(Ger.: ‘Christmas song’).
In a general sense, any song for Christmas (similarly, Weihnachtskonzert means ‘Christmas concerto’, Weihnachtsmusik ‘Christmas music’ or ‘Christmas piece’, etc.). It is often used in the same loose sense as ‘Christmas carol’ is in English.
The term was applied particularly to the simplest type of 18th-century Pastorella: a simple song, often strophic, often for one or two voices accompanied by two violins and continuo (or by the organ alone), sung in central European rural churches at Christmas, often at Midnight Mass. Other more or less equivalent terms, which probably cannot be precisely differentiated, are aria de Nativitate; aria pastoralis or aria pastoritia (possibly translations of Hirtenlied, ‘shepherd song’); Krippellied, Krippenlied or Krippelgesang (‘crib song’); and Weihnacht Aria and so on. Some Weihnachtslieder, noted down in 1819 when their popularity had already declined, are in the folksong collection of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna; an informant from Maria-Taferl gave some details of their use (reproduced in Klier, i, 45–7; Klier also printed many of the songs), though these do not apply to all Weihnachtslieder. Many survive in manuscript in, for example, local parish churches and others were printed as broadsides at Vienna, Steyr, Linz, Innsbruck and elsewhere.
Michael Haydn (Heiligste Nacht, 1786) and F.X. Gruber (Stille Nacht, 1818) used the term for a type of Christmas song similar in scope and form to the older Weihnachtslied and still set for a small number of voices, but now evocative and romantic rather than unsophisticated, direct and often comic as the songs in the older tradition had been. In the 19th century the meaning of the term was extended: it was used by folksong collectors in a general sense (e.g. Weinhold, Pailler and Klier), and was applied also to art songs with subject matter relating to Christmas (e.g. the Weihnachtslieder op.8 by Peter Cornelius).
See also Pastoral, §§4–5.
K. Weinhold: Weihnacht-Spiele und Lieder aus Süddeutschland und Schlesien (Graz, 1853, 3/1875)
W. Pailler: Weihnachtlieder und Krippenspiele aus Oberösterreich und Tirol (Innsbruck, 1881–3)
K.M. Klier: Schatz österreichischer Weihnachtslieder aus den ältesten Quellen mit den Weisen herausgegeben (Klosterneuburg, n.d.)
G.A. Chew: The Christmas Pastorella in Austria, Bohemia and Moravia (diss., U. of Manchester, 1968)
W. Deutsch and G. Hofer: Die Volksmusiksammlung der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien (Sonnleithner-Sammlung) (Vienna, 1969)
GEOFFREY CHEW