I knew, of course, that To Ancareon in Heaven was the source melody

[conuly]

For The Star Spangled Banner. I had assumed that the tune was, therefore, identical, but if you listen to the original it is clear that there are some minor variations from the one we are all familiar with. I think the original is actually easier to sing! Well, whose bright idea was it to change it, then?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l-n64NWHS4

Comments

[siderea]

How badly do you want to know?

This is kinda out of my period of study (I usually end around 1651AD) and I don't have much spare time right now. But this is, generally speaking, the sort of muslc history question I can usually manage to answer, if nobody else knows off the top of their head.

And having the background I do in the history of drinking songs, I've always figured The Anacreontic was -- *sigh* -- inevitable in my life.

[conuly]

Not badly enough to look it up myself, and only if I get to raise them from the dead and yell at them.

[siderea]

Alternatively, you could just email the editor of the edition they sung, Mark Clague, who is also the blogger at http://osaycanyouhear.wordpress.com/. See http://osaycanyouhear.wordpress.com/about/ -- he's writing a book.

The short answer you may be looking for is, "Folk Process." The youtube video edition was based on the first know printed version of the song, from 1779. There may be subsequent versions, more like the one we know today, before Francis Scott Key got his hands on it. I assume there is an edition that he published (or someone after him?) which included the music printed out, and had it as we know it today, or pretty darned close.

*googles* Oh, say.

"The Star Spangled Banner: A Pariotic [sic] Song." First edition. Baltimore: Printed and sold at Carrs Music Store, 1814.

Shame they don't have an image you can zoom into. It was someone after him; he didn't publish it as music, only a poem. The perp is as of yet unidentified.

ETA: oh, hey, a life-time of reading Nth generation samizdat sheet-music turns out to be pretty good training to forensic gif-zooming early music study. This tune is (or is much closer to) the one in the video, not the one we use now.

ETA2: I have no idea whose fault it is. But it was somebody after 1814.

[conuly]

I don't want it to be the folk process. I usually love the very concept of the folk process.

[siderea]

Welp. This is the ugly face of the actual folk process in action. This is what it looks like.

Sorry to disillusion you. :(

[conuly]

*sniffle*