To Anacreon in Heaven

The William Diamond Junior Fife and Drum Corps playing "To Anacreon in Heaven" at the West Brookfield, MA Memorial Day Parade. "To Anacreon in Heaven" is better known now as the Star-Spangled Banner.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• music
• fife
• anacreon
• william diamond

[oliviathefolkie]

It amuses me so much that the melody of the American national anthem is a tune borrowed from an old drinking song. (Incidentally, I'm American.)

[ProtectTheDamned]

Classic British Tune :)

[RiotDragonX]

@Batmanmg lol I would call you ignorant...but that's assuming you're smart enough to know what you're talking about in the first place.

[Batmanmg]

yeah, us americans like to take awful british stuff and make it our own awsome stuff.. kindof like how we took those awful british colonies and make them the awsome united states of america!!

[superdan1875]

The yanks should have to pay us royalties for this and 'my country tis of thee'

[DremordDrale]

WTF! Seriously? What's that even mean?

[XboxBasherAvailable]

@ajferet the verse containing "deutschland uber alles" is banned in germany, it was only added during the Nazi regime.

[mysteryshrimp]

The Star Spangled Banner was a poem written by Key without a tune. When it was first published, it was as a song, the tune was given as To Anachreon. It was simply because the meter fit and it was a tune that was well known, plus Key had used that tune in that manner before. A song has more staying power than a poem, so it was a common practice to assign a known tune to a verse rather than just let it stand on it's own. Look up "God Save the King". You might find that tune familiar was well.

[thepermman]

The national anthem is a big FU to the Brtiish colonial practices, Drinking houses were of few places people could publicly gather, and that is where they plotted revolution.

[luxxn]

@ajferet you are talking absolut rubbish! the melody of the german anthem was composed by Haydn for the emperor of Austria

[ajferet]

@Oliviathefolkie:

So is "Deutchland Uber Alles" (The National Anthem of Germany) :)

[pablogrifter]

In the pub is were we do our best singing ..apart from the karaoke..that still sounds like a cat be drowned, even here.