Information about National Anthem

For the Radiohead song, see "The National Anthem".

A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a country's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.

Anthems rose to prominence in Europe during the nineteenth century; the oldest national anthem is "Het Wilhelmus", the Dutch national anthem, written between 1568 and 1572 during the Eighty Years War. The Japanese anthem, Kimi ga Yo, has its lyrics taken from a Kamakura period poem, yet it was not set to music until 1880.^[1] God Save the Queen/King, the national anthem of the United Kingdom, was first performed in 1745 under the title "God Save the King". Spain's national anthem, the "Marcha Real" (The Royal March), dates from 1770. La Marseillaise, the French anthem, was written in 1792 and adopted in 1795.

During the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most remaining nations adopted an anthem upon attaining nationhood. Because of European colonial influence, many were influenced in a similar way to adopt a national anthem, and thus several anthems outside Europe are in the European style. Only a handful of non-European countries have anthems rooted in indigenous traditions, including India, China, Japan, Costa Rica, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.

An anthem can become a country's national anthem by a provision in the country's constitution, by a law enacted by its legislature or simply by tradition. The majority of national anthems are either marches or hymns in style. The countries of Latin America tend towards more operatic pieces, while a handful of countries use a simple fanfare.

National anthems are usually either in the most common language of the country, whether de facto or official. India's anthem, Jana Gana Mana, is a highly Sanskritized version of Bengali. States with more than one national language may offer several versions of their anthem: For instance, Switzerland's anthem has different lyrics for each of the country's four official languages (French, German, Italian and Romansh). On the other hand, South Africa's national anthem is unique in that five of the eleven official languages are used in the same anthem (each language comprising a stanza). Another multilingual country, Spain, has no words in its anthem, La Marcha Real, although in 2007 a national competition to write words was launched^[2]. Former military dictator General Francisco Franco replaced the original words with words considered fascist, which were dropped after his death.

Composers

Among the very few countries with a national anthem written by a renowned composer are:

• Germany, whose anthem "Das Lied der Deutschen" uses a melody written by Joseph Haydn and words by Hoffmann von Fallersleben;
• Austria, whose national anthem "Land der Berge, Land am Strome" is traditionally attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;
• Vatican City, whose anthem "Inno e Marcia Pontificale" was written by Charles Gounod;
• Hungary, whose anthem "Isten, áldd meg a magyart" was written by Ferenc Erkel;
• Newfoundland (since 1949 no longer a separate state but a province of federal Canada) whose national anthem "Ode to Newfoundland" was by Sir Hubert Parry;
• India, whose anthem is the first of five stanzas of an ode composed and scored by Rabindranath Tagore;
• although not a nation in the traditional sense, the European Union and the Council of Europe which is a separate international organization than the EU have adopted Ludwig van Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" arranged by famous conductor Herbert von Karajan as the European anthem

Several national anthems were written by little-known or unknown composers:

• the French anthem "La Marseillaise" was written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an officer in the French Army;
• the tune of the United States anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner" was taken from "To Anacreon in Heaven" by Englishman John Stafford Smith. The lyrics were composed by a local lawyer Francis Scott Key;
• the Italian anthem "Il Canto degli Italiani" was composed by Michele Novaro;
• the Canadian anthem "O Canada" was composed by Calixa Lavallee;
• there are a number of possible composers of the British anthem "God Save the King/Queen," and debate has continued for over two centuries.

Lyrics

A few anthems have been composed by Nobel prize winners. India and Bangladesh adopted two songs written by the Nobel prize winner and noted poet/author Rabindranath Tagore as their national anthems, Jana Gana Mana and Amar Shonar Bangla, respectively. Nobel prize winner Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote the lyrics for the Norwegian national anthem Ja, vi elsker dette landet.

Some national anthems have no official lyrics at all, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, and San Marino.^[3]

Usage

National anthems are used in a wide array of contexts. They are played on national holidays and festivals, and have also come to be closely connected with sporting events. During sporting competitions, such as the Olympic Games, the national anthem of the gold medal winner is played at each medal ceremony. National anthems are also played before games in many sports leagues. The use of a national anthem outside of its country, however, is dependent on the international recognition of that country. Thus, entities such as Taiwan which is not recognized by the Olympics as a separate nation but must compete as Chinese Taipei, its National Banner Song is used instead of its national anthem.^[4]

In some countries, the national anthem is played to students each day at the start of school as an exercise in patriotism. In other countries the anthem may be played in a theatre before a play or in a cinema before a movie. Many radio and television stations have adopted this and play the national anthem when they sign on in the morning and again when they sign off at night.

Nations in the cultural sense or subnational units may also have royal anthems, presidential anthems, state anthems, or anthems for officially recognized constitutive parts of federal or confederal states. These may be better described as "regional anthems", as in the case of the regions of Belgium.

Multinational countries such as the United Kingdom and Denmark compete in sporting events with multiple teams, such as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland soccer teams for the former and a distinct Faroe Island side in addition to the national team in the case of the latter. This poses problems with the tradition of pre-match anthems, since neither England nor mainland Denmark have regional anthems and use the national anthems, God Save the Queen and Der er et yndigt land respectively.

Larger entities also sometimes have anthems. There are a handful of multinational or international anthems. The Internationale is the anthem of the socialist movement, the world communist movement, the Comintern and for a time by the Soviet Union. The tune of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is the European anthem; the United Nations^[5] and the African Union^[6] also have unofficial anthems.

See also

• List of national anthems
• List of patriotic songs
• Anthem
• Songs

References

External links

• Music, lyrics and sheets of all countries anthems
• Recordings of countries' anthems around the world by the US Navy band
• A collection of national and territorial anthems in mp3 formats. Vocal renditions are included.
• NationalAnthems.us, A forum on national anthems containing background information and links to downloadable anthems.