Oh Say, Can You Sing?

“Difficult, impossible, and beautiful” is how The Star-Spangled Banner, our national anthem, was described in a 1986 USA Today Opinion piece.¹ It is a long-held viewpoint by many that the national anthem is “unsingable.” To dispute this view, two sopranos sung the song during the 1931 congressional hearings that led to its adoption, only to be accused later of singing it in an octave lower than usual.² However, there is no “correct” octave, because even after its adoption as the national anthem, there has never been an official version of either the lyrics or the musical arrangement. Over the years this has led to confusion, some questionable renditions, and more than a few cases of vocal strain.

One man tried to save from all of this. For almost twenty years, Virginia Republican Congressman Joel T. Broyhill fought to introduce a bill in the House to codify an official version of the National Anthem. He merely wanted to “state exactly the words and music for the anthem and to eliminate…inconsistencies,” an objective he was sure “certainly no one [could] quarrel with.”³ It was only his second year in Congress. As the Danville Register and Bee later pointed out, “To anyone except, possibly a congressman, the issue [had seemed] simple.”⁴

Elected as the Congressman for Virginia’s 10th District in 1953, Broyhill approached the Library of Congress for an official music sheet of the National Anthem to send to inquiring constituents (four Washington-Lee High School Students), only to be told there was no such thing. Instead, there were over 170 different copyrighted arrangements in the Library of Congress’s holdings that he could pick from.⁵ Broyhill was intrigued and as he dug further, he realized it wasn’t only differences in the music, but the lyrics as well.

Francis Scott Key made numerous revisions to his poem, and printers (intentionally or not) often made their own changes as well. Plural words become singular, apostrophes were lost and recovered, capital letters downsized and then restored. When Congress made Key’s work the official anthem, they did so by naming the piece but did not read authorized lyrics or a musical arrangement into the congressional record. The Richmond News Leader counted at least four published versions of the first two words alone – “O say!”, “Oh! say!”, “O! say.”, and “O, say.”⁶

Although unofficially, the accompanying melody was (and is) “To Anacreon in Heaven.” Without an official musical arrangement, it was also legal “to sing the National Anthem to the tune of Dixie or even rock and roll it with a hound-dog beat.”⁷ Broyhill’s attempt to rectify this was met with more pushback than he anticipated. “From the general tone of this call to arms,” said the Richmond News Leader, “it might have been thought that Mr. Broyhill had proposed life tenure for the President.”⁸

When the bill finally surfaced for a subcommittee hearing in 1958, criticism was swift. One of the most adamant push backs against Broyhill’s recommended lyrics regarded the capitalization of the letter p in line of the final verse: “Praise the power that hath made us.” Broyhill’s version had initially left the p in power lowercase, but many felt that the line, being a reference to a divine entity needed a “reverential capital” and to not do so was “un-American and almost sacrilegious.”⁹

The music itself was an entirely different issue. Although Broyhill did not propose to change the tune completely, he advocated adopting one of the two most prominent arrangements: either the “Service Version” prepared in 1918 for the Armed Forces or the “Education Version” adopted at the same time for use in schools. The melody was the same in each but the Service Version, written as an instrumental piece, was said to have “a few more syncopated rhythms” that made the already notoriously difficult song, even harder to sing.¹⁰ The “easier” Education Version included in Broyhill’s bill however was also dismissed as “unsuitable” for general public use since it went from a uniform melody to four-part harmony, intended as it was for school choirs.¹¹

Instead, the Committee opened up the floor to “interested persons and organizations” to submit “comments, suggestions, or recommended versions” at its upcoming hearing.¹² “Interested persons” did not hold back. Jack Kaminsky, a musician, wrote the editor of the Richmond News Leader to protest the proposed use of the “Education Version,” which he had never come across before. He defended the Service Version as “simple music despite the wide range” and denied that it was “syncopated”.¹³

Just because one lingers a half count more on ‘proud’ and ‘ram,’ it is not syncopation. It is also not syncopation to change two eighth notes to a dotted eight and a sixteenth, which occurs several times in the Service Version.¹⁴

Broyhill had been ready for such discussions on the merits of his proposed version and was willing to change the capitalization of “Power” and let experts hash out the best musical arrangement. What he hadn’t expected was the pushback to standardization in general.

When the hearing was held on May 21, 1958, various versions of anthem were presented for consideration based on usage such as an arrangement for “a beginning piano player…or the zippy U.S. Army Band.”¹⁵ However, the committee members, some of whom “professed the musical knowledge of a 6-year-old child” chose to focus instead on how the chosen standardized version would be enforced.¹⁶

One congressman wondered if the “FBI and the 101st Airborne Division” could be sent to any baseball diamond that “played in the wrong key” or if “a future President might dispatch Federal troops a la Little Rock.”¹⁷ How was the general public supposed to know if what they were hearing was the “correct” version, and if they thought it was a “bootleg” should they sit or stand?¹⁸ Even the played recording of the proposed versions had caused some confusion as one DAR member in attendance was heard to say, “We ought to stand.”¹⁹

When it was discovered that the Music Council that had helped with one proposed arrangement had ties to UNESCO, “a vague hint was tossed out that the Russian might be involved in an international plot.”²⁰ Newspapers in the following months echoed the skepticism of such “a move toward regimentation.”²¹

The bill never made it out of committee.

Broyhill continued to try however. He reintroduced the bill the next year, and although President Eisenhower said he would sign it, it once again floundered. In 1962, another presentation of various possible versions was presented by the United States Army Band in a concert to coincide with yet another version of the bill. The arrangements varied from one “overpowered by drum beats” which gave it “a jungle flavor,” to one “embellished with counterpoint…[that] sounded something like a Bach fugue,” to one where the “bombs bursting in air” were so soft “that it sounded like a lullaby.”²²

This time a muted, but slightly more positive view, was reflected in the Virginia press. The Virginia Pilot noted that the bill had become a “a recurring symbol” of Broyhill’s career and although they felt it “it really makes little difference” and was “doomed,” they wished him luck on his “crusade.”²³ Broyhill even had to fight off additional proposed changes. Some organizations, including the DAR, recommended “to substitute the word ‘since’ for the word ‘when’ in the phrase, ‘then conquer we must when our cause is just.’”²⁴ The New Journal and Guide’s Dr. Richard B. Martin editorialized the suggestion by remarking that “the supposition here is the Our Country is, has been and always will be right.”²⁵ But yet again, no consensus was reached other than that fact that the “jazzier versions of the Star Spangled Banner are anything but heavenly.”²⁶

Broyhill served in the House until 1975, entering his last version of the bill in 1973, to no avail.

At the end of the day, none of the proposed lyrics or arrangements really made the song “more singable,” and we continue to struggle with it today. Kaminsky, the musician who opposed any changes, admitted that it was very difficult for an “untrained voice” to sing but surmised that we would “just have to struggle along as best we can.”²⁷ The Durham Morning Herald approached it more philosophically,

Even if most of us crack on the high notes, the spirit is there just the same, for you can’t sing it, even imperfectly without being stirred. Maybe it’s good to have a National Anthem that’s difficult to sing, the symbol that we have not yet attained all we’d like to attain as a nation.²⁸