Every once in a while, somebody writes an article challenging the US’s choice of National Anthem. The usual argument is: it’s a poor choice for a national anthem because the melody was originally the official song of a British drinking club. I would argue that there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s common practice throughout music history to adapt previously-written tunes for different needs; there’s nothing wrong with that.

What’s wrong with the national anthem is that it’s a poem about a tattered piece of cloth during an insignificant battle of a war that most Americans know little about. It has little to do with our country; the only patriotic words come in the last line – “… the land of the free and the home of the brave?” – and it ends with a question mark!

If you ask me, we should adopt “Chester” as our national anthem. First, it was written by William Billings, one of the first American composers. Second, it has a rough and tough melody and harmony that embodies the American spirit of the common man. Third, the words better portray the revolutionaries’ struggle for freedom:

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav’ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England’s God forever reigns.

Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
With Prescot and Cornwallis join’d,
Together plot our Overthrow,
In one Infernal league combin’d.

When God inspir’d us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc’d,
Their ships were Shatter’d in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.

The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet’rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen’rals yield to beardless Boys.

This is a straightforward orchestral setting of “Chester” by William Schuman.

I have just returned from a week of being “off the grid” … on an 80-acre island in Maine.

My first summer vacation was to the sea, and I wrote briefly about the power of the big water – its infiniteness, its desolate surface while teeming with life under the waves, its capacity to be calm or wild, deadly or life-giving.

This second vacation was on the ocean, but unlike the flat beaches of North Carolina, the rocky, cold Maine seaside is more of a setting for majestic mountains than for surfing and sunning. A visit to the mountains is equally refreshing, but of a completely different nature. Raising your head to the mountains makes you feel tall and strong. The cooler air is invigorating, not drowsy. The harsh angles and sharp peaks speak a different language than the tips of waves. And while mountains are more finite than the sea (you can see where they start and stop), they are unchanging.

So, how do these differences play out in music? There’s this romantic version; and of course the most famous scary mountain of all. Walter Piston‘s setting is majestic, angular, and specifically about the New England mountains.

If you don’t hang around geeky musical circles, it’s unlikely that you’ll know the name Walter Piston, but you probably know his most famous students Leonard Bernstein and Leroy Anderson. Piston wrote his orchestral suite Three New England Sketches in 1959. The movements are titled Seaside, Summer Evening, and Mountains. Piston claims there is no specific narrative in the suite, and that he chose the movement titles arbitrarily. Even so, he writes this little story about the first performance of the sketches:

… a man came up to me, following the premiere, and said, “I hope you don’t mind my saying that I smelled clams during the first movement.” I said, “No, that is quite all right. They are your clams.” Each individual is free to interpret as he wishes.

I am greatly looking forward to smelling clams by tomorrow evening – I’m off to New England for some much needed R & R.