Star-Spangled Banner

[av8rmike]

At the symphony last night, they opened the program with the "Star-Spangled Banner", which seemed a little weird until the concertmaster announced that it was the beginning of their Celebrity Series (as opposed to the Favorites Series, which began 2 weeks ago). gingy commented to me that it was a really hard national anthem to sing, and more patriotic than, "Oh Canada". If she noticed that I was singing the bass part instead of embarrassing myself by singing the melody, she didn't comment. =)

Anyway, I mentioned that someone out there was petitioning to change the "official" key from B-flat major to G major, lowering the key for those of us not blessed with access to soprano registers. Here's that website:
http://singournationalanthem.com/

Oh, other unrelated musical stuff: My teacher really surprised me last night. I brought all my orchestra music because I had just a few questions on techniques. I was only intending to take maybe 10 minutes, but we spent almost 1/2 an hour looking over the hard parts and talking about the two orchestras. I feel like I have a much better handle on everything for next week's rehearsals.

Comments

[postmoderngirl.livejournal.com]

How can one national anthem be more patriotic than another? IMO, all national anthems are inherently the same amout of patriotic. They are national anthems - you can't get more patriotic than that!

The US national anthem is more MARTIAL and VIOLENT than the Canadian one, though, that's for sure. "We stand on guard for thee" doesn't quite compare, for sheer violence, with "the bombs bursting in air."

[av8rmike.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's what she meant, but you'd have to ask her. =P

[big-girl.livejournal.com]

Don't change it! I love, love, love singing-- and watching everybody else sing-- land of the freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. It's vein popping, throat stretching fun.

[gingy.livejournal.com]

I don't have any problem with it, but I hear people struggle with it constantly. It's very amusing to a dirty foreigner like myself.

[postmoderngirl.livejournal.com]

I don't get it. It's not that hard to sing, unless you try to kill yourself. You don't have to sing in the highest key possible.

[big-girl.livejournal.com]

The problem (for me, anyways) is that the range is too wide. If I can comfortably hit the high notes then the low notes are far to low and vice versa.

[av8rmike.livejournal.com]

Ginger did well with it, but she appears to be a sopralto.

I think that dude in the web site just wants to split the difference between throat-stretchingly high and gutterally low.