Silent Night ("Silent Night"). In 1816 Gruber became organist and choirmaster of the Church of St. Nicholas, next door to his native village of Oberndorf (near Salzburg). In 1829 Gruber moved to Berndorf, and in the following years to Hallein, Salzburg, where he was appointed director of the choir, singer and organist. Together with Joseph Mohr, the Catholic priest who wrote the original German text, Gruber composed the music for the Christmas hymn "Silent Night" (Silent Night). On Christmas Eve, 1818, More, the assistant priest of St. Nicholas Church, showed Gruber a poem in six stanzas that he had written in 1816. He asked Gruber to put the poems to music. Since the church organ was faulty at that time, Gruber wrote a melody with a guitar arrangement. For the first time, the two of them performed "Silent Night" during the Christmas Mass at St. Nicholas Church, during which Mor played guitar, and the choir repeated the last two lines of each verse after him. In the following years, Gruber wrote additional hymn scores for organ and organ with orchestra, as well as a number of other works, hymns and masses that are still heard in Austrian churches.