“A work of utter genius” —Trina Trotter Nussbaum

In the summer of 1914, the powers of Europe went to war, each confident that it would be over by Christmas. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The conflict we now know as World War I quickly reached a stalemate as the death toll rose by the thousands each day. By late autumn, soldiers on the Western Front had settled into life in filthy, muddy trenches blanketed by artillery fire, resigned to the fact that they wouldn’t see their loved ones at Christmas after all.

But as Christmas approached, the temperatures got colder. The constant soaking rain turned to a light dusting of snow, and the mud became hard ground. Morale was boosted as soldiers received Christmas care packages. German troops erected Christmas trees beside their trenches, and Christmas carols could be heard during lulls in the cannon fire. On Christmas Eve, some low-ranking officers ordered their men not to fire unless fired upon, and a tenuous truce began to take hold. On Christmas Day, German, British, and French soldiers stepped out of their trenches unarmed and met in no-man’s-land, where they socialized and exchanged some of the gifts they’d received from home. They played football and buried the bodies of their slain comrades. In a rare moment of humanity amid an inhuman war, the men from both sides focused on their commonalities instead of their differences.

These episodes played out similarly in many regions of the front. Multiple accounts concur that the Germans were the first to venture out of the trenches, and many specifically mention that “Stille Nacht” was sung, a song that is today one of the most beloved Christmas carols in both the German-speaking and English-speaking worlds. That is the inspiration for this arrangement for double male choir, with one choir singing in German and the other in English.