MusicPolitics

The Star-Spangled Bannerssurprising originsIts one of the countrys best-loved songs but the US national anthem has asurprising and colourful past. Clemency Burton-Hill investigates.

By Clemency Burton-Hill

3 July 2015

It was on the rainy night of 13 September, 1814, that a 35-year-old US lawyernamed Frances Scott Key watched as a barrage of British shells rain down onFort McHenry in Baltimore Harbour. The War of 1812 had been raging formore than 18 months and Key was negotiating the release of an Americanprisoner. Fearful he knew too much, the Brits kept him on board a ship eightmiles from shore. As night fell, he saw the sky turn red, and given the scale ofthe attack, was convinced the British would triumph. It seemed as thoughmother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fireand brimstone, he observed. But as the smoke cleared in the dawn's early

light on 14 September, Key watched in astonishment and relief as the US flag,not the Union Jack, was raised over the fort.

According to the Smithsonian Institution, which boasts among its manyhistorical treasures that original star-spangled banner, Key was so overcomeby what he had witnessed that he was inspired to poetry. He showed theverses to his brother-in-law, Joseph H Nicholson, commander of a militia atFort McHenry, who pointed out that the words would fit perfectly to the tuneof a popular English ditty written in 1775 by the composer John StaffordSmith. The Anacreontic Song or Anacreon in Heaven had been penned forSmiths aristocratic gentlemens club in London, but by the early 19th Centuryhad travelled across the Atlantic and become well-known in the US.

The flag that flew over Fort McHenry during its bombardment in 1814, whichwas witnessed by Francis Scott Key (Credit: Wikipedia)

Impressed by Keys efforts, Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimoreand had it distributed it under the name Defence of Fort M'Henry, indicatingthe tune to which it should be sung. TheBaltimore Patriotnewspaper soonreprinted it, and within weeks, The Star-Spangled Banner, as it was quicklyknown, appeared in print across the country, immortalising both Keys wordsand the soon-to-be historic flag it celebrated.

Soul-stirring words

Adopted by the navy in 1889, the song was quoted in 1904 by Puccini in his

opera Madama Butterfly. (The first two bars are a direct lift, giving thecharacter Lieutenant Pinkerton his cue for the aria Dovunque al Mondo, whileO say, can you see is used in later arias by both Pinkerton and Cio-CioSan, Madama Butterfly herself.) In the early 20th Century, the songs appealseemed unstoppable. So popular had it become by 1916, in fact, that there weredozens of different versions, and President Woodrow Wilson asked the USBureau of Education to produce an official edition. They in turn enlisted thehelp of five musicians: Walter Damrosch, Will Earheart, Arnold J Gantvoort,Oscar Sonneck and John Philip Sousa. The first performance of thestandardised version was given at Carnegie Hall in December 1917. It was not,however, until 3 March, 1931, that The Star-Spangled Banner was officiallymade the United States national anthem by a congressional act signed byPresident Herbert Hoover.

It was not until 3 March, 1931, that The Star-Spangled Banner wasofficially made the United States national anthem

That relatively recent date may come as a surprise to those who imagine theanthem must go back much further in history, but this lack of awareness maybe symptomatic of a wider trend. Many Americans dont realise how much ofwhat we think is foundational in our country actually stems from the 1920sand the Depression era, says Sarah Churchwell, professor of Americanliterature and public understanding of the humanities at the University ofEast Anglia, and author of the widely acclaimed book Careless People.WhenF Scott Fitzgerald a distant relative of Frances Scott Key, after whom he wasnamed was beginning to think about The Great Gatsby in 1922, the year inwhich he would set the novel, America was still arguing about whether itshould adopt a national anthem. Although The Star-Spangled Banner was afrontrunner, Churchwell points out that it was vehemently opposed in certainquarters, especially among temperance campaigners. (John Philip Sousa haddeclared, perhaps literally: it is the spirit of the music that inspires as muchas Key's soul-stirring words; its often quipped that you need to be drunk tosing it.)

American Dream

On 11 June, 1922, the Christian Scientist Augusta Emma Stetson, who had builtthe imposing First Christian Science church on New Yorks Central ParkWest, took out a remarkable (and huge) advertisement in the NewYorkTribune with the headline The Star-Spangled Banner Can Never

Become Our National Anthem. It talks of those violent, un-singablecadences which could never express the spiritual ideals upon which thenation was based. (Not only had the music had not been composed by anAmerican, says Churchwell; worse, it was a ribald, sensual drinking song.)Never, thundered the advertisement, has Congress, and never willCongress, legalize an anthem which sprang from the lowest qualities ofhuman sentiment. It warned, ominously: God forbids it.

Congress had other ideas. The Star-Spangled Banner was made Americasnational anthem in 1931, two years after the market crashed, when Americansneeded a renewal of faith, says Churchwell, who points out that this was alsothe year in which the phrase American Dream became a nationalcatchphrase, thanks to a book called The Epic of America by James TruslowAdams. The connection, she believes, is salient. In general, I think Americansare encouraged to think that everything about our country stretches back intothe mists of time, and transcends history. Thats a key aspect of the AmericanDream, and its exactly what Fitzgerald put his finger on in Gatsby, the ideathat we are constantly pulled back into our own history withoutunderstanding it.

Beyonce opened the 2013 Super Bowl press conference with the Star-SpangledBanner (Credit: Rex)

Star-Spangled Banner: Greatest hits

Jimi Hendrix, live at Woodstock in 1969 going crazy on the electric guitar

(on the Monday morning!)Marvin Gayes weirdly sensual take on it from 1983Whitney Houston in 1991 pre-recorded, but who cares: that voice!Beyonc just nailing it at the 2004 Super BowlLady Antebellum in the 2010 World Series with the Grammy award-winners giving a particularly nice line in close harmonyAnd while were talking harmony, it may be cheesy as heck but theseguys! Maybe the most moving ever?

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