Home » Music » Opera » Anthems -- "The Heaven-Rescued Land"

Anthems -- "The Heaven-Rescued Land"

©

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music defines "anthem" as "A choral setting of a religious or moral text in English, usually for liturgical performance" and notes that it derived "as an extra at the end of Matins and Evensong in the Church of England." Of course, many countries have their own national anthems that are not written on English (notably, Lily Pons said that the greatest moment of her life was when she sang the "Marseillaise" from the balcony of the Paris Opera House after the Liberation of Paris). And anthems, depending upon circumstance, may not even be sung in their original language, for example in Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims, in which Lord Sidney sings the only song he knows, "God Save the King," in Italian...an initially comic or even trite moment that becomes solemn as his simple sincerity does the song full justice. When Pinkerton and Sharpless toast "America forever" (in English), in Puccini's 1904 Madama Butterfly they do it against an orchestral snatch from "The Star-Spangled Banner," but the anthem is not quoted in verse.

Operatic composers of English anthems, in the dictionary sense, include Handel; in the North American nationalistic sense, I can only think of Quebecois operetta composer Calixa Lavallée, whose 1880 "O Canada" became the Canadian anthem. Well, we could count John Philip Sousa, I suppose, whose wordless 1897 "The Stars and Stripes Forever" is probably one of our most famous marches, but who also wrote politically influenced operettas and opera. His 1913 The Glass-Blowers is recently finding revival about the U.S. in the first productions since the year it premiered, and concerns the Spanish-American War; his most famous operetta is perhaps the 1895 El Capitán, which was revived in Houston for the Bicentennial.

Some articles back, I considered the powerful influence of hymns and church settings in American opera, and now as the country gears for war, I cannot help but notice how many of our anthems and anthem-like songs' lyrics are, as Grove noted, religious as well as nationalistic. Rather than plumb operas for anthems that are not there, let us spend this week considering the texts of some of these songs, which most Americans may not really know past their first verses.

Who could miss the profusion of flags that sprang up on homes, cars, office and public buildings, within hours of the events of September 11th? In all truth, I had never before been especially moved by the symbolism of a piece of cloth, but the first time I left my apartment to find nearly 25 flags along my New York City block alone and burst into tears, I have finally understood how Francis Scott Key's four-verse "The Star-Spangled Banner" was adopted as our national anthem. Let us ignore that it was set to an English drinking song (and that a radio survey some years ago demonstrated that, the drunker one becomes, the easier it is to make that top note at the end...!) The song is also a vow to vanquish a foe that would destroy our freedom: "And where is the band who so vauntingly swore/That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion/A home and a country should leave us no more?" The anthem concludes with a verse calling upon us to "Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation./Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,/And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'"

The copyright of the article Anthems -- "The Heaven-Rescued Land" in Opera is owned by . Permission to republish Anthems -- "The Heaven-Rescued Land" in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.