Anthem Quality

Christopher Kelen

Description

Anthem Quality is a book about the lyrics of national anthems. In this theoretical survey, Christopher Kelen deals with the general meaning of an inter-national social phenomenon – the words we sing together with our compatriots when we assert ourselves to be national subjects.

Thought of most often in the context of the Olympics or other sporting events, national anthems are a significant way for a nation and its citizens to express their identity and unity. Despite their prevalence, anthems as an expression of national self-image and culture have rarely been examined – until now. Anthem Quality analyses the lyrics of many anthems in order to explore their historical and contemporary context. Christopher Kelen’s research reveals how many of the world’s most famous and best-known national anthems, including 'The Marseillaise', 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and God Save the Queen deal with such topics as authority, religion and political devotion.

The Loyal Toast – A Personal Introduction

1. Identification of the National Subject

the idea of the anthem in the world today 

2. The Official Poem of the People

anthems, their contexts and their common characteristics

3. The Classification of Anthems

genre and speech act

4. Anthem Quality: Its Paradoxes and Parodies

the uniformity of differences and the automatisation of strong affect 

5. Choosing and Chosen

the overt and covert us and them of national devotions 

6. Anthems for a Better World

cosmopolitan and postcolonial hymns 

Conclusion: The Soul and Its Un/Official Stirrings 

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Musique
• Performing Arts
• MUSIC
• Multiple signal classification
• Performance art
• General officer
• General
• Lyrics

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 06 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783203697
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2014 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2014 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Ellen Thomas
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Jelena Stanovnik and Claire Organ
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-84150-737-8
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-368-0
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-369-7
Printed and bound by Gomer Press, UK
I know very little about the Stock Exchange. I know, of course, that stockbrokers wear very shiny top-hats, which they remove when they sing ‘God Save the King’, as they invariably do in a crisis.
— A.A. Milne, ‘High Finance’
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, sed dulcius pro patria vivere, et dulcissimum pro patria bibere. Ergo, bibamus pro salute patriae.
— anonymous nineteenth-century toast
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
— Oscar Wilde
The dead shall live, the living die, And music shall untune the sky.
— John Dryden, ‘A Song for St Cecilia’s Day’
Contents
Acknowledgements
The Loyal Toast – A Personal Introduction
1. Identification of the National Subject the idea of the anthem in the world today
2. The Official Poem of the People anthems, their contexts and their common characteristics
3. The Classification of Anthems genre and speech act
4. Anthem Quality: Its Paradoxes and Parodies the uniformity of differences and the automatisation of strong affect
5. Choosing and Chosen the overt and covert us and them of national devotions
6. Anthems for a Better World cosmopolitan and postcolonial hymns
Conclusion: The Soul and Its Un/Official Stirrings181
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my collaborators on various anthems-related projects: Sasa Pavkovic, Merima Didjarevic and Ruth Jordana Pison.
Thanks also to Benedict Anderson, John Hines, Andrew Sewell, Paisley Livingston, Matthew Gibson, Glenn Timmermans and Carol Archer for their advice on various aspects of the work.
The author acknowledges the assistance of the University of Macau for sabbatical leave in 2011–2012 and for funding research trips contributing to the production of this book: to Australia in 2002, to the Philippines in 2009, and to the Balkans in 2010 and 2011.
The Loyal Toast – A Personal Introduction
Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, O nation not desired; Before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord come upon you, before the day of the Lord’s anger come upon you. Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgement; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.
(Zephania 2: 1–3)
When I was a primary school boy (in the sixties), perhaps as just recompense for the half pint of milk (warm or cold, depending on the season) that the crown provided, I was expected to perform certain demonstrations of fealty on a regular basis. I had to say the Apostle’s creed and the Lord’s prayer; I had to salute the flag with the Union Jack in the corner. I had to stand to attention and I had to sing various songs, the most regular of which was ‘God Save the Queen’. The stanza of the song, which we sang and which must be firmly committed to memory by any Australian today over the age of forty, was:
God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen, God save the Queen; Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us: God save the Queen.
(Bristow, 576)
Australian boys got a chance at independent practice of drinking habits in the playground with the milk at recess (play lunch or little lunch depending on your state of origin). Boys could polish off the surplus the more sheepish girls left behind. The duties of the wrist (saluting, sculling) seemed to coalesce in the lyrics of what was then an Australian patriotic song, ‘Advance Australia Fair’: this was ‘wealth for toil’. Ours truly was a land of plenty, with often enough more milk than any of us could drink. Raising the wrist in this patriotic manner connected us in a way we were not yet up to imagining, with a long continuity, perhaps beginning with William Charles Wentworth’s famous Anniversary Day (26 th January) toast of 1825: ‘the land boys, we live in’ (Manning Clark, 1968, 55). Truly, we were drinking our inheritance, albeit in commendable (bone and tooth strengthening) fashion.
Toiling at being a primary school pupil and getting paid in milk was training for life’s later rewards-for-the-diligent. The theme of guzzling down your entitlement, as a kind of proof of toil and the rights it establishes, was echoed more dramatically in the last lines of that iconic outback song ‘The Overlander’/‘The Queensland Drover’ (depending on which refrain you prefer): ‘And a full year’s cheque pours down the neck/Of many a Queensland drover’ (Radic, 1983, 29). Six o’clock closing, with all that attended the all-male consumption of as much beer as possible in less than an hour, was still a thing of the recent past. In that world the working day finished at five, the pubs closed at six. Public bars were built to be hosed out. The ladies had a ladies’ lounge. Enough said.
The milk and the beer: these dreams of, and realizations of, plenty had in common an unofficial if not subversive element. Here was the frenzied moment at the trough. Here was the repressed, bubbling up to be requited. This was the moment no convict overseer or teacher could properly control. In terms of Manning Clark’s insistent dichotomy throughout his six volume history of Australia, here were the workers and the underlings wresting their carnival moment from the Protestant ascendancy. A dream of plenty as icon of national identity did not quite constitute an other-than-British self-conception. The picture of a feed (or a drink or a smoke) as something to share was however an echo of pioneering days which the Depression and the privations of the Second World War had done nothing to diminish: ‘Eat what’s on your plate’, my generation were forever being told by our depression-and-war generation parents. Now there is plenty on the plate and the dutiful nation tends a little to obesity.
So much for the milk accompanying the song. I make no claims for my precocity as a student of culture in noting that, before the words were fully automatised for me, I did find myself wondering a few things about ‘God Save the Queen’. Principally I recall wondering from what it was this queen needed saving? I am sure that mine was not the only childhood troubled this way. Did she need saving from death? Was a monarch a kind of demi-god; one capable of immortality if only given some moral support? Or failing that would the singing thing be generally helpful from the point of view of regal longevity? Did she need saving from the foreign hoards? Or might that have been the case until recently? Or might it still be the case, elsewhere? Was she or had she been under real personal threat, in the line of carrying out her duties? As time went on and no news came from the front, this seemed less and less likely.
Cynically one might have wondered if she needed saving from herself, from her silly situation, from our dreadful singing? Did she need saving from God; being there by the grace of God, as it said around her head on the back of the coins (D.G. = Dei Gratia ). The God in the Old Testament would certainly have been able to remove her, being the kind who smites and does all sorts of vengeful things. It was possible that she needed various kinds of saving, from herself and the natural wicked proclivities of humans in general. In other words she needed saving because she was like us. Saving from sin: that would have to be the guiding theme. The power of redemption is there to save you from yourself. This sounded more New Testament. It might seem paradoxical that such an exemplary character would need to be saved from her own sinfulness. Until of course you realised that this was part of her exemplariness: it was not save this poor sinful queen , it was even the queen needs saving , viz. even the best of us needs redemption via the forgiveness of a Saviour. Lucky thing that the queen happened to be head of the church!
Reflecting on these arrangements, all these years later, it seems that we, the singers of ‘God Save the Queen’, down on the lowest rung, are asking or telling God to look after the queen. Does she need that kind of support? Does God need to be told to look after those he has appointed? This ‘divine right’ angle on the story surely had to do with fairy-tale royalty. It had to do with a reified feudal conception of society such as one met in storybooks. Here one is reminded of Benedict Anderson’s first paradox of the national: the faux antique of nations (1991, 9–46 passim). Our idea of how we are or ought to be governed owes more to children’s storybooks than most imagine. Perhaps reminded of the evildoings to be overcome by the partisans of the natural orders of the storybook, there remained the nagging feeling that the queen needed to be rescued; the sort of thing, after all, that knights in shining armour could be relied upon to do.
The song was a kind of prayer; an instruction to God to look after the queen. I do not think it occurred to me that there was any element of self-interest here, a long reign making for stable society, or anything of that nature. It was just that we the subjects had a genuine and benevolent interest in the welfare of our queen. Something reciprocal was no doubt implie