We need to keep our national anthem. It isn’t difficult to sing. The tune was sung by everyone when it was just a drinking song. Well, it was sung by everyone who drank wine, anyway. It’s odd that when it accompanied the act of imbibing the song was considered easy and fun to sing. But, later, when the tune was attached to something more sobering, the fun of singing it and people’s ability to sing it were diminished.
To be fair, when the tune took on more serious connotations it also moved into mainstream America. The song praising wine suddenly no longer was exclusive to the barroom or parlor. Mainstream is a dirty word in my vocabulary. The surest way to lessen, water-down and common-ize anything is to mainstream it. But that’s an open sore to be dealt with another time and, maybe, not here.
The range of the anthem is 12 tones. A human adult who learns how to use the voice in a natural way should have access to that many notes. Most military bands play the tune in the key of B-flat. Sometimes we hear it in the key of G. Since most women are sopranos, the B-flat key (taking the voice up to F, just before the register shift) should do nicely.
One of my favorite outings is to the local Scottish Highland Games. I love bagpipes. I usually find my way to the stadium for the entry of the mass pipe bands. After they enter, the national anthems of the United States and the British Isles are played and sung by all the people in the stands. Not surprisingly, a large number of attendees are from Scotland and England. I remember the first time I heard all of these individuals singing the anthems together in the stands. It was like a movie musical. What a beautiful sound. No one had problems negotiating any of the notes. Why would this be? It is because these people have more of a tradition of singing folk melodies, and more of a tradition of music education and singing in schools than we do. It also has something to do with the pitch level at which people speak in Britain, and with the way people use their speaking voices, in general, though the younger generation is losing some of this. The memory of the first sound of those lilting voices in the stadium stands remains in my ear to this day.
If elementary school children were encouraged to sing folk-songs and other level-appropriate and range-appropriate song material in their regular classrooms on a daily basis, and if all schools had quality elementary choirs, we would have a country populated with natural singers who could sing the anthem with no problem. (This is another open sore/soapbox topic with me.) Read it this way: TURN OFF THE POP AND ROCK and turn on a little of everything else. We have such a rich heritage of folk, jazz and classical music in America. It’s a shame we disregard it so.
The way I see it, our national tune is dynamic, stirring, noble and strong. It starts with a definitive 5-3-1, and builds right back up the octave. (Nothing can keep us down.) Then we touch on the 10th, only to return to the interval of the 10th more definitively, then our 8-5-3-1, once again, with resolve. Then, we repeat 5-3-1 (ever stronger and more resolute in our patriotism). Then we depart to the 10th, and hover above the strength and grounding below us between the 10th and the 12th, still strong regardless of this departing flight, because we are rooted to the top octave. We finish the song on the top 5th (because battles of honor remain to be fought and won and our work, like our country and like our spirit, is not finished). And that’s just my interpretation of the music. Add the words, and the Star-Spangled Banner can’t be topped.
The words of the anthem provide us with a glimpse of history and, unfortunately, still speak of the bombs and rockets inherent in times of war. The text is current. I think it beats “To Anacreon in Heaven” by a major long shot.
More on the origins of the National Anthem may be found here http://www.colonialmusic.org/Resource/Anacreon.htm
and here http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm065.html
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