I tried to find this on the web–but two sites Ask Jeeves led me to, appeared “blank” in the Ask Jeeves frame while the status bar on the screen said “Done.”
I had a French teacher in high school who sang the lyrics in French, and I have them. I’d like to find them in German too. Thanks very much. 
I’ve never heard this song but I found one google hit that seems to be right. Here it is:
http://forum.fuerstenwalde.de/index.php3?eintrag=220
Danke!
I’ve been searching, and from the miniscule bit of German I’ve managed to absorb, think I may have had some success. O JESULEIN ZART? from this site. I also found a German translation of “Lo How a Rose Er Blooming”. I love that song, it’s hauntingly simple and I love to sing it or listen to it if it’s performed well. Is this story about the carol true? This page has a midi of the song, and a Japanese translation. If the song I presented is the incorrect one, you might try this site, I didn’t want to download the language file, and can’t read German well enough to navigate it with certainty. Hope I’ve helped a bit at least.
:smack: I should have realized that the song I linked wasn’t correct, I saw the lyrics for Silent Night on one site. blush Ah well…
Go listen to it. There’s a particular line of harmony…“Fall on your knees, Hear the angels’ voices”…well, if it doesn’t give you chills, I don’t know what will. IMO, one of the best Christmas songs of them all, along with some arrangements of “Oh Come, Oh Come Emanuel” and “Gabriel’s Message” (NOT the Sting vsn.).
Thanks, Kellner. The second time I clicked on the link mkl12 proffered, I got a message board in German with no sign of “O Holy Night” in any language.
Wow, that site uses crappy message board software. The post with the lyrics has moved back one page, to
http://forum.fuerstenwalde.de/index.php3?eintrag=225
Thanks, mkl; I found it.
Funny, I thought it would be easy to look up since I knew that “holy night” was “heilige nacht”. Too bad that same phrase is used in “Silent Night”, which is a way more popular German carol.
Yeah, but how common is the German for “The stars are brightly shining.”?
Well, now I have two sets of lyrics for “O Holy Night” in German; I guess where prosody is concerned, translators have considerable latitude. (I went to a website which translates “Silent Night” into more than 100 languages, including Swahili, Japanese, and Cherokee! :eek: and the phrasing is different in various languages, evident to me although I’m not a professional linguist.)