CHAPTER 31
Patricia Rosenmeyer
We took the air and we kept it. Transplanted on American soil, it thrived. As “To Anacreon in Heaven” of European origin the air is obsolete and extinct; as the air of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it stirs the blood of every American, regardless of his origin or the origin of the air.
O. G. T. Sonneck, “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Washington D.C. 1914): 8.
Introduction
The so-called Anacreontic verses are not actually by Anacreon, the archaic poet from Teos. Rather, they are a collection of imitative, anonymous poems dating to the late Hellenistic and Byzantine periods.1 The confusion extends back to the sixteenth century, when the French humanist Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) consulted a tenth-century manuscript of poems and epigrams in the Vatican Library. This manuscript, called the Palatine Anthology after its original rediscovery some fifty years earlier in the Palatine Library in Heidelberg, was compiled by the Byzantine scholar Cephalas, who himself had combined older verse anthologies that are no longer extant. What caught Stephanus’ eye in particular was a group of previously unknown works placed at the end of the volume: sixty short poems in the meter and style of Anacreon. When he published his editio princeps of the Anacreontic poems in 1554, Stephanus was convinced of their authenticity, and even re-arranged the corpus to ensure its acceptance as genuine Anacreon. For the next two centuries, poets –most famously Ronsard in France, Gleim in Germany, and Herrick in England—happily turned to the “Anacreontics” as a rich source of inspiration for their own writings.
But even in Stephanus’ own lifetime there were skeptics, especially since he refused to show the original manuscript to anyone, allowing them access only to his transcriptions. Stephanus’ son-in-law, Tanaquil Faber, rejected many of the poems on metrical grounds, while Francesco Robortello mocked Stephanus in print, declaring his opinions “perridiculus,” “completely ridiculous” (Baumann 1974: 24). In the eighteenth century, Johannes Cornelius de Pauw insisted that the collection contained no real Anacreon at all, and finally, in the early twentieth century, Ullrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff hammered the nail in the coffin, dismissing those who admired such insipid imitations of “the pure Hellenic wine” (von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1907: 27). Thereafter, scholars simply ignored the collection as a worthless “forgery.” Poets and the general public, however, did not necessarily equate imitative verse with intrinsic bad quality, and we can trace the influence of the Anacreontics on non-specialists long after classical scholars had rejected them as spurious.2
During the period in which the new “Anacreon” poems were considered to be genuine, they strongly influenced poets in Britain and Europe. Much scholarly work has been done in the past forty years on this topic,3 but little attention has been paid to the role of “Anacreon” beyond Europe, and almost nothing has been written on his reception in America.4 In this study, I focus on one particular chapter in the early American reception of “Anacreon”: the great popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the melody, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” and its eventual reincarnation with new lyrics as the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
London’s Anacreontic Society
Few could have anticipated the adoption of the tune “To Anacreon in Heaven” for the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But the popularity of the tune pushed it far beyond its original historical horizon. What began its life as a British social drinking song was recycled with new words in numerous British and American ballads before it eventually inspired Francis Scott Key. To trace the tune’s reception history, we need to begin in eighteenth-century England.
In the mid-1700s, a group of upper-class British men formed a club in London to promote their favorite pastimes: drinking, listening to music, and spending time with like-minded companions.5 They named it “The Anacreontic Society” in honor of the poet who, by that time, had been reduced to a symbol of a hedonistic attachment to wine, women, and song. The members were genuinely interested in serious classical music, however, and sponsored a variety of concerts featuring “the best performers in London.”6 But the club’s name was not wholly inappropriate, since after the serious music came a communal meal, followed by drinking and more informal entertainment: popular and comic songs (“catches”), puppet shows, and “everything that mirth can suggest” (Anon. 1780: 224).7 Details about the kinds of songs sung at this stage of the evening come from an early handbook containing eleven songs in varied rhythms: An Anacreontic Garland: Being a Collection of Favourite Songs, sung at the Anacreontic Society, &c. (1790). A woodcut on the front page shows four men seated around a table, enjoying their drink and pipe. Along with the tobacco smoke, small word banners emerge from each man’s mouth, indicating singing. The short anthology includes such titles as, “To banish life’s troubles, the Grecian Old Sage”; “Tho’ Bacchus may boast of his care-killing bowl”; “My temples with clusters of grapes I’ll entwine”; and the less overtly classical, “The Hogshead of Port.”8
Why did this group decide to call their organization specifically an “Anacreontic Society”? What did “Anacreon” mean to English gentlemen in the 1760s? While some may have known the Greek originals, since Greek and Latin were obligatory school subjects for the upper classes, it is more likely that they knew the material in English translation, possibly the version by Abraham Cowley: Anacreontiques: or, Some Copies of Verses Translated Paraphrastically out of Anacreon (London 1656). Cowley’s translations, first published in London a century earlier, were extremely popular not only in his own time, but for several hundred years afterwards.9 According to one early twentieth-century British literary critic, “To Anacreon, or rather to the pseudo-Anacreon, we owe the charming Anacreontic, which, since Cowley naturalized it, has gone on repeating itself in every generation of our poets” (Collins 1910: 73).
“Anacreon” provided an appropriate model on multiple levels. First, he was the poet of the symposium, encouraging men to drink and be merry; second, his verses cautioned against overindulgence and recommended moderation; third, he celebrated communal, rather than solitary drinking. All three aspects suited the club’s aim of conviviality and sociability without excess.
Most of our evidence for the club, including a full printing of the “Anacreontic Song,” comes from an anonymous history published in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle for May 1780 (Anon. 1780: 224–225). According to that source, the club was “begot and christened by a Mr. S—th about the year 1766, at a genteel public-house near the Mansion House, was nursed at the Feathers and Half Moon Tavern in Cheapside, and received a great part of its establishment at the London Coffee-house” on Ludgate Hill. There is also evidence of meetings at the Crown and Anchor, located on the Strand, which could accommodate the club when, at its peak, it claimed almost eighty members; another source points out that when guests and visiting musicians were counted, it could easily add up to 200 men (Clague 2014). Members paid a small fee to join, and were all from respectable social backgrounds, with “several noblemen and gentlemen of the first distinction” among them (Parke 1830: 80).10
The Anacreontic Society flourished for almost thirty years, meeting regularly in season (November through March) every other Wednesday evening, and often continuing until well after midnight (Argent 1992: 25).11 When the club finally disbanded in 1792, the reason given was that, although the club was exclusively male, one evening the Duchess of Devonshire, “the great leader of the haut ton,” expressed an interest in attending; since “some of the comic songs [were not] exactly calculated for the entertainment of ladies, the singers were restrained; which displeasing many of the members, they resigned one after another; and a general meeting being called, the society was dissolved” (Parke 1830: 83–84).
But while still in its prime, the members of the Anacreontic Society regularly celebrated with an anthem entitled “The Anacreontic Song.” The melody is thought to have been composed by one of its prominent members; John Stafford Smith (1750–1836).12 The lyrics to the tune were written by Ralph Tomlinson (1744–1778), a previous president of the Society, and were first published in The Vocal Magazine (London 1778). The tune itself, as well as the idea of a community devoted to music and conviviality, proved to be quite popular on both sides of the Atlantic, and Anacreontic Societies soon sprang up in St. Andrews, Scotland, as well as in Dublin, Belfast, Birmingham, Norwich, New York City, and Baltimore.13 All branches sang the official anthem.
The singing of “The Anacreontic Song” marked the transition from the club’s classical concert and elegant supper to the jollier and less formal part of the evening. We have a report in the diary for the year 1773, by an amateur “gentleman composer” named John Marsh (1752–1828), of what may have been one of the earliest performances of “The Anacreontic Song” (Robins 1998: 115–116):
Mr. Bowen…invited me to accompany him on the Saturday following [i.e. December 11] to a concert at the London Coffee House called the Anacreontic Meeting, which I of course readily accepted of & played with Mr. Smith the leader after wh’ch we sat down a pretty many of us to supper after which catches and glees were performed, in which Mr. Webster, a young man with a very fine bass voice much distinguish’d himself. The Anacreontic Song was also sung by him, in the last verse of which we stood hand in hand all around the table, this concert being in fact the origin of the Society held afterwards for many years at the Crown and Anchor.
The song, with its wide range of notes, was not the easiest tune for the untrained voice; when sung today at public sporting events, for example, it is still usually performed by a professional singer. In the period under discussion, the job was given to a soloist, although others joined in for the refrain, namely the last two lines of the song. Thus, as we read in an early nineteenth-century description (Parke 1830: 81).14
After the concert an elegant supper was served up; and when the cloth was removed, the constitutional song, beginning, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” was sung by the chairman or his deputy.
Scholars are not in full agreement as to how best to characterize the Anacreontic Society: an elite group of amateur music lovers, devoted to fellowship, who met regularly to enjoy performances by talented local and international musicians? Or rather a group of male friends who bonded over food, drink, and bawdy songs? The truth seems to lie somewhere in between. On the one hand, contemporary sources emphasize the highbrow musical tastes of the club members: “All the eminent Instrumental Musicians that arrived from the Continent, used to make their debut at the Anacreontic Society, in order to give a specimen of their abilities” (Argent 1992: 27). The concerts were regularly reviewed in the Daily Universal Register (which became The Times in 1790); in 1785, an evening at the Society was described in that paper as “the best concert in town” (Argent 1992: n. 11). The London Evening Post and The Morning Herald also carried reviews of concerts given at the Society (Robins 1998: 511 n. 82). But media coverage was not limited to England: the London correspondent for Cramer’s Magazin der Musik in Hamburg, having been invited to the club in April 1783, reported on the evening for his German readers (Sonneck 1914: 30–31).
If we push the argument for an elite supper club a bit further, we can note that members had to be able to afford the dues, and to have the leisure to attend evening events (Clague 2014). Their focus for the evening was on conviviality and friendship as well as on eating and drinking, which was also true of the ancient symposium; it is tempting to think that club members were cognizant of this connection to antiquity. The venue was grander than the average pub: the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand was a restaurant frequented by the elite, and other social clubs and political associations also chose to meet in its capacious ballroom (Clague 2014). The anthem itself was far from the kind of song one could sing while inebriated; rather, it was accompanied by a harpsichord and four-part vocal harmony. The melody was a challenge for amateurs to sing, and, as stated above, it was usually performed by a professional, whether the club president or an honored guest (Clague 2016). The president and directors also were meant to model proper behavior for the evening, according to this eyewitness report from the late 1780s (Morris and Brownlow 1786–1789: 6–7, quoted in Sonneck 1914: 30):
Mr. Hankey, the Banker, a gentleman highly spoken of, as a man of polished manners and most liberal sentiments, now presides at this meeting, by whose management, in conjunction with the other directors, everything is conducted under the influence of the strictest propriety and decorum.
On the other hand, some sources suggest that things could get out of hand at the club, especially in the early hours of the morning. R. J. S. Stevens, an organist in London at the time, reports that Ralph Tomlinson was “a sensible, sedate, quiet man” who worked as a solicitor in Chancery; the next president similarly “had gentlemanly manners,” but after that came a Mr. Edward Mulso, “a convivial man; frothy, vain, and silly” (Argent 1992: 25–27).15 Stevens describes one of his own visits to the club in his memoir for the year 1777, revealing how the same event could satisfy, albeit sequentially, both highbrow and vulgar tastes (Argent 1992: 25):
The Evening’s entertainment began at seven o’clock, with a concert, chiefly of instrumental Music: it was not very uncommon to have some Vocal Music interspersed with the Instrumental…At ten o’clock the Instrumental Concert ended, when we retired to the Supper rooms. After Supper…we returned to the Concert Room, which in the meantime had been differently arranged. The President, then took his seat in the center of the elevated table, at the upper end of the room, supported on each side, by the various Vocal performers. After the Anacreontic Song had been sung, in the Chorus of the last verse of which all the Members, Visitors, and Performers joined, “hand in hand,” we were entertained by the performance of various celebrated Catches, Glees, Songs, Duettos, and other Vocal, with some Rhetorical compositions, till twelve o’clock. The President having left the Chair, after that time, the proceedings were very disgraceful to the Society; as the greatest levity, and vulgar obscenity, generally prevailed. Improper Songs, and other vicious compositions were performed without any shame whatever. I never staid till the Society broke up, which was generally very late.
Apparently Stevens stayed just long enough to bear witness to the shameless behavior of his peers, but no longer. He admits, however, in the same section of his journal that he “regularly attended the Anacreontic Society” and,
pursued a plan of dissipation for some time, and used to lay in bed very late the following morning: this conduct vexed my Father exceedingly; he was always accustomed to rise early, and he could not keep his temper when he heard how intolerably idle I was become.
(Argent 1992: 23–24)
Stevens resolves (in his journal, at least) to mend his ways, coming home earlier in the evenings and rising earlier in the mornings.16
“The Anacreontic Song”
Here are the full six stanzas of “The Anacreontic Song,” published in The Vocal Magazine of August 1778 (pp. 147–148) as Song 566, and attributed to Ralph Tomlinson, Esq.:17
To Anacreon, in Heav’n, where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be;
When this answer arriv’d from the jolly old Grecian -
Voice, fiddle, and flute,
no longer be mute;
I’ll lend ye my name, and inspire ye to boot:
And, besides, I’ll instruct ye, like me, to intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.
The news through Olympus immediately flew;
When old Thunder pretended to give himself airs -
If these mortals are suffer’d their scheme to pursue,
The devil a goddess will stay above stairs.
Hark! already they cry,
In transports of joy,
A fig for Parnassus! To Rowley’s we’ll fly; [Away to the sons of Anacreon we’ll fly;]
And there, my good fellows, we’ll learn to intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.
The yellow-haired god, and his nine fusty maids,
To the hill of old Lud will incontinent flee, [From Helicon’s banks will incontinent flee,]
Idalia will boast but of tenantless shades,
And the bi-forked hill a mere desert will be.
My thunder no fear on’t,
Will soon do its errand,
And dam’me! I’ll swinge the ringleaders, I warrant.
I’ll trim the young dogs, for thus daring to twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.
Apollo rose up; and said, Pry’thee ne’er quarrel,
Good king of the gods, with my vot’ries below!
Your thunder is useless—then, shewing his laurel,
Cry’d Sic evitabile fulmen, you know!
Then over each head
My laurels I’ll spread;
So my sons from your crackers no mischief shall dread,
Whilst snug in their club-room, they jovially twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.
Next Momus got up with his risible phiz,
And swore with Apollo he’d chearfully join—
The full tide of harmony still shall be his,
But the song, and the catch, and the laugh shall be mine:
Then, Jove, be not jealous
Of these honest fellows.
Cry’d Jove, We relent, since the truth you now tell us;
And swear by Old Styx, that they long shall intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.
Ye sons of Anacreon, then join hand in hand;
Preserve unanimity, friendship, and love.
‘Tis your’s to support what’s so happily plan’d;
You’ve the sanction of gods, and the fiat of Jove.
While thus we agree,
Our toast let it be.
May our club flourish happy, united, and free!
And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.
A group of friends (“a few sons of harmony”) ask for the poet’s patronage for their club; he promises a future filled with music, love (“Venus’ myrtle”), and wine (“Bacchus wine”). But Jupiter worries that the rest of his Olympian crew, including the goddesses, Apollo, and the Muses, will abandon their classical abodes (Mt. Ida, Helicon) in their haste to join the party with the newly named “sons of Anacreon.” He threatens to send forth a thunderbolt in punishment, and mixes in some contemporary English threats as well (“And dam’me, I’ll swinge [i.e. whip] the ringleaders, I warrant./I’ll trim the young dogs…”). Apollo stands up for his “vot’ries,” comparing Jupiter’s thunder to “crackers” [i.e., Christmas crackers] that will never harm his “sons,” “snug in their club-room.” The ancient god of mockery, Momus, with his laughing face (“risible phiz”), joins in the debate; he allows Apollo to supervise “the full tide of harmony,” but claims the lighter songs for himself (“the song, the catch, and the laugh shall be mine”), neatly describing the division in the evening between highbrow and more popular entertainment. Finally Jupiter relents, and swears by the Styx to encourage the “sons of Anacreon” in their festivities. The last stanza celebrates unanimity, friendship, and love, as the men “join hand in hand” to “intwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s wine,” while Apollo as the god of music supervises the singing. The refrain, consisting of the last two lines of each stanza, and which was sung by all present, offers variations on the first set: “And, besides, I’ll instruct ye, like me, to intwine/The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.”
In the earliest documented version, two lines stand out as relevant only for the early London years: in the second stanza, “A fig for Parnassus! To Rowley’s we’ll fly,” and in the third stanza, “To the hill of old Lud will incontinent flee.” These place references point to the years when the Society met at the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill (“old Lud”), which shared its premises with a wine shop called Rowley and Leech (“Rowley’s”) (Sonneck 1914: 39). The lines were replaced with less specific markers. The change may have occurred when the club moved to accommodate larger numbers, that is, when they decamped from the London Coffee House on to the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand. I wonder if it also coincided with a sense on the part of the members that their club, becoming ever more popular, could be imagined as timeless and universally appealing: thus “Away to the sons of Anacreon we’ll fly” replaced the local reference to the London wine shop, while “From Helicon’s banks will incontinent flee” presented the classical Muses’ mountain haunt as a place to abandon in favor of the more enjoyable Anacreontic Society’s musical venue. These new verses include “words of absolutely neutral character without any personal or topographical allusions that might be subject to change at any time” (Sonneck 1914: 40).
Variations on a Theme
In its revised form, the club’s rallying song, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” continued to have a robust reception history in Britain, even well after the Anacreontic Society of London disbanded in 1792. As it was disseminated, it appealed to new audiences beyond its classical frame: “it was channeled to various new audiences further down the social scale, or readers who did not necessarily have knowledge of the original collection” (Achilleos 2008: 8). The song was parodied in London theaters, and the tune was combined with new lyrics in both Britain and America, appearing in newspapers, broadsides, and song anthologies. In Britain, for example, two of the many eighteenth-century lyrics set to “To Anacreon in Heaven” were “When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat,” published in 1778 (Sonneck 1914: 9 n. a), and the slightly later “Jack Oakum in the Suds” (Holloway and Black 1975: 133–134). In both songs, a British sailor dies from drinking too much, and converses cheekily with Charon on the banks of the River Styx. Other British parodies include “Britannia” (first verse: “To Neptune enthroned, as he governed the sea”), and “Satan’s visit to the Jacobine Club” (first verse: “To old Satan in Hell, where he sat in full glee”). In the meantime, the term “Anacreontic” appeared in the context of other public entertainment, such as ballets and operas in France and Italy: around 1800, for example, Luigi Cherubini composed Anacréon, oul’Amour Fugitif, an opera that became very popular in England (Achilleos 2008: 23–24). The entire Anacreontic culture—encompassing song, lyrics, and the biography of the Greek poet himself—broadened and expanded at this point to incorporate a wide range of activities, social causes, and political attitudes; but it was still centered on the basic idea of conviviality and sociability.
It is not quite as easy to trace the arrival of the song on American shores, nor to get a sense of how and when it became disassociated from its original British contexts. One scholar of the “Star-Spangled Banner” writes that, “the musical intercourse between England and America was too lively in those days to have permitted such a well-known air as ‘To Anacreon in Heaven’, published in the most popular collections, to have remained barred from our shores” (Sonneck 1914: 61). He argues that it had most likely crossed the Atlantic as early as the 1780s, particularly since “Sir Richard Hankey, later on president of the Anacreontic Society…served in the British army during our war for independence” (Sonneck 1914: 61). It is also highly probable that the founding of an Anacreontic Society in New York in 1795 led to a broader familiarity with the song, at least among the club’s members and their friends. We do know that “To Anacreon in Heaven” was performed at a concert in Savannah, Georgia on August 19, 1796, with one Mr. J. West as soloist (Sonneck 1914: 62). But we do not know how the audience received it: as a British drinking song, or as a universally appealing tribute to wine and poetry.
Adaptations sprang up almost immediately on American soil, including two by Robert Treat Paine: “Adams and Liberty,” performed in Boston on June 1, 1798 (discussed below), and “Spain,” set to the same tune, in honor of Spanish patriots at a festival held in Boston on January 24, 1809.18 In fact, we can trace eighty-five separate lyrics using the tune of “The Anacreontic Song” in the US before 1820 (Hill 1951: 151–193). To give just one more example, in 1804–1805, the Baltimore Musical Miscellany (vol. 2: 158–160), also known as the Columbian Songster, published the tune with the title “The Social Club”; its lyrics praised the power of musical fellowship in the quest for self-improvement. This song, like its antecedent, also sets the action on Mt. Olympus, where Jupiter observes the activities of a singing society and urges his fellow gods to assist the mortals in attaining their goals. The final stanza reads (Clague 2014):
Well pleas’d with the prospect thus spake mighty Jove –
“View you little band! link’d by friendship’s strong chain,
Such merit assistance requires from above,
Celestials – your gifts they deserve to obtain;
Let each god bestow,
On these mortals below,
The virtues most suitable for them to know,
That, improving in knowledge, they at length may unite
The study of wisdom with social delight.”
“Adams and Liberty”
Perhaps the most important step in the anthem’s Americanization, however, occurred at the turn of the century, in 1798, when Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (1773–1811) used the tune for his verses “Adams and Liberty,” written for and sung at the fourth anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society.19 This seems to be the first occasion where the lyrics turn away from conviviality and “social delight” in favor of something more patriotic and martial. The words contrast American peace and liberty with European (specifically revolutionary French) bloodshed and “commotion.” Paine must have appreciated the popularity of the tune, and decided to compose new lyrics to honor the young nation. There are nine stanzas, of which, for the sake of brevity, I include only the first six:
YE sons of Columbia, who bravely have fought,
For those rights, which unstained from your Sires had descended,
May you long taste the blessings your valour has brought,
And your sons reap the soil which their fathers defended.
‘Mid the reign of mild Peace,
May your nation increase,
With the glory of Rome, and the wisdom of Greece;
And ne’er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
In a clime, whose rich vales feed the marts of the world,
Whose shores are unshaken by Europe’s commotion,
The trident of Commerce should never be hurled,
To incense the legitimate powers of the ocean.
But should pirates invade,
Though in thunder arrayed,
Let your cannon declare the free charter of trade.
For ne’er shall the sons, &c.
The fame of our arms, of our laws the mild sway,
Had justly ennobled our nation in story,
‘Till the dark clouds of faction obscured our young day,
And enveloped the sun of American glory.
But let traitors be told,
Who their country have sold,
And bartered their God for his image in gold,
That ne’er will the sons, &c.
While France her huge limbs bathes recumbent in blood,
And Society’s base threats with wide dissolution;
May Peace like the dove, who returned from the flood,
Find an ark of abode in our mild constitution
But though Peace is our aim,
Yet the boon we disclaim,
If bought by our Sov’reignty, Justice or Fame.
For ne‘er shall the sons, &c.
‘Tis the fire of the flint, each American warms;
Let Rome’s haughty victors beware of collision,
Let them bring all the vassals of Europe in arms,
We’re a world by ourselves, and disdain a division.
While with patriot pride,
To our laws we’re allied,
No foe can subdue us, no faction divide.
For ne’er shall the sons, &c.
Our mountains are crowned with imperial oak;
Whose roots, like our liberties, ages have nourished;
But long e’er our nation submits to the yoke,
Not a tree shall be left on the field where it flourished.
Should invasion impend,
Every grove would descend,
From the hill-tops, they shaded, our shores to defend.
For ne’er shall the sons, &c.
“Adams and Liberty” was one of the most popular political songs of its era, and its resetting of “To Anacreon in Heaven” as a political tune would have major consequences for the song’s further reception in America. It opens with an address not to the “sons of Anacreon,” but to the “sons of Columbia,” that is, Americans. Full of “patriot pride,” it praises “American glory,” and “mild peace” in contrast to the recent bloodbath of the French Revolution. Enemies are described as traitors, those who have sold their country and abandoned their ancestral gods for gold, or who have threatened American sovereignty. America answers pirates with thunder—not Jupiter’s, but cannon balls—in their insistence on “the free charter of trade” in the Atlantic. The song does not cut all ties with antiquity; we hear of “the glory of Rome and the wisdom of Greece” as goals for the young nation to aspire to; “Rome’s haughty victors” are warned to beware of American guns; and in later stanzas, both Washington and Adams are compared favorably to “Leonidas’ band” of Spartan soldiers. Mixed in with the classical allusions is a Biblical reference: “May Peace like the dove, who returned from the flood./Find an ark of abode in our mild constitution.” The overall impression is of martial pride and love of liberty.
Francis Scott Key: “When the Warrior Returns” and “Defense of Fort McHenry”
The next stage of the journey from club song to national anthem was when Francis Scott Key (1799–1843) wrote the lyrics for “When the Warrior Returns,” and set it to the tune of “The Anacreontic Song.” The verses were published in Boston’s Independent Chronicle on December 30, 1805, in honor of two soldiers who had fought bravely in the First Barbary War: Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart. The First (1801–1805) and Second (1815–1816) Barbary Wars were fought by US forces against a coalition of four North African states: Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, all nominally part of the larger Ottoman Empire, and the independent territory of Morocco. Pirates from the so-called Barbary States regularly attacked American merchant ships, seizing the vessels and holding their crews for ransom, while also insisting on annual tribute money.20 The lyrics included words that would reappear in “The Star-Spangled Banner” less than a decade later. The six stanzas of the song are as follows (Key 1857: 34–36):
When the warrior returns, from the battle afar,
To the home and the country he nobly defended,
O! warm be the welcome to gladden his ear,
And loud be the joy that his perils are ended:
In the full tide of song let his fame roll along,
To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng,
Where, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
Columbians! a band of your brothers behold,
Who claim the reward of your hearts’ warm emotion,
When your cause, when your honor, urged onward the bold,
In vain frowned the desert, in vain raged the ocean:
To a far distant shore, to the battle’s wild roar,
They rushed, your fair fame and your rights to secure:
Then, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
In the conflict resistless, each toil they endured,
‘Till their foes fled dismayed from the war’s desolation:
And pale beamed the Crescent, its splendor obscured
By the light of the Star Spangled flag of our nation.
Where each radiant star gleamed a meteor of war,
And the turbaned heads bowed to its terrible glare,
Now, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
Our fathers, who stand on the summit of fame,
Shall exultingly hear of their sons the proud story:
How their young bosoms glow’d with the patriot flame,
How they fought, how they fell, in the blaze of their glory.
How triumphant they rode o’er the wondering flood,
And stained the blue waters with infidel blood;
How, mixed with the olive, the laurel did wave,
And formed a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
Then welcome the warrior returned from afar
To the home and the country he nobly defended:
Let the thanks due to valor now gladden his ear,
And loud be the joy that his perils are ended.
In the full tide of song let his fame roll along,
To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng,
Where, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.
This song is unapologetically militaristic in tone, beginning with an address to a “warrior” returning from foreign shores. There may well be direct references to the tune’s sympotic origins in the mention of a “feast-flowing board” and brows wreathed with plants, but now the garlands are made of martial olive and laurel instead of seductive myrtle and vine leaves, and the celebrants are praised for bravery rather than conviviality. Sons are mentioned in the context of their fathers, or as a band of brothers, no longer the “sons” of Apollo or Anacreon. Francis Scott Key already uses the term “Star Spangled flag” in this version, and contrasts it with the pale Crescent and “turbaned heads” of the enemy. The rhetoric may seem over the top to modern readers, as “their young bosoms glow’d with patriot flame,” and the ocean’s blue waters are “stained…with infidel blood”; but it clearly served its purpose at the time as “thanks due to valor.”
Just nine years later, on September 4, 1814, the same Francis Scott Key wrote his “Defense of Fort McHenry,” commemorating the American victory over British naval forces in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812. Key set it, as he had with his earlier poem in honor of the Barbary War heroes, to the original Anacreontic melody. He may have been inspired to write his lyrics by the large American flag that was eventually raised above the fort at dawn, signifying the courage of the American forces in the face of the assault. A plaque at 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. marks the spot where “The Star-Spangled Banner” (as it came to be known) was first sung publicly in 1814.21 The song gained popularity throughout the nineteenth century, and bands often played it during public events. Key’s poem was adopted by the US Navy in 1889, openly admired by President Woodrow Wilson, and finally established as the official American national anthem under President Herbert Hoover on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified in Title 36 of the United States Code).22
Conclusions
The song, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” also known as “The Anacreontic Song,” was already itself a product of many years of reception history, beginning with Henricus Stephanus’ publication of the Greek poems, and possibly detouring through Robert Herrick’s imagined scene of Anacreon in Elysium singing Herrick’s own verses (“The Apparition of his Mistresse Calling Him to Elizium,” lines 32–34 (Patrick 1963: 205–206):
Ile bring thee Herrick to Anacreon
Quaffing his full-crown’d bowles of burning Wine,
And in his Raptures speaking Lines of Thine…
Herrick in the early 1600s saw in Anacreon a model for sociability and conviviality even in the afterlife.23 By putting his own words in Anacreon’s mouth, he showed how easily and seamlessly the idea of “Anacreon” could be transmitted through time and adapted to different ends in an enviably extended reception history. When the club members in London followed suit a century and a half after Herrick, they set their Anacreontic verses to a newly composed tune, which in turn took on a life of its own, both in conjunction with and separate from its original lyrics.
We may find it striking that both the tune and the lyrics managed to find their way across the Atlantic during a period of strife between Britain and the US; we may also be surprised that what began as a song of friendship and conviviality could shift to accommodate the praise of victory in battle—that Anacreon’s lyre could be restrung, so to speak, to support martial lyrics. Ironically, this is precisely what the ancient Anacreon could not quite manage himself in Anacreontic 23, where he tries and fails to sing epic battles in the manner of Homer; his lyre will only play songs of love and wine. But what the poet was unable to achieve, the song in his name did, as it gradually became uncoupled from the idea of “Anacreon,” while retaining its popularity as a tune. Just as “Anacreon” could be re-imagined as a fan of Herrick’s poetry, or as the patron of a London social club, so “To Anacreon in Heaven” was reincarnated in songs that represented violence and bloodshed. Yet in the end, all the variants celebrate the brotherhood of man—at least the “man” on the winning side of the war.
FURTHER READING
For “Anacreon” as a model for social behavior in early modern England, see Achilleos 2004, and Scodel 2002. For the reception of the Anacreontics in English early modern poetry, see Braden 1978. For a comprehensive history of the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” see Lichtenwanger 1977.
Notes
1 For a general introduction to the history of the Anacreontics, see Rosenmeyer 1992 and Cingano in this volume.
2 See, for example, the translations by Henry David Thoreau discussed in Baumann 1974: 162–168, and those of the Russian poet (writing in Hebrew) Shaul Tchernikovsky 1920 discussed in Rosenmeyer 2014: 227–254.
3 See, e.g., Zeman 1972; Galiano 1972: 223–235; Baumann 1974; Braden 1978; Warde 1978; Labarbe 1982: 146–181; Rosenmeyer 1992; O’Brien 1995; Müller 2010; Baumbach and Dümmler 2014; and Höschele 2017b: 203–218.
4 The exception is Baumann 1974: 162–168, in a section entitled, “Anfänge der Anacreontea-Rezeption in Amerika,” which has a fascinating overview of Thoreau’s Anacreontic translations.
5 On the wider phenomenon of social clubs in Britain, see Clark 2000.
6 An example of the high quality of the music is an evening in 1791, when Joseph Haydn was among the audience as the young Johann Nepomuk Hummel played, “astonish[ing] the company with a most admirable performance of a favourite English ballet, with variations, on the harpsichord.” See The Times for January 14, 1791, p. 2, discussed in Lichtenwanger 1977: 8–9.
7 See also the description of the evening’s entertainment in Argent 1992: 24–26.
8 The other seven titles in Anon. 1790 are: “With my jug in one hand and my pipe in the other”; “Should I die by the force of good wine”; “Bacchus, Jove’s delightful boy”; “Let the grave, and the gay”; “By the gaily-circling glass”; “Brisk wine and women”; and “When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat.”
9 See, e.g., Baumann 1974: 73: “Es war Cowley, der den Anakreonteen ihr englisches Kleid gab, das sie mit geringfügigen Veränderungen in den folgenden Jahrhunderten trugen” (“It was Cowley who dressed the Anacreontics in English clothes; and they wore those clothes with little change [in style] during centuries to follow”); and Bryant 1877: 375: “Perhaps it is not necessary to give here any quotations from Cowley’s translations of Anacreon, inasmuch as even those who never read anything else that he has written are familiar with the most felicitous of those.” On Cowley’s Anacreontics, see Baumann 1974: 73–86. For a broader consideration of drinking and poetic practice in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, see Scodel 2002: 199–204; and Achilleos 2004: 21–35.
10 Cf. Achilleos 2008: 14, who argues that members came from varied social backgrounds; in addition to “members of the nobility and high-ranking officials, the society would also attract individuals from a wide range of groups further down the social scale—from merchants, to professional men and artisans.”
11 See also Parke 1830: 88: “If a man’s head comes in contact with a club overnight, it may be expected that it will ache the next day.”
12 Argent 1992: quotes Stevens on Tomlinson: “He wrote the Poetry of the Anacreontic Song; which Stafford Smith set to Music.” See also Stafford Smith, whose Fifth Book of Canzonets, Canons & Glees, Sprightly and Plaintive, published in 1799, included “The Anacreontic Song,” with the comment, “harmonized by the Author.” For further discussion, see Lichtenwanger 1977: 13–15.
13 The Columbian Anacreontic Society of New York was organized in 1795 and, until it passed out of existence in 1803, was considered one of the most important musical organizations in New York City; its main organizer was John Hodgkinson, famous as an actor, singer, and “bon vivant” (Sonneck 1914: 61–62). The Anacreontic Society of Baltimore was founded later, in 1820 (Leepson 2005: 64). For the society in Dublin, see Ferris 2006: 21–33.
14 A similar description may be found in the memoirs for the year 1777 by the organist R. J. S. Stevens (Argent 1992: 24–26).
15 Cf., however, the memoirs of W. T. Parke, principal oboist in the Theater Royal Covent Garden for 40 years (!), who was an honorary member of the Anacreontic Society, and says of the same Mulso in 1786 that, “he possessed a good tenor voice, and sang the song alluded to [‘To Anacreon in Heaven’] with great effect…[and that the] gentleman was a most agreeable companion” (Parke 1830: 81–82).
16 For more on Stevens, see Lichtenwanger 1977: 15–18.
17 Sonneck 1914: 32–33 presents the text from the earliest publication of the lyrics, and offers an illustration in his Appendix, Plate V. The music itself was not published until a few years later, in an edition by Longman and Broderip (sometime between 1777 and 1781), and then in The Vocal Enchantress (London 1783, music and lyrics unattributed). Sonneck 1914: 34–35 lists twenty-one re-publications of the lyrics in English, Irish, and Scottish magazines and “songsters” between March 1780 and 1804.
18 See Sonneck 1914: 62–63 for a long list of other American adaptations dating from 1797 (“For the glorious Fourteenth of July”) through 1813 (“Jefferson’s Election,” sung by the Americans in London, March 4, 1802, of which the first line reads “Well met fellow freemen! Let’s cheerfully greet…”).
19 The first American book publication of the melody was by Wright 1798: 211–218; for the lyrics, see Paine 1812.
20 For additional information, see, e.g., Rojas 2003: 159–186; Lambert 2005; and Tucker 2005.
21 There is some controversy over the first US public performance, as other sources point to an initial performance in Baltimore at the Holliday Street Theater (the “Old Drury”) on October 19, 1814; see Leepson 2014; and, with some skepticism, Ferris 2014: 25.
22 Accessible at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/36/301 [Accessed 25 February 2018].
23 For this earlier period, see Achilleos 2011, 2008; and Campbell 1990: 333–341.