Destination: Austria : Strains of ‘Silent Night’ Still Echo Through Salzburg Area

Few melodies are more peaceful, haunting and well-known than “Silent Night.” As a frequent visitor to this city, I know Salzburg as Mozart’s hometown and as the backdrop for “The Sound of Music.” But the region also gave birth to the popular Christmas carol--175 years ago this Christmas Eve--and I returned recently to find traces of the song and of the two men who wrote it.

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Just two days before Christmas 1818, in the hamlet of Oberndorf, in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, the organ bellows at St. Nikolas Church gave out, rotted from the frequent flooding of the Salzach River. Knowing his congregation’s love for music at midnight Mass, the young parish priest wrote a poem and asked the church organist to set it to music that the two could sing. The organist returned to his study over the schoolhouse in the neighboring village of Arnsdorf, where he gazed out the window onto the peaceful, snow-blown fields. He read the poem for a few moments and started to hum slowly, then sing: “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht . . . “--”Silent night, holy night . . . . “

A few hours before Mass, he made the three-mile trek back to the church, where the two men practiced the hymn and taught the refrain to the choir. Shortly after midnight on Christmas Eve, with organist Franz-Xaver Gruber singing bass and Father Josef Mohr singing tenor and accompanying on the guitar, the world heard the touching melody and words for the first time.

This year, many Austrian towns and villages will celebrate the anniversary and honor its composers with concerts and sing-alongs. Even beyond the holiday season, however, a self-guided “Silent Night” tour makes sense for interested travelers. Visits to sites connected with the carol offer both a realistic view of modern Austria and a strong sense of 18th-Century life.

I started my tour in Salzburg, where Josef Mohr was born out of wedlock and into poverty on Dec. 11, 1792, the son of a seamstress and a military deserter. Mohr’s birthplace and childhood home still stands at No. 9 Steingasse, a four-story tenement built over a well-preserved medieval street. Distinguished only by a small plaque, the building is nestled between the right bank of the Salzach and the 2,100-foot Kapuzinerberg (mountain) in the new city, that part of Salzburg built primarily after the 16th Century. It’s likely that young Josef escaped the poverty of his youth by climbing the narrow, stepped walkway that enters the Steingasse (stone alley) beside his house and weaves through medieval fortifications to the Capuchin friary atop the mountain. Here Josef (and today’s traveler) could look out upon the riches of Salzburg and beyond into Bavaria.

The view across to the old city on the left bank is postcard-perfect and has changed little in the past two centuries. The Hohensalzburg fortress, finished in 1681 after six centuries of construction, dominates the panorama, towering over the Baroque spires of the city.

Mohr could reach school or church in the old city each day in minutes by crossing one of many bridges to the left bank. I retraced his steps to the massive Renaissance cathedral, or Dom, where he sang and was later ordained. I crossed the river, walking past the 15th-Century town hall and the crowds in front of Mozart’s birthplace on the Getreidegasse, the most famous of Salzburg’s many narrow medieval alleys. From there, I strolled past the wafting scents of the old market (picking up a juicy Krainer sausage with sweet mustard on the way) and past the Residenz, palatial home to the ruling Catholic archbishops, into the Domplatz, or plaza, to the cathedral.

I took a few more steps and reached the adjacent cloister of St. Peter’s Church, where Mohr celebrated his first Mass. Rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries in Baroque style, the church borders ancient Christian catacombs and a cemetery where Mozart’s sister Nannerl is buried. The cloister also houses Austria’s oldest restaurant, the Peterskeller, established by Benedictine monks in 803 and frequented by Mohr.

I broke a sweat climbing from St. Peter’s up winding pathways to the top of the Monchsberg, the 400-foot-high hill that stretches from the Hohensalzburg nearly two miles along the old city. (Other options to the top include a funicular railway and an elevator.) I was rewarded with commanding views of the Alps to the south and the old and new cities and Kapuzinerberg to the east. To the north, the Salzach glimmered as it made its way downstream to Oberndorf, where Mohr moved in 1817 to serve as assistant pastor at St. Nikolas.

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Mohr traveled to his new assignment by ship, a common means of transportation in his time. Today, a highway and a local narrow-gauge railway offer less precarious transportation to the small town. I chose yet another option, renting a bike for about $10 a day at the Salzburg train station (most stations offer rentals) and following a bike path along the riverbank. It was an easy ride-- flat, shaded and auto-free--and almost every oncoming cyclist smiled and greeted me with the traditional “Gruss Gott” (literally, God greets).

In about an hour, I arrived at the Stille-Nacht-Kapelle, the small memorial chapel completed in 1937 on the site of the old church. Inside, candles flickered and fresh flowers lay before a wood-carved Nativity scene and altar. A guest book recorded visitors from around the world. Two stained-glass windows honored Gruber and Mohr. Outside, an elderly man explained that floods had forced the St. Nikolas congregation to higher ground in 1899. The church was torn down about 10 years later.

I coasted my bike down to the “new” church (built in the early 1900’s), which lay behind a brass memorial to Mohr and Gruber. Inside, I found statues and altar paintings from the old structure. The nearby town museum housed a new exhibit dedicated to the carol.

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It’s just three miles across rolling pastures to Arnsdorf, still a small farming village consisting of a church, a schoolhouse and a dozen homes. Gruber took his first teaching job in the schoolhouse in 1807, living there with the first and second of his three wives. His first joy, however, was music--he played guitar, violin and organ--and he shared his love for it every day with the young farm children.

A retired teacher guided me upstairs through the private apartment that was once Gruber’s home and now houses a museum. “We’ve tried to make it the way it was when he lived here. We even have some of the original furniture,” the old caretaker explained.

Entering the schoolmaster’s study, I stood for several moments behind his desk, looking out over the fields and watching the schoolchildren play. Sitting at this same window, Gruber must have seen a similar scene of tranquillity and joy as he first sang the melody of “Silent Night.”

Gruber left Arnsdorf in 1833 to take a position at the Dekanats Church in the larger town of Hallein (now popular with tourists for its famous salt mines) about 20 miles to the south. After returning my rental bike to the Salzburg train station, I boarded a train for the 25-minute ride.

A short walk from the station (following signs “Zum Grubergrab”--”to Gruber’s grave”) took me past tall, well-kept 17th- and 18th-Century houses. A small plaza fronted the plain house where Gruber lived and died. A brief inscription next to a relief portrait on the portal praised the man who had brought “beauty and truth” to the world through his music. In his 75 years, he had composed more than 90 sacred works. Although the church cemetery was moved, Gruber, who died in 1863 at the age of 75, still lay at peace between the house and the church in the original family plot; a wrought-iron cross marked the grave. Earlier this autumn, the town restored Gruber’s apartment and turned the home into the Gruber Museum.

On the way back to the train station, I stopped at Hallein’s Celtic Museum, which holds an early score of “Silent Night” and the guitar used during the midnight Mass. Fortified with another Krainer, I boarded the train and returned to Salzburg and an evening of exploring, eventually landing again atop the Monchsberg. As I looked over the city, the buildings of Salzburg took on the pastel glow of dusk, the bells of the city tolling in chorus.

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Franz-Xaver Gruber’s story ended in Hallein, but my tour continued to Wagrain, a small Alpine village known today for its exceptional skiing but in the 1800s for fair harvests and cruel winters. There, 30 miles south of Salzburg, Josef Mohr served as parish priest for 21 years until his death in 1848.

I traveled to Wagrain by bus, the final nine miles a steep, winding climb. At the tourist office, a woman dressed in a colorful dirndl directed me to Josef Hutter, the resident expert on Father Mohr. As I walked to Herr Hutter’s house, I stopped to look at Mohr’s grave site, which lay ringed with fresh flowers between two evergreens in the village churchyard.

Father Mohr knew the importance of education, Hutter said. He turned sermons into fiery speeches and raised funds from the gentry to build a home for the elderly and a school. Both still stand.

My host pointed to a small farmhouse high on a distant hill. Late one bitter night, just before Christmas, Father Mohr was summoned there to give last rites. While returning, the 55-year-old priest became snowbound for several hours. Though he was rescued, he soon died of a lung inflammation.

“To accomplish what he did, such a person had to grow from poverty. He knew the depths and the heights, and grew from the depths,” Herr Hutter said softly. “ ‘Silent Night’ is more than a song of religion. It is a song of peace. Not just peace between countries, but the kind of peace that only we can give to each other.”

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According to most accounts, “Silent Night” passed to the world thanks to the organ builder who came to repair St. Nikolas’ instrument. He learned the carol and carried it back to his home village of Fugen, not far from Innsbruck, nearly 200 miles away. The following Christmas, it was performed by two family singing groups. One of them brought the song to America as a “Tirolean folk song,” performing in New York on Dec. 24, 1839. It wasn’t until 1854, six years after Mohr’s death, that the two composers received credit.

GUIDEBOOK

Austrian Nights

Getting there: Lufthansa flies nonstop from LAX to Munich, Germany; American flies direct, stopping in Chicago; United, Delta and Northwest have connecting service. Current lowest round-trip fare, with restrictions, is about $770. Easiest route from Munich to Salzburg (63 miles) is probably via ground transportation. Take the train (75 minutes) or, with advance reservations, a van directly from the airport to Salzburg.

For more information: For assistance with lodging and transportation within the country, contact the Austrian National Tourist Office, 11601 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 2480, Los Angeles 90025; telephone (310) 477-3332.