Posted on 08/26/2004 7:31:00 PM PDT by Destro
Article Last Updated: Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 3:38:24 AM PST
National anthem subdued at Olympics
By Wayne Lee Gay
FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
WHERE'S the bombast?
As American gymnasts and swimmers have hopped on and off the gold-medal stand at the Olympic games, you may have noticed the subdued, delicate version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" being used this year.
Most notably, you have to strain to hear the quiet strings playing the melody that goes with "And the rockets' red glare."
Is this a political statement? Did someone deliberately downplay the natural bombast of the music? Was it an attempt to present a kinder, gentler America in a world that's questioning U.S. foreign policy?
The answer is a simple no.
The International Olympic Committee chose the anthem recordings for each of the 200-plus nations, though each country had the right of final approval.
Slovakian-born composer Peter Breiner, 47, arranged and recorded this soft-sell version of the U.S. tune in the mid-1990s as part of a package of about 200 national anthems (great listening, huh?).
In light of this already completed project, the committee asked Breiner to update the collection for the 2004 Olympics. And the U.S. Olympic Committee accepted Breiner's arrangement, apparently without objection.
Though Breiner paid attention to the words that go with each anthem, he says the music was his main guide -- hence the soft setting of the phrase that Americans usually connect with rockets and bombs.
The music should have contrast, Breiner says. It's not just about glories of war. There should be contemplation, too.
The melody of The Star-Spangled Banner originated as a drinking song in 18th-century England and was adapted to patriotic words by Francis Scott Key in 1814.
So my question is, what was congress thinking? Was this a plot by the 1931 Democrats in congress to make our anthem unsingable?
Listen to a web broadcast on a discussion of the history of the American anthem @ http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2001/11/20011123_b_main.asp
The anthem isn't unsingable. It's just that too many of the people singing it in public just are plain awful.
Cool - just listening to them play Elvis reading "America the Beautiful" in concert as a poem.
A good arranger would use lots of strings and brass!
Yeah, I have been very annoyed that the Anthem has been so subdued, almost melancholy. What the Hell???
I think it's a beautiful version. Most yrs they seem to rush through it, and this year it seems slower and more reverent.
The national anthem should be changed to the theme from "Peter Gunn." And it should be played LOUD.
Yea....we bad.
Maybe back then in the olden days when people sang in parlors and took music lessons they could sing it?
I find I can't remember the words as its played.
I agree with the article. The Olympic's version is a weak musical arrangement of the National Anthem.
It has no strength.
Haven't watched much Olympics so haven't heard this rendition, but Roger Hedgecock complained about it today when filling in for El Rushbo. Violins?
Eh. The version they're using at the Olympics is too soft and way too slow. I noticed it the first time I heard it, and complained about it to my son. He agreed.
I would not mind if it was scrapped all together for a new anthem.
I thought the quiet strings were nice, but I would've liked a more profound, "O say does that star bangled banner yet wave .. ff.
Seriously. Who decided how are Anthem would be played? The anti-American Greeks? It's hideous.
How do you make such a stirring song milquetoast? They've done just thought and it is terrible.
And too many try to sing it in a key that doesn't fit their range.
I noticed this kinder, gentler anthem the first time we won a gold metal. I thought someone had deliberately made it less "militant" so we wouldn't offend anyone. The Star-Spangled Banner played by strings? Interesting, and pretty, but it was weird.
(And put me down as voting against violins during rockets glaring and bombs bursting.)
The Olympics version is respectful enough for wartime. The Rockets red glare section should be quieter (so we can have the climax at the end) but the strings alone is too quiet.
During one of the sports they did actually play a different version that was mostley brass but I forget which event.
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