I love the American National Anthem. The music is superb, the words are unexceptionally heroic (I am quite fond of this subtle characterization!), together constituting a most exceptional combination. This is truly one of the most moving and inspiring national anthems of the world.
Ironically, and almost typically, the anthem’s music preceded the words and was in fact originally written to an altogether different set of words for an altogether different occasion.
The music’s author John Stafford Smith (1750-1836) was an English church organist and singer and a semi-professional music composer, who was also a member of the peculiar music-loving London exclusive club, known as the Anacreontic Society. It was as the club’s signature song that Anacreon in Heaven (also known as The Anacreontic Song) was written, to the original music of Smith, and the words of the Club’s President Ralph Tomlinson, published in 1778.
The music quickly became popular, traveling across the Atlantic, where it was heard and loved by a certain Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), an American lawyer and amateur poet, who used it as an adaptation for his 1814 patriotic poem Defense of Fort McHenry, describing his authentic personal experience during the War of 1812. (This was a second Anglo-American war, which actually lasted from 1812 until 1815.)
Ever since its subsequent publication, the song, now called The Star-Spangled Banner, was appreciated for its powerful music and stirring lyrics, and its adoption as America’s first ever (and, hopefully, the only one) national anthem was now only a matter of time. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson made it mandatory for solemn military and public occasions, and finally in 1931, ironically, but not surprisingly, during the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover made it the official national anthem of the United States.
…I love The Star-Spangled Banner. Curiously, it used to be one of the several reasons why I liked America so much.
Ironically, and almost typically, the anthem’s music preceded the words and was in fact originally written to an altogether different set of words for an altogether different occasion.
The music’s author John Stafford Smith (1750-1836) was an English church organist and singer and a semi-professional music composer, who was also a member of the peculiar music-loving London exclusive club, known as the Anacreontic Society. It was as the club’s signature song that Anacreon in Heaven (also known as The Anacreontic Song) was written, to the original music of Smith, and the words of the Club’s President Ralph Tomlinson, published in 1778.
The music quickly became popular, traveling across the Atlantic, where it was heard and loved by a certain Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), an American lawyer and amateur poet, who used it as an adaptation for his 1814 patriotic poem Defense of Fort McHenry, describing his authentic personal experience during the War of 1812. (This was a second Anglo-American war, which actually lasted from 1812 until 1815.)
Ever since its subsequent publication, the song, now called The Star-Spangled Banner, was appreciated for its powerful music and stirring lyrics, and its adoption as America’s first ever (and, hopefully, the only one) national anthem was now only a matter of time. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson made it mandatory for solemn military and public occasions, and finally in 1931, ironically, but not surprisingly, during the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover made it the official national anthem of the United States.
…I love The Star-Spangled Banner. Curiously, it used to be one of the several reasons why I liked America so much.
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