The National Anthem booth at the 2005 Floriade, Canberra – on the J. Verbeeck fairground organ. |
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National anthem of Australia |
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| Lyrics | Peter Dodds McCormick, 1878 |
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| Music | Peter Dodds McCormick, 1878 |
| Adopted | 1984 |
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Advance Australia Fair (Instrumental)
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"Advance Australia Fair" is the official national anthem of Australia. Created by the Scottish-born composer, Peter Dodds McCormick, the song was first performed in 1878, but did not gain its status as the official anthem until 1984. Until then, the song was sung in Australia as a patriotic song. In order for the song to become the anthem, it had to face a vote between the Royal anthem God Save the Queen, the "unofficial anthem" Waltzing Matilda and Song of Australia. Other songs and marches have been influenced by Advance Australia Fair, such as the Australian Vice-Regal salute.
The earliest known sound recording of Advance Australia Fair appears in "The Landing of the Australian Troops in Egypt", circa 1916, a short commercial recording dramatising arrival of the Australian troops in Egypt en route to Gallipoli.[1]
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The original song Advance Australia Fair was composed by Peter Dodds McCormick under the pen-name 'Amicus' (which means 'friend' in Latin), in the late 19th century, and first performed by Andrew Fairfax at a Highland Society function in Sydney on 30 November 1878. The song quickly gained popularity and an amended version was sung by a choir of 10,000 at the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. In 1907 the Australian Government awarded McCormick £100 for his composition.
In a letter to R. B. Fuller Esq., dated 1 August 1913, McCormick described the circumstances that inspired him to write Advance Australia Fair:
One night I attended a great concert in the Exhibition Building, when all the National Anthems of the world were to be sung by a large choir with band accompaniment. This was very nicely done, but I felt very aggravated that there was not one note for Australia. On the way home in a bus, I concocted the first verse of my song & when I got home I set it to music. I first wrote it in the Tonic Sol-fa notation, then transcribed it into the Old Notation, & I tried it over on an instrument next morning, & found it correct. Strange to say there has not been a note of it altered since. Some alteration has been made in the wording, but the sense is the same. It seemed to me to be like an inspiration, & I wrote the words & music with the greatest ease.[2]
Before its adoption as Australia's national anthem, Advance Australia Fair saw considerable use elsewhere. For example, Australia's national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, used it to announce its news bulletins until 1952.[3] It was also frequently played at the start or end of official functions. Towards the end of World War II, it was played in picture theatres after "God Save the Queen" and the American national anthem.[4]
In 1951 there was a competition for a new national anthem to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Federation of Australia. The entry by the Austrian-born conductor Henry Krips, This Land of Mine, won the competition, but it was decided to make no change to the status quo.[5]
Up until 1974 God Save the Queen was Australia's national anthem. In 1973 the Whitlam government decided that the country needed an anthem that could represent Australia with "distinction" and started a competition to find one. The Australia Council for the Arts organised the contest, which was dubbed the Australian National Anthem Quest. The contest was held in two stages, the first seeking lyrics and the second music, each having an A$5,000 prize for the winning entry. On the recommendation of the Council for the Arts, none of the new entries were felt worthy enough, so the contest ended with the suggestions for Advance Australia Fair, Waltzing Matilda and Song of Australia.[6]
In 1974 the Whitlam government then performed a nationwide opinion survey to determine the song to be sung on occasions of national significance. Conducted through the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it polled 60,000 people nationally. Advance Australia Fair was chosen and was enshrined as the national song, to be used on all occasions excepting those of a specifically regal nature. A spokesman for the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam stated that the Government regarded the tune primarily as the national anthem.
In January 1976 the Fraser government reinstated God Save the Queen for royal, vice-regal, defence, and loyal toast occasions, and made plans to conduct a national poll to find a song for use on ceremonial occasions when it was desired to mark a separate Australian identity. This was conducted as a plebiscite to choose the National Song, held as an optional additional question in the 1977 referendum on various issues. Advance Australia Fair received 43.29% of the vote, defeating the three alternatives: Waltzing Matilda (28.28%), Song of Australia (9.65%), and the existing national anthem God Save the Queen (18.78%).[7]
Advance Australia Fair, with modified lyrics from the original (See #Development of lyrics), was adopted as the Australian national anthem on 19 April 1984 by a proclamation by the Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen,[8] on a recommendation by the Labor government of Bob Hawke.
The lyrics of the anthem officially adopted in 1984 are as follows:[9]
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Even though any copyright of Peter Dodds McCormick's original lyrics has expired, as he died in 1916, the Commonwealth of Australia does copyright the official lyrics and particular arrangements of music. Non-commercial use of the anthem is permitted without case-by-case permission, but commercial use does require permission.[10]
The wordless orchestral version of Advance Australia Fair that is now regularly played for Australian victories at international sporting medal ceremonies, and at the openings of major domestic sporting, cultural and community events, is by Tommy Tycho, an immigrant from Hungary. It was first commissioned by ABC Records in 1984 and then televised by Channel 10 in 1986 in their Australia Day Broadcast, featuring Julie Anthony as the soloist.[11]
Since the original lyrics were written in 1879, there have been several changes. Some of these were minor while others have significantly changed the song. The original song was four verses long. For its adoption as the national anthem, the song was cut from four verses to two. The first verse was kept largely as the 1879 original, except for the change in the first line from "Australia's sons let us rejoice" to "Australians all let us rejoice".[9] The second, third and fourth verses of the original were dropped, in favour of a modified version of the new third verse which was sung at Federation in 1901.[12]
The original lyrics published in 1879 were as follows:[13]
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The 1901 Federation version of the third verse was originally sung as:
Both the lyrics and melody of the official anthem have been criticised in some quarters as being dull and unendearing to the Australian people. National Party Senator Sandy Macdonald said in 2001 that Advance Australia Fair is so boring that the nation risks singing itself to sleep, with boring music and words impossible to understand.[14] His Parliamentary colleague Peter Slipper thought Australia should consider another anthem.[15]
In 2001, Australian Labor Party politician Craig Emerson criticised the archaic word "girt" in the national anthem's lyrics by saying, "This must rank as one of the worst lines of any national anthem. That Australia is an island should be pretty obvious, but is our anthem girt by a sea of mediocrity?"[16] Later in 2001, Kim Beazley, the then Labor leader, defended the lyric saying, "I stand up on behalf of girt. Girt by sea needs to be celebrated and if we can't do that regularly when Australia enjoys its sporting triumphs, at the beginning of our school assemblies and I think something would be lost that is new and decent and essential to the Australian character."[17]
The anthem's lyrics and the phrase "girt by sea" have also drawn criticism in the media. In 2008, the Herald Sun published an article headed Time girt went down the gurgler, arguing that the anthem's lyrics were largely irrelevant to modern Australian life and that "girt by sea" is "simply an antiquated way of making the obvious statement that we live on an island." The article suggested replacing the first four lines of the anthem with:
A Christian movement, Awakening, in the 1990s substituted an alternative second verse naming Christ and promoting Christian values[19] An archived claim that the verse was sung in the 1930s at Smithton, Tasmania, is unsubstantiated and has been withdrawn from the original website. It was sung during the Global March for Jesus in 1998[19] and again at World Youth Day 2008 with the qualification 'This is not the official verse, but a Catholic adaptation of the Australian National Anthem'.[20]
The version was later controversially adopted by some Christian private schools for singing as a hymn at internal assemblies.[21] The substituted verse did not appear in the 1879 publication of Peter Dodds McCormick’s original work. The office of Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that, under national protocols, the anthem should not be modified and alternative words should not be used.[21]
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