Photo by Annie Spratt via Unsplash
This holiday season, as we contend with the grim persistence of war in the Ukraine and the Middle East, holiday songs with a message of peace and goodwill seem especially fitting. Many of these songs of peace were themselves written in times of war, looking forward to a day when the violence would finally end.
Franz Xaver Gruber, “Silent Night” (“Stille Nacht”)
Joseph Mohr, a young Catholic priest, wrote the poem “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” (“Silent Night, Holy Night”) in 1816, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, which had devastated his native Austria. A climate event later attributed to volcanic ash that drifted over from Indonesia had also caused widespread famine. The words of “Stille Nacht” describe the serene night of Christ’s birth, bearing no trace of these traumatic events. Two years later, Mohr had joined St Nicholas parish in the hamlet of Oberndorf, Austria, where he approached Franz Xaver Gruber, a local composer and schoolteacher, about setting his poetry to music for the Christmas service. Legend has it that the church organ had been damaged by mice or water, so Gruber wrote the accompaniment for guitar instead. Since the two men first performed the piece on Christmas Eve 1818, “Silent Night” has been translated into hundreds of languages and has become one of the world’s most popular Christmas carols.
Handel, Messiah: For Unto Us a Child Is Born
While originally premiered to coincide with Easter, Handel’s oratorio Messiah has become an enduring Christmastime favorite. Handel wrote the music in a three-week burst of activity in the fall of 1741, reworking the music from an Italian duet “Nò, di voi non vo’ fidarmi,” (“No, I will never trust you”) he had written a few months earlier. Drawn from Isaiah 9:5, the text of “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” prophecies the return of the Messiah, who will bring about the end of all war. Handel embellishes the word “born” with brilliant melodic flourishes, bringing the music to a swell on the line: “And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
J.S. Bach, Christmas Oratorio
Bach’s massive Christmas Oratorio (1734) was composed in six parts, one for each of the major feast days of Christmas, culminating in the feast day of Epiphany (January 6), which celebrates the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child.
Complete with trumpets, timpani, and a full chorus, Part Six opens in magnificent lines of cascading counterpoint. The text intones a prayer that even when waging profound spiritual battles against Sin and Death, we can rely on the strength of God to see us through.
John Baptiste Calkin, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” paired an existing 1848 tune by John Baptiste Calkin with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Christmas Bells,” written in 1863 at the height of the Civil War. As the narrator hears bells tolling on Christmas morning, he contemplates the irony of hearing “the song of peace on earth, goodwill to men” in a time of war. When Longfellow was writing this poetry, he was still mourning his wife, who had died in a fire two years prior, and just months before, his eldest son ran away to join the Union Army without his permission and was gravely wounded in the Battle of Mine Run. Many of the verses that reference the Civil War are simply left out of modern recordings of the song, including these evocative lines: “It was as if an earthquake rent the hearth-stones of a continent, and made forlorn the households born of peace on earth, goodwill to men.” In the end, the refrain “peace on Earth, goodwill to men”—a reference to the passage describing the birth of Christ in the Gospel of Luke—triumphs over the brutality of war.
Nurit Hirsch, “Oseh Shalom”
Written by Nurit Hirsch in 1969 in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, “Oseh Shalom” borrows stylistically from contemporary music as well as klezmer. Drawn from the Kaddish prayer in the Jewish liturgy, which is said both in the context of prayer services and also on occasions of mourning, the text expresses the simple hope that there may be peace for Israel and all the peoples of the world. Hirsch performed “Oseh Shalom” as part of a benefit concert during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, in the hope that peace would soon return to the Middle East. Fifty years later, as we mourn the bloodshed and the humanitarian crisis in the ongoing Israel-Hamas War, the message of “Oseh Shalom” has never been more relevant.
Haydn, Mass in a Time of War
Haydn wrote Missa in tempore belli (Mass in a Time of War) at Eisenstadt in August 1796 as Austria was on the brink of war with France. Napoleon was winning battle after battle in Italy, and Austria was suddenly facing a war for which it was ill-equipped.
The stunning “Agnus Dei” is a remarkable movement in this Mass, as the Catholic prayer for the Lord’s mercy and peace is juxtaposed with the beat of military drums echoing in the background, as if sounding the approach of the enemy. The dramatic effect of this timpani solo earned this Mass the nickname Paukenmesse or “Timpani Mass,” and was later imitated by Beethoven in the Agnus Dei of his Missa Solemnis. The music soon erupts in trumpet fanfares, insisting upon the final words of the prayer, which occupy no less than half the length of the movement: “dona nobis pacem” (“grant us peace”).
Jill Jackson Miller and Sy Miller, “Let There be Peace on Earth and Let it Begin with Me”
Written in 1955 by husband-and-wife team Jill Jackson Miller and Seymour “Sy” Miller, this holiday tune offers a simple message of peace: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” Sung everywhere from local schools to the White House and the United Nations, it has become a modern classic, renewing the hope that just one person’s actions can change things for the better.
