Leise rieselt der Schnee

Instrumental version for guitar and cello

Leise rieselt der Schnee (which translates as "softly falls the snow") is one of the most famous Christmas songs in the German language. It was composed in 1895 in Graudenz by the Protestant pastor Eduard Ebel (1839–1905) and published under the title Weihnachtsgruß ("Christmas greeting") in his volume Gesammelte Gedichte. The composition of the melody is also often attributed to Ebel, but this statement is uncertain and apparently unsupported, especially since Ebel's own publication contains only the text.[1] According to other sources, the melody is a folk tune,[2] which Ebel himself possibly adopted for his song.[3] Other sources again suggest that the melody is based on a musette (1792) by Daniel Gottlob Türk (1750–1813);[4] however, the similarity of the melodies only applies to the first one and a half bars.

  1. ^ Eduard Ebel: Gesammelte Gedichte. Gaebel, s. l. [Graudenz] 1895, p. 86.
  2. ^ Walter Hansen: Advents- und Weihnachtslieder. Mosaik, München 1979, ISBN 3-570-07253-3, S. 74.
  3. ^ Christa Holtei, Tilman Michalski: Das große Familienbuch der Weihnachtslieder. Sauerländer, Düsseldorf 2008, ISBN 978-3-7941-7629-8, S. 36 f.
  4. ^ Roland Burmeister: Die Musikstellen bei Arno Schmidt: chronologisches Stellenverzeichnis zum Gesamtwerk von Arno Schmidt mit Erläuterungen & Kommentaren. Häusser, Darmstadt 1991, ISBN 3-927902-57-8, S. 623 ([1], p. 623, at Google Books)