Opinion | O say why should you even have to try to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’?

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I enjoyed Rohan Preston’s article about the challenges singers face when performing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” (“O say can you sing the national anthem?” July 4.) The wide vocal range can be a problem, and there is also precedent for singers forgetting the words — not quite as bad as Leslie Nielsen in “The Naked Gun,” but embarrassing nonetheless. I have long thought that we should consider replacing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “America the Beautiful” as our national anthem.

• The music: As Preston mentions, the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is an octave and a fifth. Nobody can sing it comfortably. If you start too low, it’s too low for the sopranos and tenors. Start too high, and the altos and basses struggle. Many people know that the tune is not American: It’s an old English drinking song.

• The poet: Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) owned slaves. He freed some (and hired one back and paid him to supervise his remaining slaves). A lawyer, Key represented slaves seeking their freedom but also represented slave owners wanting their runaway slaves back. Key said slavery was wrong, but also expressed racist views. A whole lot of stuff is named after Key.

• The text: The first verse, the one we try to sing as our national anthem, was inspired by a battle, and was originally titled “The Defence of Fort McHenry.” It’s all about rockets and bombs. And some people might find it strange that our national anthem is a question. Others have objected that the third verse mentions slaves: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.”

“The Star-Spangled Banner” has not always been our national anthem. It wasn’t made official until an act of Congress in 1931. My grandfather’s army record book from World War I included the words for “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” and not “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

• The music: The song we know and love is from an 1893 poem by Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) that was published in 1895 and was immediately popular. By 1900, at least 75 tunes had been written for the poem. (You can sing it to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.”) The tune used today was written in 1882 for an old hymn called “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem” by church organist Samuel Ward (1848-1903). By 1910, Ward’s hymn tune was inseparably linked with Bates’s poem. The tune is just over an octave and is singable by nearly everyone.

• The poet: Bates was a writer, scholar and professor at Wellesley College. She was also a social activist interested in the struggles of women, workers, people of color, tenement residents, immigrants and poor people. She wrote her famous poem when she traveled from Massachusetts to Colorado to take a summer teaching job in Colorado Springs. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago with its gleaming white buildings, the wheat fields of Kansas, and the majestic view from atop Pikes Peak. And by the way, not much of anything is named for Miss Bates.

• The text: The four verses to “America the Beautiful” were revised from the 1893 original, and the version we know today is from 1911. The first verse, which is universally familiar and should be our national anthem, extols the natural beauty of our land and asks for divine blessing, as do all four verses. Nonreligious people might object to the repeated references to God, but such sentiments are properly viewed as a kind of generalized “civic religion,” not a specific theology. Few people could object to the idea that the crowning achievement of America would be universal brotherhood.

O beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For purple mountain majesties

Above thy fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

And remember, it’s “mountain majesties,” and not “mountain’s majesty.” “Skies” and “majesties” are an “eye rhyme,” like “God is great and God is good/And we thank Him for this food.”

The second verse might arouse the most controversy. The idea of pilgrim feet treading across “the wilderness” may appear to be an endorsement of Manifest Destiny and the subjugation of native peoples. But perhaps that sad record is one of the flaws that needs to be mended. Last, in spite of the current ascendency of the radical right, I think most Americans still support the idea of democracy and rule of law.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern, impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness!

America! America!

God mend thine every flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law!

The third verse begins with a moving tribute to those who have given their lives defending our country. The last three lines stress that material prosperity is not an end in itself, but a way to a nobler society. The original last two lines of this verse were, “Till selfish gain no longer stain/The banner of the free!” That sentiment seems particularly appropriate today.

O beautiful for heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life!

America! America!

May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness

And every gain divine!

People may remember that the first four lines of the last verse were quoted by a choked-up Dan Rather shortly after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. The sentiment is the hope for a more perfect society. Bates concludes with a repeated call for universal brotherhood.

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

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I say let’s get rid of the racist-written, purloined, unsingable war-song-question and replace it with the lovely hymn about beauty and brotherhood.

Mark Bradley is an actor, writer and union activist. He lives in Roseville.