National anthem

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the Radiohead song, see "The National Anthem".

A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a country's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.

Anthems rose to prominence in Europe during the nineteenth century; the oldest national anthem is "Het Wilhelmus", the Dutch national anthem, written between 1568 and 1572 during the Eighty Years War. The Japanese anthem, "Kimi ga Yo", has its lyrics taken from a Kamakura period poem, yet it was not set to music until 1880.^[1] "God Save the Queen", the national anthem of the United Kingdom, was first performed in 1745 under the title "God Save the King". Spain's national anthem, the "Marcha Real" (The Royal March), dates from 1770. "La Marseillaise", the French anthem, was written in 1792 and adopted in 1795.

During the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most remaining nations adopted an anthem upon attaining nationhood. Because of European colonial influence, many influenced in a similar way to adopt a national anthem, and thus several anthems outside Europe are in the European style. Only a handful of non-European countries have anthems rooted in including India, China, Japan, Costa Rica, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar.

An anthem can become a country's national anthem by a provision in the country's constitution, by a law enacted by its legislature or simply by tradition. The majority of national anthems are either marches or hymns in style. The countries of Latin America tend towards more operatic pieces, while a handful of countries use a simple fanfare.

National anthems are usually in the most common language of the country, whether de facto or official. India's anthem, Jana Gana Mana, is a highly Sanskritized version of Bengali. States with more than one national language may offer several versions of their anthem: For instance, Switzerland's anthem has different lyrics for each of the country's four official languages (French, German, Italian and Romansh). On the other hand, South Africa's national anthem is unique in that five of the eleven official languages are used in the same anthem (each language comprising a stanza). Another multilingual country, Spain, has no words in its anthem, La Marcha Real, although in 2007 a national competition to write words was launched^[2].

1 Usage
2 Lyrics
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Usage

At the commencement of international sporting events, or occasionally (such as in the United States, here pictured) at domestic events, spectators customarily stand for the duration of the national anthem.

National anthems are used in a wide array of contexts. They are played on national holidays and festivals, and have also come to be closely connected with sporting events. During sporting competitions, such as the Olympic Games, the national anthem of the gold medal winner is played at each medal ceremony. National anthems are also played before games in many sports leagues, since being adopted in baseball during World War II.^[3] The use of a national anthem outside of its country, however, is dependent on the international recognition of that country. For instance, Taiwan is not recognized by the Olympics as a separate nation and must compete as Chinese Taipei; its National Banner Song is used instead of its national anthem.^[4]

In some countries, the national anthem is played to students each day at the start of school as an exercise in patriotism. In other countries the anthem may be played in a theatre before a play or in a cinema before a movie. Many radio and television stations have adopted this and play the national anthem when they sign on in the morning and again when they sign off at night.

Nations in the cultural sense or subnational units may also have royal anthems, presidential anthems, state anthems, or anthems for officially recognized constitutive parts of federal or confederal states. These may be better described as "regional anthems", as in the case of the regions of Belgium.

Multinational countries such as the United Kingdom and Denmark compete in sporting events with multiple teams, such as England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland soccer teams for the former and a distinct Faroe Island side in addition to the national team in the case of the latter. This poses problems with the tradition of pre-match anthems, since neither England nor mainland Denmark have regional anthems and use the national anthems, God Save the Queen and Der er et yndigt land respectively.

Larger entities also sometimes have anthems. There are a handful of multinational or international anthems. The Internationale is the anthem of the socialist movement, the world communist movement, the Comintern and for a time by the Soviet Union. The tune of the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is the European anthem; the United Nations^[5] and the African Union^[6] also have unofficial anthems. The Olympic Movement also has its own anthem. Esperanto Speakers at meetings often use the song La Espero as its anthem.

[edit] Lyrics

A few anthems have been composed by Nobel prize winners. India and Bangladesh adopted two songs written by the Nobel prize winner and noted poet/author Rabindranath Tagore as their national anthems, Jana Gana Mana and Amar Shonar Bangla, respectively. Nobel prize winner Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote the lyrics for the Norwegian national anthem Ja, vi elsker dette landet.

Some national anthems have no official lyrics at all, including those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Spain, and San Marino.^[7]