When the song Silent Night was fix001Frst heard, at Christmas 1818 in the village church of Oberndorf, near Salzburg in Austria, no one could have dreamt of the success this Christmas carol would enjoy the world over. The village schoolteacher and organist Franz Gruber - the 150th anniversary of whose death is marked in 2013 - composed the melody for a poem by Franz Mohr shortly before Christmas. Today, Silent Night is sung in over 300 languages worldwide.