The Star-Spangled Banner
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Image:Defence of Fort M'Henry broadside.jpg "The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics were written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland by British ships in Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812. It became well known as a patriotic song to the tune of a popular English song, "To Anacreon in Heaven." It was recognized for official use by the United States Navy (1889) and by the White House (1916), and was made the national anthem by a Congressional resolution on March 3, 1931. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today.
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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?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream: Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause, it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
History
Early history
Image:Bombardment2.jpg On September 3, 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 approved by 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, DC and had been accused of harboring British deserters. Key and Skinner boarded the British flagship HMS Tonnant on September 7 and spoke with General Robert Ross and Admiral Alexander Cochrane over dinner, while they also discussed war plans. In the beginning, 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 much of the preparations for the Baltimore attack, they were held captive until after the battle, first aboard HMS Surprise, and later back onto the Minden sloop, waiting behind the British fleet. On September 13, at 7 a.m., the British fleet attacked the fort and the Battle of Baltimore was under way. Bombardment of the fort continued until 1 a.m. on September 14, 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 stopped and it grew dark, he would not know how the battle turned out until dawn. By then, the storm flag had been lowered and the larger main flag had been raised.
Image:KeysSSB.jpg Key was inspired by the American victory and the sight of the enormous 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 part of the Smithsonian Institution. This flag was restored in 1914 by Amelia Fowler, and again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program.
The next day, Key wrote a poem aboard the ship on the back of a letter he had in his pocket, continuing to write during the sail. After being released with Skinner in Baltimore at twilight on September 16, Key finished the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel where he was staying, entitling it "Defence of Fort McHenry".
Key gave his poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, who recognized that the poem fit the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven", a popular melody dating from the mid-1760s, written in London by John Stafford Smith. Nicholson took the poem to a printer. These broadside copies, the song's first known printing, were printed anonymously in Baltimore on September 17 — of these, two known copies still exist.
On September 20, both the Baltimore Patriot and The American printed the song, with the note "Tune: Anacreon in Heaven." The song quickly became popular, with 17 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 the first public performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" took place in October, when Baltimore actor Ferdinand Durang sang the song at Captain McCauley's tavern.
Percy Moran drew Francis Scott Key reaching out towards the flag in 1913. The song gained popularity throughout the19th century. On July 27, 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 1916, Woodrow Wilson ordered that "The Star Spangled Banner" be played at military and other appropriate occasions. Two years later, in 1918, the song was first played at a baseball game; in the World Series, the band started an impromptu performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch. The players and spectators stood at attention, took off their hats, and sang, giving rise to a tradition that is repeated at almost every professional baseball game in United States today, though it is now performed prior to the first pitch.
On November 3, 1929, Robert Ripley drew a cartoon in his Believe it or Not!, saying, "Believe it or Not, America has no national anthem."Template:Fact 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 Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was adopted as the national anthem of the United States on March 3rd, 1931. This song, like the British national anthem "God Save the Queen", is known as one of the few national anthems that does not mention the name of the home country.
Modern history
One famous instrumental interpretation is Jimi Hendrix's guitar solo at the first Woodstock Festival. Although it was condemned by some conservatives as a desecration of the song (Roseanne's performance being far in the future), it has since become an emblematic signature of the ideals of the late 1960s. Hendrix' interpretation was meant to invoke comparisons to the destruction of the Vietnam War; the "sound effects" generated by Hendrix' unique fingering style seemed to parallel the bombs and gunfire that were a staple of the nightly news reports on the conflict.
When sung in public (before major sporting events, for example), for reasons of brevity, verses after the first are almost always omitted and relatively few Americans know the words beyond the first verse. Isaac Asimov's short story No Refuge Could Save made light of this when a foreign spy was identified when it was found he knew every stanza, the joke being that no "real" Americans would know it. It is also sometimes said humorously that the last two words of the national anthem are "PLAY BALL!" In March 2005 a government sponsored program was started in the USA to help the population learn the lyrics of the national anthem. This program, which was titled The National Anthem Project, was created in response to a poll conducted by Harris Interactive that showed many adults did not know the lyrics nor the history of the Star-Spangled Banner, despite learning them in school. <ref>Harris Interactive poll on The Star-Spangled Banner [1]</ref>
Performances and adaptations
Template:Main The song is notoriously difficult for non-professionals to sing, due to its octave-and-a-half range. Garrison Keillor has frequently campaigned for the performance of the anthem in the original key, G major, which can, in fact, be sung by most average singers without difficulty. 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 Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner, and when, by the dawn's early light, the British heard it sung, they fled in terror!"
Notable
Professional singers have been known to forget the words, which is one reason why the song is so often pre-recorded 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 pre-recording of the anthem has become standard practice at some ballparks (such as Boston's Fenway Park, according to the SABR publication, The Fenway Project) [2] in order to prevent a "Roseanne incident"; actress Roseanne Barr performed the song in San Diego on July 25, 1990, 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 a few eyebrows and triggered changes in the way the song is presented.
Baseball
Chicago Cubs
Wayne Messmer, the Chicago Cubs public address announcer, occasionally presents his stirring rendition at Wrigley Field, wherein he ends on two rising notes, rather than dropping down the scale as the song is normally done. Many of the artists who sing the anthem infuse it with their own style, with pauses at their own discretion which make it difficult for the audience to sing along. Messmer does it "straight".
Several other adaptations of the anthem include changing some of the lyrics or to emphasize a word or phrase; mostly in order to show support for a sports team. Examples include:
Baltimore Orioles
The fans of the Baltimore, Maryland, Major League Baseball team have adapted the song to show support for the local team the Baltimore Orioles. Fans sing the song with a fortissimo emphasis upon the "Oh" in the stanza "Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave," which is a reference to the Orioles' nickname "the O's."
Atlanta Braves
An adaptation is made by fans of the Atlanta Braves, in Atlanta, Georgia. The last words of the song are changed from "home of the brave" to "home of the Braves."
Hockey
Wayne Gretzky
On April 18, 1999, professional hockey star Wayne Gretzky played his final NHL game in New York. In tribute to the retiring superstar, the two singers of the Canadian and American anthems altered the words of their respective songs. The final words of the Canadian National Anthem (normally "O Canada we stand on guard for thee") became "O Canada we're going to miss Wayne Gretzky". The second to last line of the Star Spangeled Banner (normally "O'er the land of the free") was changed to "O'er the land of Wayne Gretzky".
Dallas Stars
It is also a tradition at Dallas Stars hockey games for fans to scream "Stars" twice during the song ("Whose broad stripes and bright 'Stars!'""Oh, say does that 'Stars!'-spangled banner...".) The tradition has become so widespread that some opposing teams will not play the national anthem when the Stars are the visiting team, most notably the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
Colorado Avalanche
After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Unites 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!").
College
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 the rockets red glare" becomes "And the rockets BLUE! glare" (Cal's colors are blue and gold while red is associated with rival Stanford), and "And the home of the brave" becomes "And the home of the BEARS!" (Cal's mascot is the Golden Bear). Students at Cornell University yell "RED!" and raise their right hands during the stanza "And the rockets red glare". At the North Dakota Fighting Sioux home hockey games, the tail end of the song "and the home of the brave", is changed by fans to "and the home of the SIOUX!!". At Princeton, no modifications are made to the song itself (as it is often played by The Princeton Band, rather than sung), but it is traditional to follow the final note with "Let's Go, Tigers!" to the point that the cheer has become a kind of tagged-on ending.
Other
The tune has been used in a number of classical compositions. The city of Philadelphia commissioned Richard Wagner to write a piece in honour of the centenary of U.S. independence. The American Centennial March that he wrote uses a recurring allusion to the Star-Spangled Banner in its main theme. The last of Leopold Godowsky's set of 30 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 title tune of the 1960s musical Hair famously contains the line, O, say, can you see my eyes? If you can, then my hair's too short!
- 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 <ref>The Samoa News reporting of an Samoan version [3]</ref>
Media
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External links
Template:Commons Template:Wikisource
- 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
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