Music

Politics

The Star-Spangled Banners

surprising origins
Its one of the countrys best-loved songs but the US national anthem has a
surprising 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 lawyer
named Frances Scott Key watched as a barrage of British shells rain down on
Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbour. The War of 1812 had been raging for
more than 18 months and Key was negotiating the release of an American
prisoner. Fearful he knew too much, the Brits kept him on board a ship eight
miles from shore. As night fell, he saw the sky turn red, and given the scale of
the attack, was convinced the British would triumph. It seemed as though
mother earth had opened and was vomiting shot and shell in a sheet of fire
and 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 many
historical treasures that original star-spangled banner, Key was so overcome
by what he had witnessed that he was inspired to poetry. He showed the
verses to his brother-in-law, Joseph H Nicholson, commander of a militia at
Fort McHenry, who pointed out that the words would fit perfectly to the tune
of a popular English ditty written in 1775 by the composer John Stafford
Smith. The Anacreontic Song or Anacreon in Heaven had been penned for
Smiths aristocratic gentlemens club in London, but by the early 19th Century
had travelled across the Atlantic and become well-known in the US.

The flag that flew over Fort McHenry during its bombardment in 1814, which
was witnessed by Francis Scott Key (Credit: Wikipedia)
Impressed by Keys efforts, Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore
and had it distributed it under the name Defence of Fort M'Henry, indicating
the tune to which it should be sung. TheBaltimore Patriotnewspaper soon
reprinted it, and within weeks, The Star-Spangled Banner, as it was quickly
known, appeared in print across the country, immortalising both Keys words
and 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 the
character Lieutenant Pinkerton his cue for the aria Dovunque al Mondo, while
O say, can you see is used in later arias by both Pinkerton and Cio-Cio
San, Madama Butterfly herself.) In the early 20th Century, the songs appeal
seemed unstoppable. So popular had it become by 1916, in fact, that there were
dozens of different versions, and President Woodrow Wilson asked the US
Bureau of Education to produce an official edition. They in turn enlisted the
help of five musicians: Walter Damrosch, Will Earheart, Arnold J Gantvoort,
Oscar Sonneck and John Philip Sousa. The first performance of the
standardised version was given at Carnegie Hall in December 1917. It was not,
however, until 3 March, 1931, that The Star-Spangled Banner was officially
made the United States national anthem by a congressional act signed by
President Herbert Hoover.
It was not until 3 March, 1931, that The Star-Spangled Banner was
officially made the United States national anthem
That relatively recent date may come as a surprise to those who imagine the
anthem must go back much further in history, but this lack of awareness may
be symptomatic of a wider trend. Many Americans dont realise how much of
what we think is foundational in our country actually stems from the 1920s
and the Depression era, says Sarah Churchwell, professor of American
literature and public understanding of the humanities at the University of
East Anglia, and author of the widely acclaimed book Careless People.When
F Scott Fitzgerald a distant relative of Frances Scott Key, after whom he was
named was beginning to think about The Great Gatsby in 1922, the year in
which he would set the novel, America was still arguing about whether it
should adopt a national anthem. Although The Star-Spangled Banner was a
frontrunner, Churchwell points out that it was vehemently opposed in certain
quarters, especially among temperance campaigners. (John Philip Sousa had
declared, perhaps literally: it is the spirit of the music that inspires as much
as Key's soul-stirring words; its often quipped that you need to be drunk to
sing it.)
American Dream
On 11 June, 1922, the Christian Scientist Augusta Emma Stetson, who had built
the imposing First Christian Science church on New Yorks Central Park
West, took out a remarkable (and huge) advertisement in the New
YorkTribune with the headline The Star-Spangled Banner Can Never

Become Our National Anthem. It talks of those violent, un-singable

cadences which could never express the spiritual ideals upon which the
nation was based. (Not only had the music had not been composed by an
American, says Churchwell; worse, it was a ribald, sensual drinking song.)
Never, thundered the advertisement, has Congress, and never will
Congress, legalize an anthem which sprang from the lowest qualities of
human sentiment. It warned, ominously: God forbids it.
Congress had other ideas. The Star-Spangled Banner was made Americas
national anthem in 1931, two years after the market crashed, when Americans
needed a renewal of faith, says Churchwell, who points out that this was also
the year in which the phrase American Dream became a national
catchphrase, thanks to a book called The Epic of America by James Truslow
Adams. The connection, she believes, is salient. In general, I think Americans
are encouraged to think that everything about our country stretches back into
the mists of time, and transcends history. Thats a key aspect of the American
Dream, and its exactly what Fitzgerald put his finger on in Gatsby, the idea
that we are constantly pulled back into our own history without
understanding it.

Beyonce opened the 2013 Super Bowl press conference with the Star-Spangled
Banner (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 1983
Whitney Houston in 1991 pre-recorded, but who cares: that voice!
Beyonc just nailing it at the 2004 Super Bowl
Lady Antebellum in the 2010 World Series with the Grammy awardwinners giving a particularly nice line in close harmony
And while were talking harmony, it may be cheesy as heck but these
guys! Maybe the most moving ever?

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