Songs of the Season #6 and #5

After one doozy of a hectic, gruelling day I'm back to pick up where we left off on my list.

I've agonized and debated over the next 2 songs as far as their respective placements in this list. Under different circumstances these 2 songs would have been much higher up - probably in the top three but - as things go this is where they stand.

I consider song #6 to be THE power ballad of Christmas carols. Musically, it is a masterpiece and very difficult to sing. My most common complaint about artists who attempt to cover the song is this: If you can't hit THE high note on the first try, don't slide into it with a series of arpeggios. It doesn't do justice to the music and it only showcases the artists' technique, not the talent. Besides, the original is always the best, so just "cover" something else.

Anwyay, back to the song - originally written in 1847 by Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure this song was intended as a Christmas poem. After realizing that such beautiful words should be set to music, he approached his friend Adolphe Charles Adams and asked him to compose one of the most haunting melodies known to man.

Translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight O Holy Night combines the quiet reverence at “stars are shining brightly,” the regret of the world “in sin and error pining,” the introspection when a “soul felt His worth,” the anticipation behind “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,” the enchantment of “for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn,” the repentance “fall on your knees,” and the worship when “Christ was born” before building to the crescendo of wonderment and exultation of “o night divine.”

This Christmas carol remains one of the most eloquent of songs that brings into focus God's eternal love for man. Once again, I am reminded of my fallenness in contrast to God's outstretched hand.

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Song #5 is another song that's very dear to me and many others worldwide. Following is one of the many versions of how this song came to life:

It was December 24, 1818, and in Oberndorf, Austria, the assistant priest went to the home of his friend, the organist of the small church. He brought the words of a poem that he had written two years earlier and asked him to write a tune to it, to use at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. The organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, reminded Fr. Joseph Mohr that the organ wasn’t working and so they would not be able to have music for the service. Fr. Mohr went in the other room and got a guitar. Gruber strummed a few chords, then started humming. He exclaimed, "The song, it sings itself." A few hours later, he had composed the tune, and the two men presented the carol for the first time that Christmas Eve.

When the organ repairman, Carl Mauracher, later heard the carol, he took a copy of it with him. He presented it to two groups of traveling singers, who then performed it in their Christmas repertoire, and thus it began its journey around the world. The Strasser and Rainer families traveled and performed all over Europe, and they sang "the Tyrolian folk carol". The Rainer family brought the carol to the United States, first performing it in German in New York City in 1839.

A publisher heard the carol sung near Innsbruck, Austria around 1832. He liked it and published it for the first time, claiming the source to be a "Tyrolian folk song." The songwriters were not known at that time, and the tune had been changed somewhat from the original.

Whatever the circumstance, the world is grateful to the two friends who gave us this simple, yet beautiful picture of the Silent Night that Christ was born.

These two songs evoke images of that one divine night when the world received, in the humblest of circumstances, our King, Lord and Savior. It is that one glorious night that changes the course the man's history and it is that one act of God and His Son that gives mankind an alternative to a deserve eternity of pain and suffering.