The Only 'Silent Nights' You Need

Our friends at The Takeaway set me an interesting task: Of the literally thousands of versions of “Silent Night” that have been recorded over the years, I was to bring in no more than five that I thought were good.  This was a tougher assignment than it might appear, and to explain why, I’m going to reprint something I wrote for Soundcheck just before Christmas, 2010. What I wrote four years ago still applies, though the question at the end now has at least a few answers, which will duly follow.

“Silent Night” is not a great Christmas song. It is a great song. Period. As another song famously says, “tis a gift to be simple,” and “Silent Night” is simple enough that it’s easy to overlook just how lovely the melody is. Nothing fancy, just a lilting 6/8 and a basic set of chords. And the words, whether you’re a believer or not, don’t get in the way; it’s a softly romanticized image of an ancient tale, or an inspired vision of the birth of the son of God, depending on your spiritual affiliation. 

I think I was well into my 30's when I first realized this.

Part of the problem, of course, is that modern Christmas is anything but silent. Once Halloween passes, it becomes hard to avoid Christmas carols and seasonal songs in malls, stores, on TV, in ads, etc. One of our favorite seasonal pastimes now is to kvetch about all the holiday music, how awful it is and how intrusive and it’s ruining Christmas and blah blah blah.

And in a way, “Silent Night” suffers not only from its ubiquity, but from the very simplicity that makes it great. Christmas is a time for gilding the lily, and it seems like everyone who records “Silent Night” has to add more stuff – more voices, more strings, a big crescendo, an even slower tempo. Unlike, say, “White Christmas,” which benefits from a splendid, definitive recording – Bing Crosby, of course – “Silent Night” has become a blank canvas on which record producers throw gobs of musical paint. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever heard a recording of the song that captures the beauty of the original. One voice, maybe two, until the “Sleep in heavenly peace” part, where you want four-part harmony, all accompanied by solo guitar. That’s how Gruber and Mohr wrote it, and how they played it in that little Austrian church in 1818.

It was only when my first daughter was young and I was working out some Christmas songs on the guitar that I found myself thinking, "Holy crap -- this is actually a great song!" (I believe I thought this silently, though I needn’t have worried: with the way my kids talk, “Holy crap” would sound like a genteel, Victorian phrase by comparison…)   

Anyway, I’m still on the lookout for a genuinely good recording of “Silent Night.” If you know of one, let me know!  

So that’s what I wrote in 2010. Now here are the versions of “Silent Night” that I shared with host John Hockenberry and The Takeaway listeners.

Sinead O'Connor

The Irish singer has had a notoriously combative relationship with her native religion (Roman Catholicism), but she clears out the texture in this recording, floating her vocals over a synth drone. Some of it may be a little mannered, but it is the No. 1 version of “Silent Night” in the U.K.

Kathleen Battle and Christopher Parkening

Every year, another group of opera singers line up to sing holiday fare – a rare opportunity to cross over to a wider audience. And very often, they find themselves bellowing over a full orchestra, and probably a full chorus as well. So much for the intimacy of “Silent Night.” (Though having said that, the Welsh bass/baritone Bryn Terfel’s recording with harpist Catrin Finch and full orchestra is pretty easy on the ears.) Soprano Kathleen Battle, though, looks back to that first performance of the song, singing with only a classical guitar for accompaniment. Of course, there are lots of flights of musical fancy along the way, but that resilient old melody bends without, I think, breaking.

Low

Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker are the husband-and-wife indie rockers behind this Minnesota band. They sing “Silent Night” in quiet harmony, accompanied by a single guitar. Yes, there’s a hint of American twang in the harmonies -- this isn’t 19th Century Austria, after all -- but the spirit of this performance is close to what I imagine that first performance might’ve felt like.

Nick Lowe

The British pub-rocker who wrote “(What’s So Funny ‘bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” and “Cruel to Be Kind” has no intention of celebrating the quiet and the stillness of a holy night. He wants to party. His “Silent Night” is a theoretically wrong but practically irresistible bit of upbeat rockabilly.

Al Green

The world’s sexiest Reverend simply cannot make a recording, not even one about a virgin birth, without giving you the impression that the lights are dimming and the (probably fake) fireplace is crackling and the wine is about to be left half-drunk in its glass… Just so we’re clear, I mean this in a good way.

There are several other notable recordings of “Silent Night” that are worth mentioning here.

Tribecastan

The wild world music purveyors of downtown Manhattan have a wild uptempo version with Central Asian and African instruments added.

Julian Koster

Perhaps most famous for his work with Neutral Milk Hotel and The Music Tapes, Koster has a version of “Silent Night” played on musical saws. Nothing but musical saws. And believe it or not, it is really lovely.

John Fahey

The late, hugely influential American acoustic guitarist did several albums of idiosyncratic arrangements of Christmas songs. They were his most popular albums, and included a semi-famous solo guitar version of “Silent Night.”

One final note about “Silent Night.” It features prominently in the improbable but true tale of the so-called “Christmas Truce” of 1914, when German and British soldiers put a decidedly unofficial pause on proceedings during World War I and shared songs, little gifts, and the odd game of soccer. The song is mentioned prominently in “Christmas In The Trenches,” by the American folk singer John McCutcheon. Check out the song; there are many accounts of the Christmas Truce that hew more closely to the facts, but few that ring as true.