<\/p>
Y<\/span>o<\/span>u know exactly what it is as soon as you hear the opening drum-roll,\u2019 says Major Stewart Halliday, director of music, Coldstream Guards. \u2018It captures the imagination right from the start.\u2019 And the melody that follows has been capturing imaginations for well over 250 years. Yet still, after all this time since its first recorded performance in 1745, evidence for the origins of God Save the Queen\/King<\/i> remains scant.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> When that performance was given at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 28 September, London was in a state of panic. George II\u2019s Protestant reign seemed under mortal threat from the Stuart pretender Bonnie Prince Charlie \u2013 a Catholic \u2013 and his Jacobite forces. \u2018Jacobite rebellion was just under way in Scotland,\u2019 says historian Paul Monod of Middlebury College in Vermont. \u2018London was especially fearful of a supporting invasion by the French, landing in southern England. By December 1745 people were rushing to get their money out of banks\u2026and stocks tumbled.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Cometh the hour, cometh the song for a historic moment, arranged by prominent composer Thomas Arne for singing by three soloists following that evening\u2019s play at Drury Lane. The second line \u2013 \u2018God save great George our King\u2019 \u2013 <\/i>perhaps affirmed George\u2019s occupancy of the British throne in the face of the Jacobite competition. The basic melody closely resembled what we know today, but we must imagine an ornate performance graced with embellishment and improvisation according to the practice of the day. The Daily Advertiser <\/i>newspaper said the audience \u2018were agreeably surpriz\u2019d by the Gentlemen belonging to that House performing the Anthem of God save our noble King. The universal Applause it met with, being encored with repeated Huzzas, sufficiently denoted in how just an Abhorrence they hold the arbitrary Schemes of our invidious Enemies, and detest the despotick Attempts of Papal Power.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Further regular performances were given both at Drury Lane and also Covent Garden to equal acclaim. In no time, words and music were <\/span>available via such publications as The Gentleman\u2019s <\/i><\/span>Magazine<\/i> and The London Magazine. <\/i>The first, second (\u2018O Lord our God arise\u2019) <\/i>and fifth (\u2018Thy choicest gifts in store\u2019) <\/i>of the five stanzas recognised today were in place practically from the start. <\/i>Once in print, the song made its way around the country, the impact doubtless enhanced by the final defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden in April 1746 \u2013 <\/span>song of defiance transmuting into song of\u00a0victory.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In due process of time, without royal decree or Act of Parliament, God Save The King <\/i>acquired the status of a \u2018national anthem\u2019. Exactly when such a bold title would have been attached is \u2013 like so much else in this story \u2013 unclear. For decades it was simply one more popular song with patriotic overtones to place alongside Arne\u2019s Rule Britannia <\/i>and Handel\u2019s \u2018Hallelujah Chorus\u2019. \u2018Maybe its first appearance at a Coronation \u2013 George IV\u2019s in 1821 \u2013 should be seen as a milestone,\u2019 is Monod\u2019s guess. \u2018More likely, though, it was a process of slow evolution which continued through the 19th century\u2026 a development from the anthem being a celebration of the ruling monarch to a celebration of the nation.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n So what in musical terms gave these mere 41 notes such an infectious appeal? Well, ask a composer used to gauging broad-based taste. John Rutter says the anthem follows a time-honoured formula. \u2018Varied repetitions of the same melodic and rhythmic pattern always help lodge a piece in the brain,\u2019 he explains. \u2018The words fit the music perfectly, with no strange emphases. And, of course, the anthem obeys the golden rule that the climax, with a ringing top note, should be saved for very near the end. You\u2019re left feeling satisfied that the anthem has always known where it\u2019s going.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n In referring to that 1745 Drury Lane performance, the theatre\u2019s treasurer Benjamin Victor described the melody as \u2018an old anthem tune\u2019. The first evidence of the words and music being printed \u2013 with no composer named \u2013 comes in the 1744 part-song collection, Harmonia Anglicana. <\/i>But what was the \u2018old anthem tune\u2019 which apparently formed the musical basis for the song? Ultimately, it\u2019s shrouded in mystery. \u2018We shouldn\u2019t be surprised at this,\u2019 says Monod. \u2018It\u2019s extremely common for the origins of such music to be obscure, partly on account of the role often played by purely oral transmission. It was hardly unusual for public music to undergo transformation over time.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n No one delved into the possible origins of the anthem more assiduously than the indefatigable writer on music for the masses, Percy Scholes (1877-1958). His weighty God Save The King!: Its History and Romance<\/i> appeared first in 1942. Scholes considered a host of derivations for the anthem, referencing scraps of melody from here and there. Does the tune have an origin in folk song, he pondered\u2026or a carol\u2026a Genevan patriotic song\u2026a keyboard piece by the aptly named composer John Bull? Most intriguingly, he offered the possibility that the melody had been heard in a Jacobite anthem (what irony!) sung at James II\u2019s Catholic chapel in the 1680s, although it has been suggested elsewhere that it was heard even earlier, at the court of Charles II. The scholar Matthias Range suggested the tune may have been heard at James II\u2019s Coronation in 1685, featured in Henry Purcell\u2019<\/a><\/strong>s music for the acclamatory \u2018Vivats\u2019. Did the composer Maurice Greene, court composer to George II, then fully \u2018rescue\u2019 the tune for the Protestant cause in the\u00a01730s?<\/span><\/p>\n As for the origin of the words? Scholes\u2019s extensive research included considering 18th-century \u2018Jacobite glasses\u2019 (for drinking the health of the Stuarts) which bear a version of a few of the words for God Save the King<\/i>. Did all the burrowing get Scholes any closer to the truth in all this? He simply said he \u2018dare not pronounce\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s instead return to the ever-developing vogue for God Save the King <\/i>after its 1745 outings. Newspaper advertisements for public entertainments demonstrate that a performance of the anthem was considered a draw in itself. When George III was making his way to Weymouth at the time of one of his famous bouts of illness, inhabitants of Lyndhurst spontaneously burst out with God Save The King <\/i>as he passed through. In her famous diary, Fanny Burney noted that \u2018These good villagers continued singing this loyal song during [the King\u2019s] whole walk, except to shout \u201chuzza\u201d at the end of every stanza.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n Britain\u2019s fight against Napoleon inevitably enhanced the popularity of the anthem, all the more so given the desire to drown out those of Republican persuasion in Britain. When George\u00a0III survived an assassination attempt in 1800 \u2013 in the rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre \u2013 \u2018God save the King<\/i> was called for, and received with shouts of applause, waving of hats, etc,\u2019 reported one witness.<\/span><\/p>\n As the British Empire inexorably spread its reach through Victoria\u2019s reign, so too did God Save the Queen<\/i>. By 1918 a competition was being launched to find words for an extra, Empire-tinged verse to celebrate all those \u2018pink bits\u2019 on the map. An officer serving in France \u2013 Capt. Walter Inge \u2013 triumphed with lines that concluded with the now distinctly non-PC\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Brothers of each domain,<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Bound but by Freedom\u2019s chain,\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Shout, as your Sires, again \u2013<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018God save the King!\u2019<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n However, almost from the start the famous melody had become equally the property of the wider world of music. Way more than a hundred composers, from JC Bach (in 1768) to Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara (in the 1970s) have incorporated the tune into their compositions in some way, for whatever reason (see \u2018The anthem overseas\u2019, left). The list contains individuals as legendary as Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Paganini, Liszt and Debussy. By far the greater number of names are nonetheless unfamiliar to us today \u2013 the likes of James Calkin and Jane Savage, Charles Chaulion and Norman Coke-Jephcott, Eugene Thayer and Samuel de Lange.<\/span><\/p>\n More surprising is the number of countries where the melody, with different words, has been used as a ceremonial song or even a national anthem \u2013 in Sweden, Germany and Russia, for example. To this day, the tiny country of Liechtenstein uses the tune for its national anthem, or Volkshymne<\/i>. The best-known example of a \u2018borrowing\u2019 of the tune is the US\u2019s \u2018alternative anthem\u2019, America <\/i>or My country, \u2019tis of thee<\/i>. \u2018When I was a keyboard student it was one of the standard pieces on which you were expected to exercise your skills in harmony,\u2019 recalls Allan Atlas, professor emeritus at the City University of New York. \u2018Most people in the States will recognise the tune immediately, but not that many at all will recognise it as the British National Anthem. People have an affection for the melody of My country \u2019tis of thee<\/i>, but it perhaps lacks the drama of The Star-Spangled Banner<\/i><\/a><\/strong>\u2026 <\/i>whose tune also comes from Britain!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Republicanism in the UK has a long history, its roots going back to Cromwell\u2019s Commonwealth. Yet today, there\u2019s no real sign of it gaining traction despite the rocky times the monarchy has been through in recent decades. If the tide did finally turn against it, how would we The People go about selecting\/commissioning a new anthem? Or would we settle for new words to the \u2018old anthem tune\u2019? As it is, how long will it be before the Welsh and Scottish parliaments succeed in \u2018disestablishing\u2019 God Save The Queen<\/i>, so that this is no longer the United Kingdom national anthem?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWhen did God Save The Queen\/King<\/em> become the national anthem?<\/h2>\n
Who composed the tune?<\/h2>\n
Who wrote the words to God Save The King?<\/em><\/h2>\n
What other countries use the melody?<\/h2>\n