A new Silent Night

A few days ago I did something I've never done before. I released a song on YouTube. There was nothing particularly fancy about the production. It was simply a home-made live take with one voice and two guitars, and I needed some help doing it (thankyou Olivia and Daniel). But it's the song itself I want to talk about in this blog. You see, writing this song was somewhat audacious, since it was a new tune for a 200-year-old classic Christmas carol.

I'd actually written this new 'Silent Night' tune years ago, but it was only recently I decided to do something with it. The reason it seems rather audacious is that (of course) Silent Night already has a perfectly good tune (and a very pretty one), a tune known and loved by millions around the world. So why write a new—and different—melody?

Part of the answer (though only part) is that the idea of writing a new Silent Night tune inspired me. As a creative person, I get lots of ideas. Some of these ideas are best expressed in poems, some in short stories, some in picture books, some in little novels, some in short plays or non-fiction articles. But other ideas are musical, and so need to find expression in musical form. That's what this idea was
—an attempt to write a new tune for Silent Night that I could love as much as Franz Gruber's 1818 original.

The new melody came quite quickly to me. After all, it was simple and fairly short. But it had to feel 'right' as a melody that would suit Silent Night. So, it's probably worth pointing out, that it therefore had to fulfil at least three requirements.

Firstly, the new tune had to exactly fit the meter of the English lyrics. (The lyrics had been originally penned by Joseph Mohr in German in 1818, but it was the most common English translation that I followed.) So my tune was in three-four time, similar to Gruber's famous three-eight tune, and the placement of my notes fit the flow of the words. Yet the internal rhythmic structure of my new tune, as well as the actual new melody, was almost entirely distinct; almost, though not quite, for the words virtually required that there be at least some slight correspondences between old and new in the internal rhythm.

Secondly, my tune had to be fresh and new; otherwise, what was the point. Thus, the chordal structure was new and had (I think) a little sense of 'journey' to it from beginning to end. Overall, too, the melody was—to my ears at least—lyrical and even lovely. It pleased me, and my hope was that it would please others too.

Thirdly, I wanted the tune to have a 'classical' feel to it. What this actually meant, I had no idea. After all, I have very little knowledge of music 'theory'. But I sort of felt, by instinct, that this melody did the job. I liked it, and it sounded sort of 'classical'. To me, the melody seemed as if it could've been written any time in the last 300 years!

Anyway, it's now over to others. Does anyone else out there in Internet-land like this simple, lyrical alternative Silent Night tune? Would anyone else like to sing it for themselves? It will be interesting to find out.

You can see the YouTube clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXWqGNFChH0 or by tracking it down via my Facebook page at facebook.com/peterfriendwriting.