Olympics Star Spangled Banner

[IkeH]

Sorry, the Olympic version is wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. To me, the best version was Whitney Houston's, done in the Super Bowl some years ago, arr. by superb bassist John Clayton.

The worst? Rosanne Barr.

[MaryAnn]

...The forceful, march-like band arrangements just don't do it for me. The olympic version does.

While the SSB would be a bitch to march to, personally I sort of like it in a march and militaristic style. At the very least it should be played with a lot of brass (read this a more TUBA).

Actually, hearing this the other night on the TV....was the first time I EVER heard ANY tuba in SSB. I was thinking, "Wow! finally some BASS in this piece!" But that was at the beginning and then it went to the wimpy part.

MA

[MaryAnn]

It's not my favorite rendition, but it beats hearing mediocre singers at ball games trying to Soul-sing it, dragging the tempo to death, and making the melody almost unrecognizable.

Just be happy we don't have to listen to the Rosanne Barr version.....

MA

[Tubatoad]

Just be happy we don't have to listen to the Rosanne Barr version.....

MA[/quote]

AMEN!!

[Doug@GT]

Maybe we should make fouling up the National Anthem a capital offense.

[TubaRay]

"Maybe we should make fouling up the National Anthem a capital offense." I believe this would be a huge mistake. Our prison system is already overloaded.

[TubaRay]

Good point!

[Leland]

I think Roseanne could be considered a WMD though. Maybe we could dispose of her appropriately.

I'd revise that acronym to MWD, or maybe MDW.

I can only say that "mass" makes up part of it...

[Dan Schultz]

[quote="IkeH"]To me, the best version was Whitney Houston's, done in the Super Bowl some years ago, arr. by superb bassist John Clayton. /quote]

Ah yes! I remember THAT one. THAT, IN MY OPINION, is the 2nd worst rendition of The Star Spangled Banner... right behind the one by Hendrix. The arrangements might have been OK, but the stylizing by these artists SUCKED! They should have been shot at sunrise! Roseanne doesn't even count. She's a fat-axxed idiot!

The national anthems being played at the Olympics aren't the greatest, but they are in the true spirit of The Games. The real shame is that it's obvious that most of the athletes don't even know the words to their anthems!

[Dean E]

Is it me, or is the recording that they are using for the medal ceremony in Athens one of the wimpiest, sorriest recordings of the SSB ever made?

The arranger, Peter Breiner, says he arranged the Star Spangled Banner in 1994. His deliberately peaceful mood contrasted with the violent lyrics, well before 9/11.

Excerpted from Philip Kennicott's "Changing Our Tune: Athens Honors American Winners With Kinder, Gentler National Anthem," Thursday, August 26, 2004; Washington Post, Page C01 (free registration required)
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A "Europe-friendly version of the anthem," designed "to play down the notion of the U.S. as a chest-thumping, butt-kicking, jingoistic powerhouse," sniffed a writer in the Wall Street Journal, quoting an unnamed musician. "Even our warlike national anthem has been transformed, from blaring horns to peaceful, soothing strings" wrote Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, in a column about the toning-down of U.S. bravado at the Athens games.

"What should I think?" Breiner asks, perplexed. "I wrote it in 1994." That would be before 9/11, before George W. Bush became president and invited insurgents in Iraq to "bring 'em on," before the whole debate about preemptive wars and sensitive foreign policy. Breiner, 47, a prolific Canadian composer who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1992, harmonized and orchestrated "The Star-Spangled Banner" for Marco Polo Records as part of a decade-old project devoted to the national anthems of the world.

Those recordings caught the attention of Olympics organizers, who asked Breiner to supply the anthems for all the medal ceremonies (many of which will never be heard, given how few countries take home gold).

Getting them all ready in time for the Olympics was a scramble, requiring approval from all nations, and in some cases, rewrites and revisions. But Breiner's version of the U.S. anthem, heard repeatedly over the past week, is unchanged since he finished it on July 13, 1994 -- the eve of Bastille Day, but no symbolism there. Which makes it a mid-Clinton administration artifact.

On purely musical grounds, however, it's easy to see why fast-on-the-draw cultural critics might find fodder for partisan speculation. Particularly subject to comment was Breiner's setting of the music accompanying the words "and the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air." Breiner went for contrast, setting some of the most martial lines of Francis Scott Key's poem to sharply contrasting music.

He uses, at first, violins and violas, high in their register, delicately played, ethereal in effect. It sounds tender and distant, even a bit sentimental. Then he brings in the cellos, adding a bit of depth, and a few woodwinds, giving it a pastoral flavor.

"I just followed my guts there," said Breiner in a telephone interview from Toronto, where his version of "O Canada" (jazzy, up-tempo) has caused an even more furious tempest. "My primary inspiration was the music, not the words. I knew the words, but I thought, what the heck, it is not unusual to be completely contradictory to the text."

He's right, from a composer's point of view. In opera, the most horrifying revelations may be set to chillingly sweet, almost whispered musical lines. But Breiner wasn't writing opera. He was orchestrating a tune that has a dual existence, as commonly shared patriotic icon and pure musical DNA.

Therein lies the problem. Are national symbols open to interpretation? And if so, where is the line between interpretation and desecration? The debate is familiar when the symbol is the flag -- and it's a perennial Republican favorite to attempt writing the line into the Constitution. With the national anthem, the situation is a bit messier. It's clear that, say, screeching it as Roseanne Barr once did, and then holding your crotch, crosses some kind of threshold.
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[Tubatoad]

At the risk of resurecting a dead topic, I just heard Lauren Maazel conduct the NY Phil in a spirited orchestra version of the National Anthem, and for me it rivaled the USMC band version. Basically they didn't go minor and the strings didn't wimp it in the middle. Oh yeah - the orchestra stood to play, and the conductor looked like he meant it.