National(-ist) music - right or wrong?

[Eric]

I saw a memorial service on BBC TV news just now, where British secret saboteurs, trying to undermine the Nazi war machine, were being honoured for the first time after WWII (many decades ago) - the SOE.

The military band was playing Elgar (Nimrod), and the thought struck me: is it legitimate for a piece of music to be used in a non-?sthetic, but quite national(-ist) way?

Anthems, songs to boost the morale of the troops, stirring hymns - are they all legitimate, or jingoistic?

[hdw]

I saw a memorial service on BBC TV news just now, where British secret saboteurs, trying to undermine the Nazi war machine, were being honoured for the first time after WWII (many decades ago) - the SOE.

The military band was playing Elgar (Nimrod), and the thought struck me: is it legitimate for a piece of music to be used in a non-?sthetic, but quite national(-ist) way?

Anthems, songs to boost the morale of the troops, stirring hymns - are they all legitimate, or jingoistic?

Particular pieces of music come to be associated with particular contexts, irrespective of what the composer originally intended. Elgar wrote the Enigma Variations at least partly with jocular intent, as each one is allegedly about one of his friends, but as "Nimrod" is a rather sad, plaintive melody in a minor key, it has come to be associated with solemn formal public occasions.
I'm not sure if it assumed that role during Elgar's lifetime, but the old boy is no longer around to be canvassed about it, so I suppose the military can do what they like with it.

I am one of those Scots - I hope we are the majority, but I'm not sure - who loathe the teary, self-pitying dirge "Flower of Scotland" being trotted out at major sporting events, like rugby internationals at Murrayfield. I'm not keen on the whole national(istic) anthem thing, and I particularly hate it when they hark back to ancient grievances.

Harry

[Jayaprakash]

At least as legitimate as using music to to bolster infantile romanticism or aspirations to joining the ever so glamorous criminal class.

But I still won't listen to NSBM.

[nnyhav]

This past month saw a new group hit the scene in readiness for the next Eurovision contest, but the music's already discordant:

The European Alliance of National Movements (AENM), the coalition of far-right parties formed last month in Budapest, has failed in its an attempt to get its hands on European Parliament cash, as the jumble of reactionary rightists did not manage to file the application on time.
...
Hungarian MEP Balczo Zoltan, Jobbik's vice-president, angrily told journalists at the press conference that the alliance will never permit the inclusion of Slovak or Romanian nationalists, as their brand of nationalism was exclusionary of the wrong type of people.

http://euobserver.com/9/28982
Acronym AENM is apparently shared with Associazione Emigranti Nel Mondo. Go figure.

[hdw]

"Nationalist" music doesn't have to be xenophobic and bombastic. A good few years ago my wife and I had a holiday in the Czech Republic, and as our plane started descending into Prague airport they played Smetana's Ma Vlast over the tannoy, and everybody fell silent. I got quite a lump in my throat. My wife had just been talking to her neighbour, a Canadian woman of Czech origins coming "home" to reconnect with her roots.

Harry

[Eric]

Unlike Harry (#2), I like sentimental music, as long as it is not played in cloying surfeit.

I'm afraid I don't know that "Flower of Scotland" sounds like, but I did hear a tune which, via its lyrics, I finally traced by Googling, and that is a tune perhaps symbolic of a divided Ireland. It is called "Danny Boy" (Republican) but also "The Londonderry Air" (Unionist).

I like the Vltava (Moldau, to you) by Smetana, which is the most famous of the M? vlast set of six symphonic poems.

Picking up on Nnyhav's point about abject nationalism, I find it curiously ironic that Gorbach?v finally allowed the Soviet Union to crumble in 1991, but that Putin later took back the Soviet national anthem tune as the Russian one, as if the period from 1917 to 1991 was something to be proud about.

Another curiosity is that the Finnish and Estonian national anthems have exactly the same tune (written by the Swedish-speaker Fredrik Pacius). When there are Finnish-Estonian state visits, it must be comical when the identical anthem tune is played twice.

[beelzebubbles]

Londonderry Air is the name of the tune from Northern Ireland that the lyric Danny Boy, written by an English lawyer, was finally, but not originally, set to.

I remember singing a song about calvary to this tune at church. Quite a few lyricists have used it. Of course, Danny Boy is the most popular especially with the Irish diaspora.

If you want to see a few other lyrics to the Londonderry Air check out this wikipedia thread. Londonderry Air - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you want to see what I imagine is only a partial list of all the singers that recorded this song I give you Danny Boy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Eric]

Thanks for that Beelzebubbles. I've heard the tune named both ways on YouTube. Didn't remember it was an English lawyer, though I must have read it when looking for it. There is an English hymn we sang at school that has a similar tune, but owing to the interference of the Danny Boy tune in my head, I can't call it to mind.

The fact that this typically Irish tune was written by and Englishman has reminded me that many of the tunes of stirring English hymns were in fact written by Germans. For instance, the hymn "Glorious things to Thee are spoken", which we sang at school, turned out to be the same tune as "Deutschland, Deutschland, ?ber alles". Many tunes of carols in Holland, and some in Estonia, are the same as the English ones, also implying a common source, probably German. Although the Battenbergs changed their name to Mountbatten during WWI, many English hymns have German tunes to this day.

[saliotthomas]

Right or wrong,left and right,black and white,good and bad,important and casual,gloomy and happy,where to draw the line?


Aux armes ectera.

YouTube - Gainsbourg - Aux armes

[hdw]

The fact that this typically Irish tune was written by and Englishman has reminded me that many of the tunes of stirring English hymns were in fact written by Germans. For instance, the hymn "Glorious things to Thee are spoken", which we sang at school, turned out to be the same tune as "Deutschland, Deutschland, ?ber alles".

There's a string quartet by Haydn with a very beautiful, lyrical slow movement which sounds vaguely familiar when you first hear it, because it is of course the tune which was later used for Deutschland ?ber alles.

I'm interested in the way in which popular composers pillage the classics for a good tune. If you're of the older generation, brought up on Broadway musicals and their Hollywood incarnations, you'll wonder, on listening to Borodin's String Quartet in D major, 'where I have I heard those tunes before?' The answer is that you're listening to 'Baubles, Bangles and Beads', and 'Hold my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise', because the composer of Kismet seems to have pillaged Borodin without let or hindrance (or shame). Andrew Lloyd Webber wasn't the first to re-use a good tune.

Mind you, some composers aren't above re-using their own material in a new piece. You'll hear the same melodies in Mahler's Symphony no.1 and his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

Harry

[Eric]

I'll forgive Mahler his potpourris. He and Bart?k, Smetana, Dvoř?k and a few others are the kind of composers who contribute added value when they steal or borrow folk tunes. Nothing wrong with nicking the odd klezmer refrain or folk tune, as long as you add something, by embedding it in a sophisticated Central European symphony.

But when pop people steal the bald original, they are so much more infradig. Where, pray, did Mary Hopkins' chart-topper "Those were the days, my friends..." come from? I loved the song as a teenager, only to find out, years later, that this was a straight filch from the Russians.

[beelzebubbles]

I love that song. When I was a little girl I used to steal down to my neighbors apartment and play that song on her record player until she would kick me out.

YouTube - mary hopkin - those were the days-68

YouTube - Those were the days (Russian song originally)

Those Were the Days (song) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Does it count as stealing if the song is not copyrighted in your country? Didn't all things Russian belong to the people back in the Soviet era?

[Eric]

Yes, Beelzebubbles, I meant to mention in my last posting that the Russians (sometimes called Soviets) were abysmal about copyright. During the Soviet era, they published lots of books without paying royalties to wicked Western capitalists (including left-wing authors, no doubt).

What annoyed me about the Mary Hopkin episode was that most Brits knew nothing about Russia, so that clever manipulators simply poached the song. I can't remember whether it became Number One, but got pretty near if it didn't. I wouldn't mind betting if we weren't meant to think it was a Welsh ballad or similar.

I too love the song, even now, but it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth that we Brits were conned by the pop industry. I'm Fomin at the mouth. The Wiki says:

"Those Were the Days" a song is credited to Gene Raskin, who put English lyrics to the Russian gypsy song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною", lit. "By the long road"), written by Boris Fomin (1900-1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism. The first known recording of the song was by Alexander Vertinsky in the 1920s. The song is best remembered for Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording, which was a top-ten hit in both the U.S. and the U.K.

[nnyhav]

since were singin' contrafacta here:
Electrolite: Roll over Parnassus:

[Bjorn]

But when pop people steal the bald original, they are so much more infradig. Where, pray, did Mary Hopkins' chart-topper "Those were the days, my friends..." come from? I loved the song as a teenager, only to find out, years later, that this was a straight filch from the Russians.

It's OK, they sent the Red Army to take it back.

YouTube - Red Russian Army Choir & Leningrad Cowboys

[beelzebubbles]

Hahahahaha! Dude...Awesome! *thumbs up*

to keep the gypsy party feeling going

YouTube - Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple @ Coachella 2008

"all your sanity and wits they will all vanish. I promise you."

Why the Russian Army kicks ass.

YouTube - Roots of Breakdance (Run DMC - It's Like That)

[kateuic]

Why the Russian Army kicks ass.

YouTube - Roots of Breakdance (Run DMC - It's Like That)

WOW! One of the best things about Russian ballet: Russian men's buns in tights.