John Stafford Smith

John Stafford Smith continues to be called “virtually the initial British musicologist.” He was also a favorite author of glees (unaccompanied component tracks) and continues to be a significant body in American background as the author of the tune that Francis Scott Crucial modified into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the nationwide anthem of america. Smith’s dad Martin was the longtime organist at Gloucester Cathedral (1739 – 1781). After learning with William Boyce in London, Smith started an extended association using the Chapel Royal, beginning being a chorister in 1761, afterwards learning to be a Gentleman from the Chapel (1784), an organist (1802), and from 1805 – 1817 the Chapel’s Get good at of the kids. He also kept positions being a place vicar at Westminster Abbey (beginning in 1785) and organist for the Gloucester Music Reaching (from 1790). As soon as 1773, Smith earned prizes through the Catch Membership for his tracks and over another few decades, released five choices of glees. Tracks like “Flora Today Calleth Forth Each Bloom” became well-known hits. His popularity was in a way that in 1766, he joined up with the go for London taking in and singing membership the Royal Anacreontic Culture (named following the sixth-century B.C.E. Greek poet Anacreon). Around 1775, he had written the music to get a tune that became the “constitutional tune” from the Culture, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” This melody obtained wide blood circulation and was lent for the first patriotic track “Adams and Liberty” (establishing poems to well-known pre-existing melodies was after that commonplace). Francis Scott Important had first utilized Smith’s melody to accompany his 1805 poem When the Warrior Earnings from the Fight Afar and came back to it for his Protection of Fort M’Henry, influenced by the assault of Fort McHenry, MA, from the English fleet in 1814 (through the Battle of 1812). The U.S. Military and Navy used the track and in 1931, the U.S. Congress officially produced what became referred to as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the country’s nationwide anthem. Smith was a devoted collector of uncommon music manuscripts and such was his experience that he aided in assembling the music good examples for Sir John Hawkins’ General Background of the Technology and Practice of Music (1776 – 1789). In 1812, Smith released his large Musica Antiqua, an anthology of vocal functions and dance music from your twelfth through eighteenth hundreds of years that he drew thoroughly by himself manuscript collection, offering historical annotations for every work. The quantity remained used through the nineteenth hundred years and strengthened Smith’s reputation like a musicologist.