Christmas carol, sheet music with note names
Silent Night: notes, key and chords
Silent Night in B♭ major, 6/8: all 46 notes with letter names, chords, range B♭3 to E♭5, public-domain words and a note-name worksheet. Free printable PDF.
Two kinds of page: the tune with a letter name under every note, and a worksheet with the names left blank.
Download the PDF kit
Free to print and share. No sign-up, no e-mail, no watermark. A4 for most of the world, Letter for the US and Canada; both are black and white, with the fonts embedded.
Quick answer
The tune of "Silent Night" is 46 notes long in 12 bars of 6/8, in B♭ major, with a range of B♭3 to E♭5 (17 semitones). It begins on F4, the 5th note of the scale, and finishes on B♭3, the home note. Below: the melody with a letter name under every note, a version you can play, the chords of the 1920 hymnal setting, the words (English and German) and the checks that were run.
Silent Night at a glance
- Key
- B♭ major (two flats)
- Time signature
- 6/8: two beats to the bar, each beat a dotted quarter note
- Range
- B♭3 to E♭5, 17 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 46 notes, 12 bars
- First note
- F4 (scale degree 5)
- Last note
- B♭3 (scale degree 1)
- Words
- Joseph Mohr, written in 1816
- Music
- Franz Xaver Gruber, 1818
- English words
- John Freeman Young, 1859 (the usual three verses); the 1920 hymnal prints other words from verse 2 on, by Jane Montgomery Campbell
- Why it is free to use
- Mohr died in 1848 and Gruber in 1863; the English words are from 1859 and the hymnal edition is a US government book of 1920
- Level
- Harder: wider than a major sixth (17 semitones); wider than an octave; sixteenth notes; a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
- Tempo
- about dotted quarter note = 52 when played at normal speed
Press a note on the staff to hear it. The sound is made in your browser from the notes of this page (a plain synthesiser, not a recording).
Silent Night
B♭ major · 6/8 · melody with note names
Key B♭ major (two flats: B♭, E♭) Range B♭3 to E♭5 Words Joseph Mohr (poem written 1816; English: John Freeman Young 1859, Jane Montgomery Campbell) Music Franz Xaver Gruber, 1818
Scale of B♭ major B♭ C D E♭ F G A I B♭: B♭ D F IV E♭: E♭ G B♭ V F: F A C
Melody: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 37, as transcribed on Wikisource (public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikisource page revision 11525747 of 2021-07-23), checked note by note against 2 other editions. Chord symbols are worked out from the four voices of that edition. Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/silent-night-notes
Silent Night: name the notes
B♭ major · 6/8 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are flat: B♭, E♭. The last note of a tune is usually the home note, B♭.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a B♭, the home note of the key.
Melody: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 37, as transcribed on Wikisource (public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/silent-night-notes
The notes of Silent Night, bar by bar
46 notes in 12 bars, in B♭ major. Letter names, the do-re-mi syllables (movable do: do is B♭) and the chord symbols of the setting, where there are any. “held” means a tied note that is not played again.
| Bar | Notes | do re mi | Chords | Chord function |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | F G F D | sol la sol mi | B♭ | I |
| 2 | F G F D | sol la sol mi | ||
| 3 | C C A (held) | re re ti (held) | F7 F | V7 V |
| 4 | B♭ B♭ F | do do sol | B♭ | I |
| 5 | G G B♭ A G | la la do ti la | E♭ | IV |
| 6 | F G F D rest | sol la sol mi (rest) | B♭ | I |
| 7 | G G B♭ A G | la la do ti la | E♭ | IV |
| 8 | F G F D rest | sol la sol mi (rest) | B♭ | I |
| 9 | C (held) C E♭ C A | re (held) re fa re ti | F7 | V7 |
| 10 | B♭ D rest | do mi (rest) | B♭ | I |
| 11 | B♭ F D F E♭ C | do sol mi sol fa re | ||
| 12 | B♭ (held) | do (held) |
Chord symbols: worked out by a program from the four voices of the hymnal setting (the chord that best fits all the notes sounding at the start of each beat; passing notes can hide a chord change). Checked against the four voices of Mutopia Project, "Stille Nacht (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop): the two agree on the root and the major or minor quality of the chord at 24 of 24 beats in common.
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 45 moves from one note to the next, counted.
Which note lengths it uses
Every note counted by its length, as a fraction of a whole note.
Most-used note: F4 (11 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 2. Different pitches: 11, made from 7 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 10 semitones.
The words of Silent Night
English: John Freeman Young's version
Verse 1
Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and child!
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Verse 2
Silent night! Holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight!
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Saviour is born!
Christ the Saviour is born!
Verse 3
Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!
Source: Wikipedia, "Silent Night", section Lyrics; words in the public domain; page text CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 1356661611 of 2026-05-29. This is the translation by John Freeman Young (1859) as Wikipedia quotes it from his book Great Hymns of the Church (1887). The Army and Navy Hymnal of 1920 prints different words from the second verse on (verses 2 to 5 are by Jane Montgomery Campbell).
German: Joseph Mohr's original
Verse 1
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Verse 2
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Halleluja,
Tönt es laut von fern und nah
Christ, der Retter ist da!
Christ, der Retter ist da!
Verse 3
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb' aus deinem göttlichen Mund,
Da uns schlägt die rettende Stund'.
Christ, in deiner Geburt!
Christ, in deiner Geburt!
Source: Wikipedia, "Silent Night", section Lyrics; words in the public domain; page text CC BY-SA 4.0; revision 1356661611 of 2026-05-29. Mohr wrote the poem in 1816. This is the text of the Evangelisches Gesangbuch (no. 46) as quoted in Wikipedia; the original had six verses.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 37, as transcribed on Wikisource (public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikisource page revision 11525747 of 2021-07-23). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the editions below, which were typeset and encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s 46 notes that are found there, whatever key the other edition is in.
| Edition | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mutopia Project, "Stille Nacht (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop)Mutopia-2008/02/19-1295 | Public Domain | 46 | 100% | 91% |
| Wikipedia, "Silent Night" (score 3 in the article)revision 1356661611 of 2026-05-29; in another key, compared after moving it by 4 semitones | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 46 | 100% | 96% |
The rhythm column is lower than the pitch column because editions write the same long notes in different ways (a half note and a tied pair, a held last note) and because performance MIDI files shorten or lengthen notes. Pitch is the part that matters for the letter names.
Silent Night: questions people ask
What key is Silent Night in?
In the setting used on this page, the 1920 Army and Navy Hymnal, it is in B♭ major (two flats) and in 6/8. Wikipedia prints the tune in D major, and the first edition it shows is also in D major, with a more dance-like rhythm. The notes keep the same shape in every key; only the starting note moves.
What are the notes of Silent Night?
The first phrase, "Silent night, holy night", is F G F D F G. The whole tune uses 7 note names (F G D C A B♭ E♭), some of them in two octaves, which makes 11 different pitches. Every note, with its letter name, is on the printable sheet above.
How do I count the time signature of Silent Night?
6/8 has six eighth notes in a bar, grouped as two beats of three. Count "1 2 3, 4 5 6" with the stress on 1 and 4. The long-short figure of "Si-lent" is a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note; it appears 9 times in this edition, and the first-edition score in Wikipedia has the same figure. Play the sound above at slow speed and tap the two main beats.
How high and low does Silent Night go, and can I sing it?
The range is B♭3 to E♭5, 17 semitones; 48.8% of the first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus have a smaller range and 29.6% a larger one. It is wider than the typical range of soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass lines (by 1 to 5 semitones), so the key is chosen to suit the singer. It is a wide tune for a carol: over an octave and a fourth.
Which version of the Silent Night melody is this?
Wikipedia says that in the 1840s the melody changed slightly into the version that is commonly played today. This page uses the setting from The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), checked note by note against a second typeset edition (Mutopia Project) and against the "contemporary" score in Wikipedia's article; all three have the same notes. Where they differ, it is only in how the long notes are written.
Can I print and share the Silent Night sheet music?
Yes. The tune is by Franz Xaver Gruber (died 1863) and the words by Joseph Mohr (died 1848); the English words are from 1859 and the edition is a 1920 US government book, so nothing here needs a licence. The sheet is made by this site and may be printed and shared. Modern arrangements, recordings and newer translations have their own rights, so do not copy them from other sources.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
Silent Night in real music: the numbers
In B♭ major the tune uses 7 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, all of them inside the key. It moves by step 19 times out of 45, and ends on the home note, as 75% of major-key art songs do.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | F4 (degree 5) | 41.7% start on degree 5 |
| Last note | B♭3 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 17 semitones (B♭3 to E♭5) | 49% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 30% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the carol numbers are counted on the melody printed above.
How common B♭ major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in B♭ major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 4.8% | 10 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 4.8% | 8 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 6.1% | 6 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 5.2% | 11 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 8.3% | 5 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 6.4% | 5 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for B♭ major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (B♭3 to E♭5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | wider than this range by 3 semitones |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | wider than this range by 5 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | wider than this range by 4 semitones |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | wider than this range by 1 semitone |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | wider than this range by 2 semitones |
Typical range = the median across song lines of the lowest and highest notes (ignoring one stray note each side), from 285 vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus. "Fits" means both ends of the tune are inside it.
Method
- The carol's own numbers are counted by a script on the decoded melody (tied notes counted once, rests ignored).
- Art-song numbers are read from the files behind the site's statistics pages (OpenScore Lieder Corpus: key and scale-degree counts for the first vocal line of every piece, vocal ranges of 1,458 lines).
- Key counts for Mutopia and MusicBrainz come from the same published statistics; a key is counted from its key signature.
Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).
Background
Excerpts from open reference works, reproduced as published (references, images and tables removed). Every excerpt names its source, licence and original article.
History of "Silent Night"
Overview
"Silent Night" ("Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht") is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011. The song was first recorded in 1905 and has remained a popular success, appearing in films and multiple successful recordings, as well as being quoted in other musical compositions. It is one of the most recorded Christmas songs, with more than 137,000 known recordings.
Creation
Father Joseph Mohr, a young Catholic priest, had come to Oberndorf in 1817. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, he had written the poem "Stille Nacht" in 1816 at Mariapfarr, the home town of his father in the Salzburg Lungau region, where Joseph had worked as an assistant priest.
The melody was composed by Franz Xaver Gruber, schoolmaster and organist in the nearby village of Arnsdorf, now part of Lamprechtshausen. On Christmas Eve, 1818, Mohr brought the words to Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and guitar accompaniment for that night's mass, after river flooding had possibly damaged the church organ. The church was eventually destroyed by repeated flooding and replaced with the Silent-Night-Chapel.
"Stille Nacht" was first performed on Christmas Eve, 1818, at the Nikolauskirche, the parish church of Oberndorf, a village in the Austrian Empire on the Salzach river in present-day Austria.
Subsequent history
According to Gruber, Karl Mauracher, an organ builder who serviced the instrument at the Oberndorf church, was enamoured of the song, and took the composition home with him to the Zillertal. From there, two travelling families of folk singers, the Strassers and the Rainers, included the tune in their shows. The Rainers were already singing it around Christmas 1819, and they once performed it for an audience that included Franz I of Austria and Alexander I of Russia, as well as making the first performance of the song in the U.S., in New York City in 1839. By the 1840s the song was well known in Lower Saxony and was reported to be a favourite of Frederick William IV of Prussia. During this period, the melody changed slightly to become the version that is commonly played today.
Source: Wikipedia, “Silent Night” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-05-29.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 37, as transcribed on Wikisource, Mutopia Project, "Stille Nacht (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop), Wikipedia, "Silent Night" (score 3 in the article).