National anthem

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See also List of national anthems. For the Radiohead song, see "The National Anthem".

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

1 Background
2 Types of anthem
3 Composers
4 Lyrics
5 Usage
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Background

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. It should be noted that the Japanese national anthem has older lyrics, but the melody wasn't added until the early 20th century, and it wasn't considered to be the official national anthem until 1999.

Spain's national anthem, the "Marcha Real" (The Royal March), dates from 1770. God Save the Queen, the national anthem of the United Kingdom, was first performed in 1745 under the title "God Save the King". La Marseillaise, the French anthem, was written in 1792 and adopted in 1795.

During the rise of the national 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 China, Japan, Costa Rica, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.

[edit] Types of anthem

An anthem can become a country's national anthem by a provision in the country's constitution (such as in France), by a law enacted by its legislature (as in the United States), or simply by tradition (as is the case in the United Kingdom).

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. Anthems by their nature have to be brief (the average is about one minute in length), yet many, if not most, manage to make them musically significant, and a true representation of the nation's musical character.

National anthems are traditionally either in the de facto language of the country or one of the official language or languages. Pakistan's anthem, however, is not in modern Urdu or English (its main languages) but in classical Urdu, which is not understood by most people in Pakistan except for experts on the Urdu language. India's anthem is a highly Sanskritized version of Bengali. South Africa's national anthem is unique in that five of the eleven official languages are used in the same anthem of said nation (each language comprising a stanza).

[edit] Composers

Among the very few countries with a national anthem written by a world 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 was possibly written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (though there is not a lot of evidence)
Vatican City, whose anthem Inno e Marcia Pontificale was written by Charles Gounod
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
although not a nation in the traditional sense, the European Union has adopted Ludwig van Beethoven's Ode to Joy as its anthem.

Most of the best-known national anthems were written by little-known or unknown composers:

the French anthem La Marseillaise was written by the otherwise unknown Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
the tune of the USA's The Star-Spangled Banner was taken from To Anacreon in Heaven by the otherwise unknown Englishman John Stafford Smith
there are a number of candidates for the composer of the British anthem God Save the Queen and debate has continued for over two centuries.

[edit] Lyrics

Few anthems have been praised for having lyrics of any great poetic merit. 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 (India has declared Vande Mataram, the song of its freedom struggle, as its National Song). Nobel prize winner Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote the lyrics for the Norwegian national anthem. Singapore's anthem was chosen during an inter-citizen competition in the 1950s.

Some national anthems have no official lyrics at all, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, and San Marino. (The European anthem also lacks official words, but several unofficial words have been written, as well as the lyrics of Ode to Joy have been unofficially used.)

[edit] Usage

At the commencement of international sporting events, or occasionally (such as in the United States, here pictured) at domestic events, spectators customarily stand for the duration of the national anthem.

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. At the Olympic Games and similar official international competitions 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, countries 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.

In some countries, the national anthem is played to students each day at the start of school, as an exercise in patriotism, similar to (and possibly combined with) a flag salute. 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. On most occasions, only one stanza of the anthem is played (usually the first, although Germany uses the third).

Many states also have unofficial anthems, e.g., "Sare Jahanse Achcha" in India, and nations in the cultural sense or other subnational units may also have royal anthems, presidential anthems, state anthems, or anthems for sub-national entities that are also officially recognized, notably as constitutive parts of (con)federal states, and may then technically be better described by an adjective referring to the legal status, e.g. regional anthem in the case of the regions of Belgium.

Larger entities also sometimes have anthems. There are a handful of multinational or international anthems. The Internationale is the anthem of the socialist movement and then of the world communist movement - and so also adopted by the Comintern. The tune of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is the European anthem; the United Nations and the African Union also have unofficial anthems.