Star Spangled Banner Vs Hail Columbia!

[Air tree]

I was just thinking of this, I'm not very patriotic by any means, but I was looking at the history of American patriotic songs and I apparently Hail Columbia was the go to song, much like The Star Spangled Banner is today.


But man, listening to Hail Columbia and I got to say it's a much better song to be honest..

I prefer it to the star spangled banner purely on song quality, to be honest, and it still feels a tad more patriotic.





random thought.../endthread

[nugglets]

The Star Spangled Banner is honestly a pretty bad song, musically, and that's because it was set to the tune of what was basically a song written for drunk, amateur musicians to sing at their social club.

So many countries have better anthems.

[Spopepro]

Agreed. Add to the list my pet peeve: people who drag the damn thing out and make it a performance about themselves. The anthem isn't about you, so just lead it, be swift about it and move things along. Fastest anthems I've ever played were under Col. John Bourgeois.

There are two treatments that I think are noteworthy because of quality. First is Stravinsky's treatment. It doesn't sound so off to modern ears, but at the time it was scandalous. And nothing says America like an expatriated Russian genius living in LA dousing his depression in a fifth of scotch a day.

The other is the Stanford band arrangement. I think maybe they started out just trying to be over the top different, but by intention or by accident, they stumbled upon one of the most reverent treatments possible, I think. I had a hard time finding an ok recording on YouTube. This isn't the best trumpet I've heard, and you can't really hear the piccolo solo line in the b verses, but it's what I've got.

[chyros]

Almost all anthems are bad, they're usually boring as ****. My own country's one is especially sleep-inducing, very slow-tempo and pompous xD .

The Russian one is pretty excellent, though. They know how to write anthems for sure, even though it's very young it's a proper anthem.

[nugglets]

Almost all anthems are bad, they're usually boring as ****. My own country's one is especially sleep-inducing, very slow-tempo and pompous xD .

The Russian one is pretty excellent, though. They know how to write anthems for sure, even though it's very young it's a proper anthem.

Russia, Poland, and Germany (Haydn) have spectacular anthems. There are some other really interesting ones, too. Uruguay's is really different and cool. Japan, Austria and France are all pretty good.

And Spopepro, I can't believe I haven't heard the Stravinsky rendition before. I love Stravinsky. That was really cool, thanks for sharing.

[chyros]

Almost all anthems are bad, they're usually boring as ****. My own country's one is especially sleep-inducing, very slow-tempo and pompous xD .

The Russian one is pretty excellent, though. They know how to write anthems for sure, even though it's very young it's a proper anthem.

Russia, Poland, and Germany (Haydn) have spectacular anthems. There are some other really interesting ones, too. Uruguay's is really different and cool. Japan, Austria and France are all pretty good.

And Spopepro, I can't believe I haven't heard the Stravinsky rendition before. I love Stravinsky. That was really cool, thanks for sharing.

I find the German one to be much too happy. The French one is very iconic but again it's almost giddy. The lyrics are completely psycho by the way, one of my French colleagues pointed that out once xD .

[nugglets]

Almost all anthems are bad, they're usually boring as ****. My own country's one is especially sleep-inducing, very slow-tempo and pompous xD .

The Russian one is pretty excellent, though. They know how to write anthems for sure, even though it's very young it's a proper anthem.

Russia, Poland, and Germany (Haydn) have spectacular anthems. There are some other really interesting ones, too. Uruguay's is really different and cool. Japan, Austria and France are all pretty good.

And Spopepro, I can't believe I haven't heard the Stravinsky rendition before. I love Stravinsky. That was really cool, thanks for sharing.

I find the German one to be much too happy. The French one is very iconic but again it's almost giddy. The lyrics are completely psycho by the way, one of my French colleagues pointed that out once xD .

haha ya... the lyrics are pretty brutal, but given the history not all that unexpected. During the French Revolution, the country was pretty much constantly under siege from all sides for something like 25 years.