Stravinsky - Arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner (1944)
After Stravinsky immigrated to America, and after spending time in Boston, he figured he would show a bit of patriotism by arranging a slight reharmonization of the national anthem. He said that his goal was to call back to Puritan times and emphasize a sense of religiosity in the music. But at one of the early concerts, audience members stood up to sing along, and were taken aback by the harmonies. They arenât crazy, as you listen along youâll notice differences but nothing super angular or anything. However it is different enough to hit the âuncanny valleyâ and so the audiences stopped singing and were a bit stunned. The press ran with audience reaction and overinflated it to being âStravinsky mangles our national anthem!â and it became a mini-scandal in our culture. Whatever news sells well I guess. At the next concert, there was outcry from people who didnât know better against Stravinskyâs version, and reporters and patrons and radio broadcasts were at the edge of their seats to hear what the controversy was, how he had âruinedâ the anthem. And then the Boston police arrived to stop it. Yes, the police got involved. Because I guess there was some law recently passed [probably for a sense of nationalism during the wars] that said no one was allowed to tamper with the anthem as dance music, or as concert music, or embellished, or anything like that, and such things were deemed âdisrespectfulâ. Before the concert they told Stravinsky not to play it, so instead he played a traditional version of the anthem, and everyone was disappointed that they missed out on the âscandalousâ version. Which goes to show that hyped up sensationalized news that causes outrage over nothing has been a part of American culture for a long long time. On the one hand, I wasnât in the mood to post anything today because itâs very hard to feel patriotic these days. But the silliness around how patriotism can go to far, as exemplified in this story, made me smile.
