Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944)

A beau­ti­ful and very human sound­ing arrange­ment. Not a proud day in the his­tor of Boston to have this pulled from the pro­gramme.

The Irish-Amer­i­can police of Boston were not corn on the cob eaters.

When the Bal­let Russ­es arrived to to per­form ‘Scheherazade’ in Boston in 1917, the local author­i­ties insist­ed the harem mat­tress­es be replaced with rock­ing chairs.
‑Jen­nifer Homans, ‘Apol­lo’s Angels: A His­to­ry of Bal­let’

I made a com­ment here yes­ter­day, and its dis­ap­pear­ance is dis­turb­ing. I wrote that I liked the arrange­ment by Stravin­sky, but that the author had mis­used the term “dom­i­nant sev­enth chord.” Today I find my com­ment erased, the arti­cle re-writ­ten, and the new ver­sion just as incor­rect.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of the Star Span­gled Ban­ner uti­lized dom­i­nant sev­enth chords. In fact. most tonal music from Bach on for­ward uti­lizes dom­i­nant sev­enth chords. A lot of them.

It is true that Stravin­sky’s “sin” was to muck with the har­monies. But the descrip­tion as it stands is pret­ty mean­ing­less. He did not add a dom­i­nant sev­enth chord. He re-hamo­nized a few chords with tonal, yet not tra­di­tion­al, chords. They may be a bit star­tling to one used to the orig­i­nal har­monies, but I assure you, the inclu­sion of a dom­i­nant sev­enth chord is not the rea­son why.

As I remem­ber (from read­ing Robert Craft), Stravin­sky said he was threat­ened with arrest if he changed the Nation­al Anthem and that police were sta­tioned in the con­cert hall. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know.

The statute in ques­tion?
from my 1995 Com­pendi­um of Mass­a­chu­setts Crim­i­nal Law:
Chap­ter 264, Sec­tion 9 NATIONAL ANTHEM; MANNER OF PLAYING
Who­ev­er plays, sings, or ren­ders the “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” in any pub­lic place, the­ater, motion pic­ture hall, restau­rant or cafe, or at any pub­lic enter­tain­ment, oth­er than as a whole and sep­a­rate com­po­si­tion or num­ber, with­out embell­ish­ment or addi­tion in the way of nation­al or oth­er melodies, or who­ev­er plays, sings, or ren­ders the “Star Span­gled Ban­ner” , or any part there­of, as dance music, as an exit march or as a part of a melody of any kind, shall be pun­ished by a fine of not more than one hun­dred dol­lars.

The dom­i­nant 7th chord is a very com­mon musi­cal con­struct. The con­struct has been used in dif­fer­ent ways in music for hun­dreds of years. At its heart, “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” is sim­ply a melody. The word­ing the author uses, “added a dom­i­nant 7th chord” makes no sense; all sorts of chords (cer­tain­ly includ­ing dom­i­nant sev­enths) and har­monies have been created/added in arrange­ments of the song since 1931 when it was made the nation­al anthem. Why would a dom­i­nant 7th chord, specif­i­cal­ly, be some­how for­bid­den? In any case, it’s an inter­est­ing, weird sto­ry.

^ How do I delete a com­ment? ;)

Agreed. Sounds won­der­ful!

Shades of his har­mon­i­sa­tion of Per­gole­si in Pul­cinel­la :-)

The chord that would have caused all the fuss (such as it was) can only be the B flat 7th four bars from the end. So, yeah, a dom­i­nant 7th of sorts — but a sec­ondary dom­i­nant, a 7th chord built on the ton­ic, i.e. the dom­i­nant of the sub­dom­i­nant (if you get my drift), which does con­found expec­ta­tions some­what. How­ev­er, it was hard­ly “mod­ern”, let alone avant-garde: Beethoven’s very first sym­pho­ny, for one, starts in exact­ly that way.

The writer of the arti­cle should have just asked a musi­cian for a lit­tle expla­na­tion of what was going on.

Pre­fer the orig­i­nal version…Happy Fourth of July! !

Of course, the Jimi Hen­drix ver­sion is more noto­ri­ous! No one sleeps through it.

https://youtu.be/MKvnQYFhGCc

If you’re not a musi­cian the musi­cal def­i­n­i­tion of a dom­i­nant 7th chord would still be con­fus­ing. If you lis­ten the the songs I’m get­ting ready to men­tion it will help you under­stand all the fol­low­ing descrip­tions. So I’m going to use some very famil­iar songs you should know to help you hear (in your head) what a dom­i­nant chord sounds like. A chord is when you play dif­fer­ent notes at the same time, like when you press 4 dif­fer­ent notes on the piano at once and all togeth­er. The dom­i­nant 7th chord in this ver­sion of the Nation­al Anthem is heard as the word “…free” is sung. If you’ve ever heard of the syl­la­bles ” Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do”, these syl­la­bles rep­re­sent the 8 notes of a Major scale. If you notice the first syl­la­ble is “Do” and the last syl­la­ble is also “Do”; this is because a major scale starts and ends on the same note; the first “Do” is low and the last “Do” is high… i.e from one C to the next C on a piano. If you sing the first 8 notes to the song “Joy To The World “; this is an excel­lent exam­ple of a major scale sung back­wards. In the hym­nal “Amaz­ing Grace” the sec­ond chord ( the chord between “… grace, how sweet” ) is a dom­i­nant 7th chord.

This was my ques­tion exact­ly. Yes, it’s (slight­ly) uncon­ven­tion­al, but there’s noth­ing AT ALL uncon­ven­tion­al about a dom­i­nant sev­enth chord. What a weird way to describe his rehar­mo­niza­tion.

it’s most­ly the chord voicings…in Puer­to Rico wout WiFi, lis­ten­ing in stream spurts…