Greatest national anthem?

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I quite like the marselleise, but there's some good drum rolls in 'god save the queen', proper anthems have majestic drum rolls. Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" is a masterpiece, but it's not the national anthem.

ours (oz) is putrid.

Last edited by Postperson on 31 Jan 2009, 4:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

I like the Latin-Version of the EU-Anthem:

http://www.hymnus-europae.at/

Est Europa nunc unita
et unita maneat;
una in diversitate
pacem mundi augeat.

Semper regant in Europa
fides et iustitia
et libertas populorum
in maiore patria.

Cives, floreat Europa,
opus magnum vocat vos.
Stellae signa sunt in caelo
aureae, quae iungant nos.



---

Beethoven's Ode an die Freude in German and I think the Latin version would better acceptable with other nations.

You are thinking of -My Country 'Tis of Thee- which is sung to the tune of God Save the King/Queen. -America The Beautiful- is a different tune completely. It is normally sung to the tune of "Materna" composed by Samuel Ward in 1882. It can also be sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne"

ruveyn

Yeah, I realized that after I posted and never got around to fixing it.

Except we kind of failed at that war. I mean, we started off all gung-ho, thinking we were going to go use it as an excuse to annex Canada, and then by the end we were just happy we could get out of the war without a completely humiliating surrender involving the Brits taking back huge chunks of land from us. As I said, the war of 1812, at least on this continent, was quite lame. Now, the European version, with Napoleon freezing his ass off in Russia, was much cooler.

I like the Canadian National Anthem, "O Canada!"

I AM CANADIAN

[youtube]http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=QZtfphBDp-w[/youtube]

There is a lot of nice anthems around - for example the Netherlands "Het Wilhelmus", arguable the oldest anthem still in use:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIg9VaMBi9o[/youtube]

They did not translate the text properly: The line "Ben ick van Duytschen bloet," is to be translated "Be from German blood"; thus the Netherlands gained independence from the Holy Roman Empire as late as 1648 and the House of Nassau-Oranje is a German family.

A more modern form:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4cDmvh4IlQ[/youtube]

Regarding the current British one, the melody has been more than one time "recycled", it served as anthem of Prusse and later Germany till 1918 ("Heil Dir im Siegerkranz"), as Anthem for the King of Norway and as Anthem of Liechtenstein. But the medoly was originally written for King Louis XIV of France, persually by Lully; More here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WReF2vUC_c[/youtube]

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=XA6cnXFiE ... D9&index=7

My favourite.

I was interested to hear the dutch anthem. Thanks.

actually, our National Anthem is set to a British drinking song called 'Perseus in Anachreon'...

I'm not making that up, but it may explain why it's so hard to sing...

In my more nasty thought moments, I consider writing new lyrics to the Horst Wessel hymn, releasing it, and seeing how long it would take someone to wig to it...

Already done. There is at least a communist version. In the 1920s the two radical political movements in Germany stole each other melodies. So the communist (KPD) had another text on the same melody:

"1. Auf, auf zum Kampf, zum Kampf!
Zum Kampf sind wir geboren.
Auf, auf zum Kampf, zum Kampf sind wir bereit!
Dem Karl Liebknecht, dem haben wir's geschworen,
Der Rosa Luxemburg reichen wir die Hand.

2. Wir fürchten nicht, ja nicht
Den Donner der Kanonen!
Wir fürchten nicht, ja nicht die Noskepolizei
Den Karl Liebknecht, den haben wir verloren,
Die Rosa Luxemburg fiel durch Mörderhand."