The Star-Spangled Banner

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is a poem written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key and is the national anthem of the United States of America. Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, wrote it after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, by British ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812.

Set to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven," a popular British drinking-song, it became well-known as an American patriotic song. It was recognized for official use by the United States Navy (1889) and the White House (1916), and was made the national anthem by a Congressional resolution on 3 March 1931. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today. Like the British national anthem "God Save the Queen," "The Star-Spangled Banner" is one of the few national anthems of the world without a country's name mentioned in the lyrics.

Lyrics

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Note: This is only the first stanza of the poem. Click here ^* to see the full text.

History

Early history

On 3 September 1814, Key and John S. Skinner of Baltimore, Maryland, an American prisoner-exchange agent, set sail from Baltimore aboard the sloop HMS Minden flying a flag of truce on a mission approved by U.S. President James Madison. Their goal was to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes, the elderly and popular town physician of Upper Marlboro, a friend of Key's who had been captured in Washington, D.C., and had been accused of harboring British deserters. Key and Skinner boarded the British flagship, HMS Tonnant, on 7 September and spoke with General Robert Ross and Admiral Alexander Cochrane over dinner, while they discussed war plans. At first, Ross and Cochrane refused to release Beanes, but relented after Key and Skinner showed them letters written by wounded British prisoners praising Beanes and other Americans for their kind treatment.

Because Key and Skinner had heard details of the plans for the attack on Baltimore, they were held captive until after the battle, first aboard HMS Surprise, and later back on Minden, after which some British gunboats attempted to slip past the fort and effect a landing in a cove to the west of it, but they were turned away by gunners at nearby Fort Covington, the city's last line of defense. During the rainy night, Key had witnessed the bombardment and observed that the fort's smaller "storm flag" continued to fly, but once the shelling had stopped, he would not know how the battle had turned out until dawn. By then, the storm flag had been lowered, and a larger flag had been raised.

Key was inspired by the American victory and the sight of the large American flag flying triumphantly above the fort. This flag, with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, is today on display in the National Museum of American History, a treasure of the Smithsonian Institution. It was restored in 1914 by Amelia Fowler, and again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program.

Aboard the ship the next day, Key wrote a poem on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. At twilight on 16 September, he and Skinner were released in Baltimore. He finished the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying, and he entitled it "Defence of Fort McHenry."

Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, who recognized that the words fit the tune of the popular melody "To Anacreon in Heaven," which dated from the mid-1760s, when it had been composed, in London, by John Stafford Smith. Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore, who anonymously printed broadside copies of it—the song's first known printing—on 17 September; of these, two known copies survive.

On 20 September, both the Baltimore Patriot and The American printed the song, with the note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven." The song quickly became popular, with seventeen newspapers from Georgia to New Hampshire printing it. Soon after, Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store in Baltimore published the words and music together under the title "The Star-Spangled Banner." The song quickly became popular, and its first public performance took place in October, when Baltimore actor Ferdinand Durang sang it at Captain McCauley's tavern.

The song gained popularity throughout the nineteenth century and bands played it during public events, such as July 4 celebrations. On 27 July 1889, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy signed General Order #374, making "The Star-Spangled Banner" the official tune to be played at the raising of the flag.

In 1913, Percy Moran painted a picture of Francis Scott Key reaching out toward the flag.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson ordered that "The Star-Spangled Banner" be played at military and other appropriate occasions. Although the playing of the song two years later during the seventh-inning stretch of the 1918 World Series is often noted as the first instance that the Anthem was played at a baseball game, evidence shows that the "Star Spangled-Banner" was performed as early as 1897 at Opening Day ceremonies in Philadelphia and then more regularly at the Polo Grounds in New York beginning in 1898. Today, the anthem is performed before the first pitch at every game.

On 3 November 1929, Robert Ripley drew a panel in his syndicated cartoon, Believe it or Not!, saying, "Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem." In 1931, John Philip Sousa published his opinion in favor, stating that "it is the spirit of the music that inspires" as much as it is Key's "soulstirring" words. By a law signed on 3 March 1931 by President Herbert Hoover, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was adopted as the national anthem of the United States.

Modern history

A famous instrumental interpretation is Jimi Hendrix's guitar solo at the first Woodstock Festival. Though condemned by some conservatives as a desecration of the song (Roseanne's infamous 1990 performance being far in the future), it became a late-1960s emblem. Whitney Houston's rendition of the anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 has been described as one of the finest, and a commercial release of it became a bestseller.

When sung in public (before major sporting events, for example), verses after the first are almost always omitted, and few Americans know their words. Isaac Asimov's short story "No Refuge Could Save" made light of this: a foreign spy was identified when it was found he knew every stanza, the joke being that no "real" American would know the whole text. It is also sometimes said humorously that the last two words of the national anthem are "PLAY BALL!" since that phrase is shouted by baseball umpires after the anthem is played before games.

In March 2005, the government-sponsored The National Anthem Project was launched after a Harris Interactive poll showed many adults knew neither the lyrics nor the history of the anthem. Harris Interactive poll on The Star-Spangled Banner ^* While many view this project (which is sponsored by the military and various corporations) as a form of wartime propaganda, some music teachers claim it will offer benefits for music education by bringing new attention to their efforts.

Translations

A controversial Spanish-language version, "Nuestro Himno," was released on 28 April 2006, just days before nationwide demonstrations (on 1 May) about immigration-law reform. This version was created as a show of support for Latino and Hispanic immigrants in the United States as a response to a proposed crackdown on illegal immigration. Similar to the English version of the Canadian national anthem, which was set to the tune of the French version but is not related to the text thereof, this song, or himno, is merely inspired by and is only an approximate—not a word-for-word—translation of stanzas selected from Key's poem. No claim is made that it is the Spanish-language version of the United States' national anthem.

Public reaction was widely divided, and it drew this response from President George W. Bush: "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English." Aversa, Jeannine. "Bush Says Anthem Should Be in English". Breitbart.com. April 28, 2006

Another multilingual version was released on 16 May 2006: performing as Voices United for America, ten singers sing the song in Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Bulgarian, German, Arabic, Japanese, Tagalog, Korean, and English. The song was recorded to raise awareness of House Resolution 793, which states that the National Anthem should be sung only in English. The song is available for free download at www.YourNationalAnthem.com ^*

"Nuestro Himno" is not the first Spanish-language version of the "The Star-Spangled Banner" to have been published. The United States Department of State's website shows other Spanish-language versions of it, including "Himno nacional—La Bandera de Estrellas," copyrighted in 1919.

The anthem has also been translated into other languages. In 1861, it was translated into German (and is also on that page in Latin). It has been translated into Yiddish by Jewish immigrants ^*. It has been translated into Samoan; here are the last four lines of the first verse:

O roketi mumu fa'aafi, o pomu ma fana ma aloi afi

E fa'amaonia i le po atoa, le fu'a o lo'o tu maninoa.

Aue! ia tumau le fe'ilafi mai, ma agiagia pea

I eleele o sa'olotoga, ma nofoaga o le au totoa.The Samoa News reporting of an Samoan version ^*

Performances

The song is notoriously difficult for nonprofessionals to sing, because its range is wide: an octave and a half. Garrison Keillor has frequently campaigned for the performance of the anthem in the original key, G major—which can, in fact, be managed by most average singers without difficulty. (It is usually played in A-flat or B-flat.) Humorist Richard Armour referenced the song's difficulty in his book It All Started With Columbus:

In an attempt to take Baltimore, the British attacked Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor. Bombs were soon bursting in air, rockets were glaring, and all in all it was a moment of great historical interest. During the bombardment, a young lawyer named Francis Off Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner", and when, by the dawn's early light, the British heard it sung, they fled in terror!

Professional singers have been known to forget the words—which is one reason why the song is so often prerecorded and lip-synched. This situation was lampooned in the comedy film The Naked Gun, as its star Leslie Nielsen, undercover as opera singer Enrico Palazzo at a baseball game, made mincemeat of the lyrics. The prerecording of the anthem has become standard practice at some ballparks (such as Boston's Fenway Park, according to the SABR publication The Fenway Project) ^* to prevent a "Roseanne incident."

In San Diego on 25 July 1990, actress Roseanne Barr performed the song before a Padres baseball game, and her screechy rendition (complete with spitting and crotch-grabbing in an imitation of a baseball player after she had been booed by spectators) raised eyebrows and triggered changes in the way the song is presented. Roseanne had been asked by a Padres manager to make a joke out of it. She acted in this way to correspond with her redneck, blue-collar TV character, Roseanne Connor, on the popular 1980s-1990s show Roseanne.

Another notorious performance came from nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis. In East Rutherford, New Jersey, singing to a sellout crowd before a Chicago Bulls–New Jersey Nets basketball game, Lewis gave a catastrophically bad performance: drawing a blank at the phrase "rockets' red glare," he interrupted his performance to promise, "I'll make up for it"—but he never did. Later, he explained that he had been hoarse from participating in inauguration-related events at the White House the day before.

Adaptations

The anthem is sometimes adapted by changing some of the lyrics or emphasizing a word or a phrase, mostly to show support for a local sports team. Examples include:

When the anthem is performed before Houston Rockets games, fans traditionally let out a loud cheer after the singing of the line "And the rockets' red glare."

Fans of the Baltimore Orioles emphasize the "Oh" in the first line of the song to refer to the Orioles' nickname "the O's."

Atlanta Braves fans change the last line from "home of the brave" to "home of the Braves." Other cities and colleges have a tradition of simply replacing the last word with whatever the name is of the local team.

At Dallas Stars hockey games, fans traditionally scream "Stars" twice during the song ("Whose broad stripes and bright Stars!" "Oh, say does that Stars!-spangled banner").

Students at the University of California, Berkeley modified the phrases "Oh, say can you see" to become "Oh, say can U! C!" (as in University of California), and altered "And the rockets' red glare" to "BLUE! glare" (Cal's colors are blue and gold, while red is associated with rival Stanford University).

Fans of Cornell Big Red Hockey know to shout "RED" ("and the rockets red glare") as loudly as they can, and at times—at away games—this has so flustered the singer of the anthem that a noticeable pause has ensued.

At University of Michigan football games, students enthusiastically pump their right fists in the air when the lyrics "what so proudly we HAILed" are sung--a reference to Michigan's fight song "the Victors".

Such adaptations are not always designed to celebrate a local team. After the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, fans attending the Colorado Avalanche home games began to emphasise the line "That our flag was still there" by shouting the line loudly ("Gave proof through the night, THAT OUR FLAG WAS STILL THERE!").

Musical references

The tune has been referenced in many other musical compositions.

The city of Philadelphia commissioned Richard Wagner to write a piece in honor of the centenary of U.S. independence. His American Centennial March uses a recurring allusion to "The Star-Spangled Banner" in its main theme.
The nineteenth-century American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) incorporated both "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Yankee Doodle" in his piano composition The Union.
Giacomo Puccini controversially used the opening phrases of "The Star-Spangled Banner" as a theme for the character of Pinkerton in his opera Madama Butterfly.
The last of Leopold Godowsky's set of thirty piano pieces titled "Triakontameron" is "Requiem (1914–1918): Epilogue," which concludes with a full-blown romantic arrangement of the anthem. The opening strains of the anthem appear prominently in first portion of Edwin E. Bagley's National Emblem March.
The paraphrase of the first stanza is used in the score of American Panorama (1933) by Daniele Amfitheatrof.
The title tune of the 1960s musical Hair contains the line "O, say, can you see my eyes? If you can, then my hair's too short!"
The opera Nixon in China by John Adams seems to quote "The Star-Spangled Banner" upon the arrival of President Nixon's plane.

Media

References

External links

Isaac Asimov on the four stanzas of the anthem
Encyclopedia Smithsonian article on "The Star-Spangled Banner"
"Star-Mangled Banner: A look at some controversial, and botched, renditions of our national anthem"
"The Star-Spangled Banner" by John A. Carpenter
Easybyte—free easy piano arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner / Anacreon in Heaven"
Various recordings of "The Star-Spangled Banner"
Wayne Messmer singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" (.swf)
Carl Lewis's infamous rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" (.mp3)
The latest rock interpretation of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by Amod Dange
"Stars and Stripes Forever" City Pages, July 4, 2001

American culture | 1814 | Baltimore, Maryland | National anthems

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