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The best national anthem in your opinon?

39K views 147 replies 93 participants last post by  Johnnie Burgess 
#1 · (Edited)
IMO there's no question about it. It is:

 
#114 · (Edited)
I loved how just before the World Cup finals in 2010 (between Spain and the Netherlands), the Dutch players sang their loyalty to the King of Spain :p

"den Koning van Hispanje / heb ik altijd geëerd"
"the King of Spain / I have always honoured"
 
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#113 · (Edited)
Aw How did I miss this thread until now?

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).


And the Latvian one is a little gem.
 
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#115 ·
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.
 
#116 ·
...

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.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...7.14087j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
 
#126 ·
May I ask what you find scary about it? Just curious. I've always found it to be somehow very innocent-sounding.
 
#128 ·
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?
 
#129 · (Edited)
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!

French anthem 2nd or 3rd, depends
 
#140 ·
In a few months you can expect Trump to join the little gathering, and then we will all be cluster...FUKed.
 
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