God Save the Queen
God Save the Queen / God Save the King | |
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Title in German | "God save the queen" / "God save the king" |
country |
United Kingdom , New Zealand , Commonwealth Realms |
Usage period | since around 1800 |
text | Henry Carey (controversial) |
melody | Henry Carey (controversial) |
Sheet of music | Publication 1745 |
Audio files | MP3 |
God Save the Queen (“ God save the Queen ”) or God Save the King (“ God save the King ”) - depending on whether the British monarch is a woman or a manat the time of usesince the beginning of the 19th century the national anthem of what is now the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . It is also one of the two national anthems of New Zealand and the royal anthem of all Commonwealth Realms .
In addition, the song Rule, Britannia! , Arthur Christopher Benson's Land of Hope and Glory to the melody of Sir Edward Elgar's March Pomp and Circumstance No.1 and Jerusalem by William Blake with the melody of Hubert Parry as "unofficial" British national anthems. Parts of the United Kingdom ( Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland ) also have their own (unofficial) national anthems. The British anthem is usually also sung for England .
melody
The Thesaurus Musicus (1744) is considered to be the place of the first publication of the melody (still in a slightly different version ). The following year the melody was printed in Gentleman's Magazine with the opening words "God save great George our king" . Older similar melodies include a Gregorian chant and harpsichord piece (1619) by John Bull . Traces of the melody can also be found in some of Henry Purcell's works , once even the use of the melody head together with the text “God save the King”. During the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745, the hymn was sung in various London theaters, including the Drury Lane Theater in an arrangement by Thomas Arne in honor of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland . The Jacobites also adopted the song with the opening words “God save great James our king”.
In contrast, the authorship of the poet Henry Carey is rejected today. Carey's son had assigned the rights to the melody to his father in 1795 and had hoped for a royal pension from it. However, he stated that his father had just composed the melody in 1745, although he had died in 1743. The writer Carey is said to have taken the help of his friend Smith, who was a student of George Frideric Handel and who corrected his bass voice , for the composition .
Equally wrong is the derivation of a melody by the French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully , with which, according to the memories of the Marquise de Créquy, the recovery of Louis XIV from an anal fistula was celebrated.
A march of the Swiss military was also named as the origin of the melody.
The then strange name national anthem , ie “national anthem ”, came from the fact that the fourth Coronation Anthems, composed by Handel in 1727, had the same beginning. In 1745, for patriotic reasons, these were sung daily in London theaters and concerts for a while, just before Carey's song became popular. So it inherited the name anthem , which today means both “hymn” and “hymn”.
song lyrics
Here the version God Save the Queen . If a king rules the monarchy, the line is God Save the King . Then the pronouns are also adjusted: she / he, her / him, her / his .
Today's stanzas
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1 In the version God save the King this line reads: With heart and voice to sing (because of the rhyme of King ).
More stanzas
The last three of the originally six stanzas hymn are usually no longer sung today:
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Additional stanza earlier in Canada
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First verse in French (previously sung in France and Canada)
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Use the melody for hymns from other countries
In the 19th century, numerous German princely and national anthems were created based on the melody of the British royal anthem . It has also been adopted in other countries:
- in the Principality of Liechtenstein since 1850 the national anthem (up to 1963: Above on the German Rhine , then Above on the young Rhine );
- in Switzerland the national anthem sung until 1961, you call, my fatherland ;
- in Norway the commonly used royal hymn Gud sign vår konge god ;
- in the German Empire from 1871 to 1918 the imperial hymn Heil dir im Siegerkranz , which had been the Prussian national anthem since 1795;
- in the Kingdom of Saxony the hymn God bless Saxonyland ;
- in the Kingdom of Bavaria the royal anthem Hail our King, Hail! ;
- in the Kingdom of Hanover the royal anthem Heil Dir Hannover! ;
- in the Russian Empire of the Molitwa Russkich ("Prayer of the Russians") called hymn, which is considered the national anthem for the years between 1816 and 1833;
- in Iceland the quasi-national anthem , until the Lofsöngur became its own anthem.
A variation of the English hymn melody chose Kalakaua , the king of Hawaii , as the national anthem for his island kingdom in the 1890s .
In the United States , the tune is sung under the title America with the patriotic lyrics My Country, 'Tis of Thee . It was used by Charles Ives in his Variations on America (original for organ, arranged for orchestra by William Schuman ).
Processing in pop and rock music
In 1970 the progressive rock group Gentle Giant created an expressionist version of God Save the Queen on their first album (of the same name) under the title The Queen , in which the pompous performance of the hymn is supposed to reflect the appearance, perhaps even the essence of the Queen.
The British rock band Queen released an instrumental version of God Save the Queen on their 1975 album A Night at the Opera . Since 1974 (with the exception of performances in Ireland), this song was always the last that was played - on tape - at Queen's concerts, and thus anticipated any further requests for encores. In addition, the band's guitarist Brian May played his Red Special God Save the Queen on the roof of Buckingham Palace in 2002 to mark the opening of the Party at the Palace concert on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's golden jubilee .
In 1977 the punk band Sex Pistols caused a sensation when they presented a song of the same name as a single in London for the Queen's silver jubilee , in which they described the Queen as a non-human being and her empire as a fascist regime and as "England's reverie" termed no future . This song later appeared on their album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and was covered by Motörhead , the Foo Fighters , Poison and Anthrax , among others .
Robert Fripp released a Frippertronics version of the anthem on the album God Save the Queen / Under Heavy Manners in 1980 .
In 2006 the Slovenian band Laibach, originally from the post-industrial environment, released a cover version under the title "Anglia" on a 12 "/ CD single of the same name with several remixes and on the album Volk , on which they played national anthems compared to earlier works, the music is "less brutal, but more consumer-friendly, with a filigree sound and is characterized by a well-structured composition", whereby classical instruments are combined with synthesizers and everyday noises as well as synthetically generated "noise". The voice varies "between classical Singing and a prophetic, commenting or admonishing gesture. ”According to their own statements, the band treats on this album“ the analogy and dichotomy of pop songs and national anthems ”, which are in fact themselves“ pop (ulistic) compositions. ”The basic characteristics of a hymn According to Laibach, they also apply to pieces of music in pop, what the band wanted to show. The music video for Anglia shows a “scrapped” elderly lady who feeds chained prisoners with British breakfast, draws blood from them and uses it to paint crosses on their bodies. This “smug and strict lady or queen was planted in an environment that was anything but representative or majestic ”. Their worn clothing suggests that they come from another century, but they use modern technology, so that there is a "discrepancy between appearance and time", underlined by the text alienated by the band, according to which the Queen is still for who holds ruler over the world. The prisoners chain themselves and wait for treatment by the queen, who laughs scornfully before leaving. This represents the former imperialism of Great Britain, the cross symbolizes proselytizing as a tool or (if it is turned) the flag of England , and thus indicates the original meaning of hymns as a composition to a religious text.
In 2012, Neil Young released a version of the song on his album Americana .
In 2014 , the Einstürzende Neubauten created a collage of different text variants such as God save the King and Heil dir im Siegerkranz to this melody under the title “Hymnen” on Lament , their concept album for the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War .
Movie
- Made in Switzerland , a film by Erich Langjahr . Short report on the visit of Queen Elisabeth II in 1980 to Switzerland.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c After Percy A. Scholes in: The Oxford Companion to Music (tenth edition). Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Souvenirs de la Marquise de Créquy, cap. 4 . Penelope.uchicago.edu. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
- ↑ Cf. Anthem as well as word origin of Anthem ( Antiphon ).
- ↑ "Thoroughly shaken" . In: Der Spiegel , No. 29/1971, July 12, 1971 (accessed March 25, 2010).
- ^ Eva-Maria Hanser: Ideotopie. Playing with the ideology and utopia of 'Laibach art' . Vienna 2010, p. 41–44 ( univie.ac.at [PDF; accessed on September 12, 2011]).
- ↑ http://www.laut.de/Einstuerzende-Neubauten/Alben/Lament-94720