#ScienceandDigitalBriefs
By Shopper Editor Dave Bunting
Silent Night, Holy Night
Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863) was born into a poor linen weaver’s family and studied violin and organ even though his father wanted him to work in the family business.
There are several variations on the story of the writing of this hymn, but they all center on the little Church of St. Nicholas in Obendorf, a village near Salzburg, Austria, on Christmas Eve, 1818—and they all recount a church organ that wouldn’t play and a priest who was determined not to let the broken organ spoil the Christmas Eve service.
In one telling of the story, a band of roving actors came to Oben-dorf with their Christmas play, which so inspired Fr. Joseph Mohr that he wrote this song.
In another telling of the story, when Fr. Mohr discovered that the organ was broken, he remembered a poem that he had written two years earlier. He took the poem to the church organist, Franz Gruber, who set it to music.
But the story most frequently told has Fr. Mohr discovering that the organ was broken. Distraught over the possibility that the Christmas Eve service might be ruined, he sat down and quickly wrote these verses—and then took them to Franz Gruber, who com-posed the music.
Fr. Mohr did write the words for this carol. Franz Gruber com-posed the music. It was first sung on Christmas Eve, 1818, in the Church of St. Nicholas in Obendorf, and the original accompani-ment was a guitar. All the stories agree on those facts.
Also note that Silent Night was written for the Church of St. Nicholas, worshipped by children as the father of Christmas, and the name Santa Claus is a childrens’ mis-pronunciation or mis-translation of the name Saint Nicholas.
Joy to the World
Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was born to Dissenting parents (people who refused to accept the authority and practices of the Church of England). As a boy, he sang hymns outside prison walls to encour-age his father, who had been arrested for his non-conformist beliefs.
Isaac showed promise as a poet at a very young age. As he grew, he became increasingly unhappy with the hymns that he sang in church each week. In those days, hymns were psalms set to music. Watts saw that the hymns thus reflected little or nothing of the New Testament, and set out to remedy that error. His hymns—at least his earlier hymns— reinterpreted the psalms in the light of the Chris-tian faith. In 1719, he published a book of hymns entitled, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament.
One of those hymns was “Joy to the World,” based loosely on Psalm 98, which says, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises” (Psalm 98:4). That psalm looks forward to the day when the Lord will come to judge the world in righteousness. In this hymn, Watts reinterpreted the psalm to rejoice in the coming of the Christ as our Lord and savior.
This hymn was sung to various tunes for many years. Then in 1839, Lowell Mason, a banker who happened to be quite interested in church music, published the tune that we now associate with “Joy to the World.” Mason borrowed liberally from classical music and acknowledged his debt to Handel’s “Messiah” for parts of this hymn tune.
Watts wrote some 600 hymns altogether, and is considered to be the father or Christian hymnody.
Rev. Watts is also the father of logic, the study of our ability to think clearly, and wrote the book “Logic” or “The Right Use of Reason in the Inquiry After Truth,” which was written and used as a grade school textbook. Logic is the foundational logic textbook in nearly all colleges and universities worldwide for 200 years and it is still in print and use today.
Above Includes excerpts from sermonwriter.com