Noël! Noël!

On Christmas Eve in 1818, in the Austrian village of Obendorf, one of the most celebrated Christmas carols was written. In the church of St Nicholas, preparation for the midnight mass had been thrown into chaos with the discovery that the church organ had broken. Faced with the possibility of a silent night, the parish priest and the organist hurriedly wrote a work for the remaining instruments—guitar and voice.

The work they performed was Stille Nacht, now better known as Silent Night, which has since been translated into over three hundred languages around the world. Along with a serene performance of Stille Nacht by the Brandenburg Choir, you may hear a rare medieval hymn, a single pure soprano or the warm sound of natural trumpets and sackbuts heralding a bright and very Brandenburg beginning to Christmas.