Many years ago, maybe 70, I was playing some LP’s of old British songs, (Then, there were no CD’s or cassettes, and LP’s had just replaced 10” 78 rpm records), and I ran across one titled, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” It had a catchy melody, and I did a bit of research, to see who this ‘Anacreon’ was. It was a poem written by a Greek, who lived from 582 BC to 485 BC and died at age 97. Long time ago! In 1776, a British composer, wrote a melody for the poem, and even today, there is a “Anacreontic Society,” who sings this song as a sort of theme for its gentlemen members, who enjoy a good drink when they meet. You can hear a group of guys singing it if you look it up on their web site.
Why do I mention this? Because it’s part of American history. During the War of 1812, when the Brits torched the White House, and did all sorts of damage here, Francis Scott Key, was sitting on a battlement overlooking Baltimore, and he wrote a poem titled, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” No music, just the poem. Eventually, music was found to accompany Key’s poem, which officially became our National Anthem in 1931, although President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order in 1916, designating it to be so. Why did it take so long? Because first of all, it is virtually un-singable, since its range of notes make it difficult to sing, and then of course, who knows what “The rocket’s red glare,” and “bombs bursting in mid-air,” means? We all try to sing it though, and stand at attention with our hands over our hearts, and men remove their hats when it is played. I do too, although it does pain me when I hear the French and British anthems, which are so beautiful and expressive. The “Marcellaise,” and “God Save The King,” are superb.
Here’s the point of this. For a hundred years and more, America had no National Anthem. Katherine Lee Bates, an English Professor at Wellesley College in Newark New Jersey, at age 33, went to Colorado Springs to teach, and many of the mountains, and sheer beauty of Colorado’s sights she witnessed, were undoubtedly climaxed when she took a trip to the top of Pike’s Peak, from which the eye can see for over a hundred miles distant. Bates was so awed, that she wrote a poem she titled, “Pikes Peak.” It was published in 1895, under the title of “America,” Samuel Ward a choir director and organist at Grace Episcopal Church, also in Newark New Jersey, wrote the music accompanying Bate’s Poem in 1910, and it instantly became the wonderful, “America the Beautiful,” we all know today.
‘What’s this got to do with anything?” Here’s what. Our National Anthem’s music, is exactly the same; note for note, as “To Anacreon in Heaven,” written in 1776 to accompany a poem written probably in 500 B.C. Here we are singing a song difficult to sing, about things we mostly know nothing about, to music written before we even became a nation, which today is still a drinking song for a Gentlemen’s club, in England.
Now consider the words for “America the Beautiful.”
“Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains’ majesty,
Above the fruited plain.
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee.
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea.”
Or the second verse.
“Oh beautiful, for pilgrim’s feet,
Whose stern impassioned stress,
A Thorofare for freedom beat,
Across the wilderness.
America! Americas!
God mend thy every flaw.
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.”
The third verse.
“Oh beautiful, for heroes proved,
In liberating strife.
Who more than self,
Their country loved,
And mercy more than life.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.”
Could there possibly be a better National Anthem, than America the Beautiful? We never had one till 1931. Why not change it to something beautiful, descriptive, and easily sung?
Don Stott – don@coloradogold.com