4th of July Series – “To Anacreon in Heaven” by John Stafford Smith

The music of our national anthem was written by a British man for a London gentleman’s club called the Anacreontic Society for their “constitutional” song. The society was an 18th century gentleman’s club for amateur musicians. Their president, Ralph Tomlinson, created the lyrics to “To Anacreon in Heaven” and John Stafford Smith, the composer behind our national anthem, created the tune which was later purposed for “The Star-Spangled Banner”. The society was named after Anacreon, a Greek poet famous for his drinking songs and hymns. Perhaps appropriately then, “To Anacreon in Heaven” became a drinking song in the states during the 18th and  19th centuries. After Francis Scott Key, a young lawyer from Georgetown, witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, he created his poem,  “Defence of Fort M’Henry”. He then gave this poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, who saw that the poem fit well to “To Anacreon in Heaven”. Nicholson took the poem to printer and soon it became popular. It was Thomas Carr, a music shop owner in Baltimore, who printed the song with the title “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

Read more about it here and here.

So, presented here is the origin of the music, not the lyrics, of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, sung by a men’s choir, as it would have been done by the Anacreonitc Society.

Now, check out my favorite composer, John Williams, conducting the National Symphony Orchestra, the U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, the Joint Armed Forces Chorus and the Choral Arts Society of Washington performing a new arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner”.