How many national anthems are plagiarised? | Hacker News Reader

How many national anthems are plagiarised?

bbc.com

44 pointsTideflat25 comments

Missing: The German national anthem.

This was actually the anthem of the Austrian monarchy (introduced in 1797, in official use from 1826 until the end of the monarchy in 1918). Some Austrians are still hearing the original text ("Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze / Unsern Kaiser, unser Land!") whenever the "Deutschlandlied" is played.

Before the "Deutschlandlied" was introduced in 1922, the Prussian anthem "Heil Dir im Siegerkranz" was in common, but not official use in the German empire (1871). This one used, like many others, the melody of Britain's God Save the King/Queen.

[Edit] The anthem of the Habsburg-empire is a bit tricky in terms of plagiarism: The melody was composed by Joseph Haydn in commission by Franz II. (later Franz I.), but was also part of the "Kaiserquartett" (op. 76 no. 3, also 1797). Here, there are some similarities to an earlier composition by Mozart ("Exsultate, jubilate").

Isn't the current German national song "Deutschland Ueber Alles" modified in some way like omitting the first verse?

Since 1991 it's the third verse only ("Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit …").

After Paraguay lost most of its population in a huge war in the 1870s, there was literally nobody alive who could remember the entire Paraguayan national anthem, and all written records were lost.

So our lyrics of our National Anthem now consist of all the fragments people could kinda remember all smashed together, including some parts that make no sense (Can any Spanish speaker tell me what the word "infausto" is supposed to mean?).

The gaps in the melody were filled by copying La Marseillaise, I believe.

There you have: infausto, infausta adjetivo formal [hecho, situación] Que trae desgracia y causa tristeza, dolor o sufrimiento moral. "un infausto recuerdo; nadie quiere hablar del infausto día en que fueron derrotados" Adj. situation that brings disgrace and causes sadness or pain.

Thank you. Just knowing for sure that it is an adjective helps a lot. That word appears pretty far from the noun it's supposed to modify, so it was not obvious.

This is the first line of the Paraguayan National Anthem:

"A los pueblos de América infausto tres centurias un cetro oprimió"

Parsing that sentence is a common exam question for college admissions.

I once browsed through the lyrical content of national anthems for common themes. The typical republic's theme consists of: "kill the tyrant, the people will rise, we will not be defeated." There are little variations among them that reference particular struggles in their history, but in most ways they're more similar than different.

The Brazilian national anthem is said to be a mashup of several compositions of the time, including the French anthem: you can sing "Allons enfants de la patrie!" in place of "Ouviram do Ipiranga as margens plácidas"

There are also several bars ripped off from Paganini.

The article incorrectly mentions God Save the Queen as the first national anthem. The oldest national anthem in the world in the Dutch Wilhemus. The first to be officially recognized as national anthem is the Spanish La Marcha Real. God Save the Queen is younger than Wilhelmus, and was never officially recognized as national anthem; it's really just a very popular song.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_national_an...

This articule weird because it's holding the anthems to a standard that doesn't make much sense. In traditional music and hymns, tunes and words are semi-independent, and it is completely routine for one tune to have multiple sets of words set to it, or one set of words to have multiple tunes.

If you claimed you wrote the tune when you borrowed it, sure, that's plagiarism. But setting words to an existing tune while acknowledging that you are doing so is perfectly okay.

New Zealand has to have the funniest one. It's just Twinkle Twinkle Little Star played a bit slower.

To some extent I think all inventable music has been invented. I can't remember the exact piece, but you can even hear parts of Advance Australia Fair in a Beethoven piece!

But it's interesting how even countries share melodies

How about American high school (or even college & university) fight songs?

I think it is a bit much to expect each high school to compose a fight song from scratch.

I played in the marching band for our high school's football and basketball games and most (probably all) schools in our conference just used college fight songs with modified lyrics. (Our school song was Notre Dame's fight song, another school had On Wisconsin, etc.)

My school's was Purdue's fight song in a different key and time signature; I think possibly syncopated. I only learned it in an AP music theory class so there's a good chance hardly any of the student body or general public even knew (unless they were alumni or students of music themselves). But we were also in the state of Indiana so...I suppose by that measure it was probably more a matter of admiration/local support than straight copying.

I ended up going to IU, so the joke's on them :P

My father, an ND grad, mentioned a cartoon from I suppose the 1950s at the latest with one kid telling the other, "That's not 'The Notre Dame Fight Song', that's 'Fight on to Victory, Charles F. Connolly Junior High School.'"

For that matter, my junior high school's song--which I hadn't thought of in many years, used the tune of "Hail to Thee, Cornell" or whatever that is actually called.

Or alma mater songs, many of which are based on 'Annie Lisle' because of Cornell's "Far Above Cayuga's Waters".

quite a few, GTs Ramblin Wreck is to the tune of Son of a Gambolier by Charles Ives.

Colorado School of Mines, and I'm sure others, use the same tune.

Doesn't even mention the Star-Spangled Banner, which is literally Francis Scott Key's "Defence of Fort McHenry" sung to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven".

It's discussed explicitly in the fourth paragraph from the end. (Well, it doesn't name the poem used for the lyrics, but that's not really the point of the article.)

Ah, I guess I missed that. Thanks.

The European anthem, quite deliberately, is the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, without the usual lyrics (Ode an die Freude).

"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal." -- Stravinsky

Well, maybe. But who knows for sure?

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/

That's great. You see, the quote even applies to quotes. ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com