Album version 3:49 Gaelic 2008

Quotes about the song

Enya: It’s one of my favourites, I remember being taught ‘Silent Night’ at School. I remember practising in the choir at church and the first time to perform ‘Silent Night.’ But I would have known it as ‘Oiche Chiuin’ because my first language is Gaelic. And even though I had recorded it quite a few years ago, it was so nice to approach it from a different musical angle this time because Nicky had an idea to actually sing it with the more chorale arragement.

Nicky Ryan: The original version of ‘Silent Night’ is much lighter and it’s Enya’s solo vocal. But in this case, we went for a complete chorale version sung as if she was a choir singing. So, that’s the difference.

Enya: I have a totaly different arragement that I hear in my head to what he hears. But that’s where we have the fun and games of working together on that side of the music. Quite often we don’t see eye to eye but we have one golden rule that we try to stick by: we try all the ideas. Hormonazing to ‘Silent Night’ was unusual. The difference with doing the, as Nicky called it, the choir of one arragement was I specifically sang the words with the lead vocal, which is different for me to do. The harmony is very different when you have to harmonize specifically with the actual melody and not with the actual arrangement.

Roma Ryan: Nicky had always wanted to do this, he’d always wanted to present Enya as a choir. And he describes it as a choir of one. And in fact, this idea of his has been there since ‘Watermark’. I think it’s timely, as we are celebrating our twenty years since release of ‘Watermark’, that in fact his little wish has come true. He has finally gone Enya to sing it exactly the way he had envisaged it.

And Winter Came EPK, 2008
transcribed by enya.sk

Enya’s seventh studio album also contains (…) a new version of Silent Night (Oíche Chiuín), a song Enya sings in Gaeilge that has proved hugely popular over the years. “It was exciting to re-live Silent Night because I sung that twenty years ago,” enthuses Enya. “It is re-released every year in America and it was so nice to go back and do something different with it.”

The new rendering of Oíche Chiuín (Chorale) incorporates what Nicky describes as the “choir of one”, a technique he first fully adopted during the recording of Watermark that finds Enya performing multi-layered vocals to create a mellifluous sea of harmonies. “I enjoy the process, I love the excitement of not knowing if it will work,” admits Enya.

Official press release, Warner Music, 2008

Performances

Venue Date Details
This Morning (UK) Dec 4, 2008 Lip-synced

 

Lyrics

Oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic Dé,
Cach ‘na suan, dís araon,
Dís is dílse ‘faire le spéis,
Naíon beag gnaoigheal ceananntais caomh,
Críost, ‘na chodhladh go seimh,
Críost, ‘na chodhladh go seimh.

Oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic Dé,
Aoirí ar dtús chuala ‘n scéal,
Allelúia aingeal ag glaoch,
Cantain suairc i ngar is i gcein,
Críost an Slánaitheoir Fein,
Críost an Slánaitheoir Fein.

Oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic De,
Cach ‘na suan, dís araon,
Dis is dílse ‘faire le spéis,
Naion beag gnaoigheal ceananntais caomh,
Críost, ‘na chodhladh go seimh,
Críost, ‘na chodhladh go seimh.

traditional lyrics
enya.com