I like the Kenyan. It is not typically symmetrical - like some notes and chords have been omitted - so it stays in your ear.
The other I like is Slovakian. More traditional, but carries a lot of weight.
"Advance Australia Fair" is just an embarrassment. New Zealand's anthem, on the other hand, sounds great and has the advantage of also being their defence policy.
Now it's too long to read entirely so I could be writing things already mentioned.
However, there was a time when I decided to explore the national anthems genre and I found some nice suprises.
Of course most of the well known ones (especially the US, the Soviet and the German) all have some outstanding quality to them.
But I found one which is to me by far the most moving and - yes, the best overall. It's the Hungarian one. The build up is almost overwhelming.
I also like Hatikvah, the Israeli one - which uses an all ever present medieval folk tune (which btw is the same as the famous tune in Smetana's Ma Vlast).
Our own anthem, Fratelli d'Italia, I just find it quite trivial musically.
There was a proposal to adopt Verdi's "Va' pensiero" from Nabucco some years ago.
If I remember correctly, it was refused just because, in the plot of Nabucco, it is the choir of Hebrew slaves, so not connected to Italy.
More recently, the same proposal was revived by the Northern League politicians, which kind of made it unacceptable per se to me.
However, that music is indeed stunning, but it should be heavily adapted for an anthem's purpose (the intro is way too long for an anthem).
Here's a performance of it inside the Italian parliament.
There was a proposal to adopt Verdi's "Va' pensiero" from Nabucco some years ago.
If I remember correctly, it was refused just because, in the plot of Nabucco, it is the choir of Hebrew slaves, so not connected to Italy.
More recently, the same proposal was revived by the Northern League politicians, which kind of made it unacceptable per se to me.
Unacceptable to Verdi too. "Va pensiero" was a favourite anthem of great hero of the Left to Australians (an Italophile) and chosen by him to be performed at his commemoration (his modest first choice being "Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder"). He was probably under the same impression as me - that this was an anthem of the Risorgimento .
Footnote:
I heard Richard Fidler (Conversations with Richard Fidler, link below) interviewing an RAF pilot, Frank Dell, whose Mosquito had been downed in Germany and who slowly made his way by foot into Holland. At about 58:40 in the interview he describes walking Westward one night around 2am and hearing a "clean tenor voice singing a particular refrain....repeated 2 or 3 times. Then hundreds of voices took up the refrain. In Holland, describing the experience to someone, he was asked: "Was there an air raid on?....when there is an air raid the Germans stop all the trains...in all probability you were on a road parallel to a train line and [from the area you were in] the train was carrying Jewish people to Belsen.
Frank Dell discovered that the refrain that lingered in his mind was Va pensiero.
Not positing it as the best or anything, but Japan's national anthem is interesting in that it's written in a traditional scale rather than a Western diatonic one, though the style of harmonization is clearly influenced by the music of the Romantic era when it was written.
Does anyone know of other anthems that aren't based on minor/major scales?
Russian anthem. They definitely know how to write motivational anthems.. both words and music.
The sort of unofficial anthem they had during WW2 gives one shivers.. Imagine this playing on the radio or whatever they had during that time..AND naming it Sacred War. Genius.
There are two translations
Sacred War
Arise, vast country,
Arise for a fight to the death
Against the dark fascist forces,
Against the cursed hordes.
Chorus: (2x)
Let noble wrath
Boil over like a wave!
This is the peoples' war,
a sacred war!
We shall repulse the oppressors
Of all ardent ideas.
The rapists and the plunderers,
The torturers of people.
Chorus
The black wings shall not dare
Fly over the Motherland,
On her spacious fields
The enemy shall not dare tread!
Chorus
We shall drive a bullet into the forehead
Of the rotten fascist filth,
For the scum of humanity
We shall build a solid coffin!
I love the Italian anthem, especially the instrumental introduction. Everytime I watch their national football team and hear the anthem at the beginning, I get super excited and I almost feel Italian myself.
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