SILENT NIGHT - chords, tab and comments

At the bottom you'll find a link to the complete lyrics.

This is the world's most common Christmas carol, and this year (2018) it celebrates 200 year's anniversary. In 1814 the austrian pastor Joseph Franz Mohr (1792-1848) wrote the poem, and when he 2 years later needed a new carol for the Christmas Eve midnight mass, he visited his friend Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863) for help: besides being a teacher, he was the church's choir master and organist. He composed the "Stille Nacht" melody for Mohr in just a few hours on that December 24th, 1818.
A curiosity is that it was composed for guitar: the organ of the church had lately been destroyed by a flood.
The carol was then more or less forgotten, but in 1863 the Episcopal priest John Freeman Young (1820-1885) translated, or rather rewrote, 3 of the original 6 verses into english, and it gradually rose to fame. Now it's translated into more than 140 languages ... Bing Crosby's 1935 version is the third best-selling single ever.

The song has now and then been attributed to famous composers like Bach, Hayden and Mozart, but in 1995 a manuscript from 1820 was found, with Mohr's handwriting stating that Gruber really wrote it. The notes have slightly been changed for the two last lines, and they were originally repeated. It became "intangible cultural heritage" by UNESCO in 2011. In Austria commercial use of the carol is forbidden, and it is never played until Christmas Eve.

E
silent night  holy night
B       B7  E         E7
all is calm all  is bright
A         F#m7    E           E7
round yon virgin mother and child
A    F#m7       E
holy infant so tender and mild
B         B7      E C#m
sleep in heavenly peace
E         B7sus4   E
sleep in heavenly peace