Super Bowl 2012 and The Star Spangled Banner

Gearing up for the game on Sunday.  It is a big deal here - and everywhere else. 

Kelly Clarkson will be singing The Star Spangled Banner, and Madonna will be performing during the halftime show singing Vogue and Like a Virgin and two other selections.

The SSB is a notoriously difficult piece to sing.  It spans an octave and a fifth.  Since it is acapoco, singers have to be really careful not to start too high or else they will wipe out on the high notes at the end.  Also, the lyrics in poem-form were written in 1814 and sadly, most of us don't have all those words in our vocabulary, making it even more confusing to sing.  Rampart?  Gleaming?

 Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics the morning after he was released from captivity during the Battle of Fort McHenry in The War of 1812.  Key was detained by the British as he had heard the British plans to bombard the fort.  Throughout the night, as he heard rocket fire and exploding bombs and in the bowels of the enemy's ship, he anguished because he had no idea who was winning.  As the dawn came, he saw our flag still proudly flying.   

So it is an honor to the singer who sings the words correctly, in the right key, with the right spirit.  I think our anthem reflects my teaching motto perfectly.  You have to be fearless to sing it.  My favorite rendition is sung by Whitney Houston who blew the crowd away with her 1991 "Welcome Home Heroes" concert in Norfolk, VA.

May Kelly Clarkson be fearless and brave on Sunday and long live the Patriots!

Here are the five verses:

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country, should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation. Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust;" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Cover of sheet music for "The Star-Spangled Banner", transcribed for piano by Ch. Voss, Philadelphia: G. Andre & Co., 1862

Additional Civil War period lyrics

In indignation over the start of the American Civil War, Oliver Wendell Homes added a fifth stanza to the song in 1861 which appeared in songbooks of the era.

When our land is illumined with liberty's smile,
If a foe from within strikes a blow at her glory,
Down, down with the traitor that tries to defile
The flag of the stars, and the page of her story!
By the millions unchained,
Who their birthright have gained
We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave,
While the land of the free is the home of the brave.