When he saw the American flag still waving at dawn - an improbable victory - Key penned the stirring “Defense of Fort M’Henry,” with a rhyme scheme matched to the Anacreontic Song. Nine years later, stuck on a ship after negotiating the release of a prisoner, Key watched the British overnight siege of Baltimore during the War of 1812. Key was familiar with the tune before he wrote the “Star-Spangled” verses, having already refashioned it as a paean to American naval heroics in 1805. Battling over the meaning of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is an essential - if overlooked - part of the song’s tradition. Its alcoholic repute was in part due to moralistic protests against the tune during the Prohibition era, when Congress was deciding whether to make it the official national anthem. “You had to have a harpsichord and four-part harmony, so it just doesn’t work very well in a pub.” “It’s not a drinking song in the way its reputation would lead people to believe, in the sense of a pub ditty,” Dr.

A trained tenor would perform the tune as a virtuoso set piece, with the conclusion of each refrain repeated heartily by the society’s members. The society’s president wrote the original lyrics, an ode to the jovial Greek poet Anacreon. The song served as an after-dinner transition between a professional orchestral concert and participatory group singing. “To Anacreon in Heaven,” as the melody was first known, had its debut around 1776 at a meeting of the Anacreontic Society, an amateur gentlemen’s music club in London. Hampson’s recital allows for a Fourth of July tie-in. Clague would know: He heads Star Spangled Music, an initiative celebrating the anthem’s bicentennial. A professor at the University of Michigan, Dr. “It’s missing a phrase of music, it’s at the wrong tempo, it’s much slower, it’s sung by a massed group of people instead of an individual soloist,” he added. “Key wouldn’t really recognize what we sing today,” said the musicologist Mark Clague in a joint Skype interview with Mr. In short, it is how the anthem might have sounded 200 years ago, when Francis Scott Key wrote new lyrics to an old British melody aboard a ship in Baltimore’s harbor. A jaunty pickup will substitute for the stately descent of “O say.” The last two lines of each verse will be echoed by a septet of singers. When the baritone Thomas Hampson sings “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Library of Congress in Washington on Thursday, it won’t sound quite like the familiar tune belted out at ball games and presidential inaugurations.Ī sprightly lilt will replace the usual slow waltz.

The star spangled banner song for kids