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I have a very nice version of the Star-Spangled banner for brass quintet. It is a version arranged for the Navy. Do the military bands have brass quintet arrangements of national anthems for other countries (UK, Canada, France, etc.)? Are these available for purchase?

funny story about national anthems. when I was at Rutgers for grad school our quintet was asked to play for a reception at the Raritan Yacht Club. They were hosting the Nicarauguan Naval Cadets tall ship. This was in 1985 or 86 when they had the big parade of tall ships in NYC harbor for the unveiling of the refurbished Statue of Liberty. One of the requests was to play the Nicaraguan national anthem for the cadets. Keep in mind this was the days before the interenet as we know it so trying to find the Nicaraguan national anthem was a job in and of itself. anyway I found a book of national anthems in the Rutgers U. music library, but it was rather old and I had no idea if the anthem in the book was still current; with all the turmoil in central america who knew if there was a coup and a new regime who would have changed the anthem. so we are playing at the reception and it comes time to play the anthem for the guests. Well we start playing and no one is singing or doing anything. They are standing at attention but no singing. We are all secretly praying that we are playing the correct song. Well we hit the chorus of the piece and all of a sudden these cadets start singing at the top of their lungs. It was a quite a moving thing. And we breathed a huge sigh of relief. Still don;'t know if we played the rightr song but at least it was recognizable to the cadets and it must have been some patriotic song. many of them came up to us and thanked us for playing. At least we didn't start a riot.
sorry to take your post off topic
ken k

When playing national anthems there are more often issues than you would think. I can only list two issues, as these are the two ones I know about, but Ken K has highlighted another.

If you play the English national anthem, you WILL be making a political statement, whether you want to or not. Play it plain and straight-laced and you tell the audience that you are a royalist and support the monarchy. Do something more fancy with it and you tell the audience that you are a republican (in the original - non-american meaning of the word) and would like to get rid of the monarchy and replace it with a republic. So much for just playing a tune...

If you play the Norwegian national anthem you play it straight-laced and plain, period. If you treat it like americans seem to like their anthem treated (judging by films and tv shows) not only will you mortally offend your audience - you may end up with legal trouble too. Jan Garbarek, the jazz sax player recorded a jazz version of the anthem in the late 70's. He narrowly escaped criminal prosecution by withdrawing the album, issuing refunds to anyone who had already bought it, and publicly apologise.

Care should be taken, it's not unlikely that there are similar issues elsewhere too - I know the stories behind two anthems and both reveal deep issues behind them.

This web site has some sheet music scans of various national anthems that you could use to create your own arrangement. Lot of information but could take you a while to hit pay dirt for what you need but it might have what you are looking for.

http://www.nationalanthems.us/forum/YaBB.pl

Mark,

Your question is right up my ally. I am the NCOIC (leader) of the Air Force Brass Quintet at Robins AFB, GA and former NCOIC of our band's library. Although some protocols have changed in recent years, it is generally been the resposibility of the U.S. Army Band in D.C. to keep the most up-to-date marching/ceremonial band arragements of all the countries in the world. (At least that has been our protocol in the Air Force, sorry Navy guys if I am wrong!) These charts are titled by "Department of Defense" and "National Anthem of XXXX" on the typical "Marching Band Pouch" size paper. Unfortunately these charts usually do not extend to brass quintet arrangements. HOWEVER, in a pinch what I have found that they are arranged in such a way that you can play the Trumpet 1&2, Horn 1, Trombone 1, and Tuba parts and make it work. When we do have time, I'll take the anthem in question to our staff arranger (or arrange it myself). If you would like an arragement of the typical DOD U.S. National Anthem, just email/IM me. My band gets calls all the time for the National Anthem and Air Force Song. If you would like a KILLER U.S. National Anthem, I suggest you check out Robert Elkjer's arrangement at http://home.pacbell.net/melkjer/ElkjerM ... ge11g.html" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank
and listen to my brass quintet's recording of it here:
http://www.usafreserveband.af.mil/recor ... /index.asp" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank
As for other nation's anthems, I'm not sure the Army will give them out, but it never hurts to ask. The Navy also has an extensive listing here: http://www.navyband.navy.mil/anthems/all_countries.htm" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank
Here is another nice site: http://www.nationalanthems.info/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

Best of Luck!