I think, many people recognize the
German national anthem. Usually I like to listen to the symphonies and oratories of
Haydn. I know that he had a Hungarian connection. He lived in Eisenstadt several decades. (at that time it was also Hungary) He was a conductor at Prince Esterhazy court. I was in his birthplace in Rohrau
and I saw his grave in Eisenstadt. (His funeral and the
stolen skull, are another story).
Haydn
was an authentic Austrian composer. I was listening to a concert
on
DVD recently. I overheard a melody and I thought that I already know
it. I read the brochure on the DVD about what it. Is it was Haydn
C dur (Kaiser) quartet.
In 1797,when he
returned from the second concert of London - because the British national anthem (God Save
Our Gracious King) was very popular there – Haydn composed music,
an anthem for the emperor, it's called : Gott erhalte Franz der Kaiser,
( a congratulation for emperor Ferenc I.
) based on a Croatian folksong.
The poem was by Leopold Haschka. The
next emperor was Ferdinand,
so he needed to rewrite a poem with the
new first name. Then
came Ferenc József and once more a new first name was needed. There
are several kinds of texts, but the
people of Vienna didn’t like them.
Then there was a competition for a new text. The condition was: it
was forbidden to write a first name in the text. The final text of the anthem
was written by Seidl. Finally, it was the text of the anthem until 1918. (One interesting thing: The emperor anthem was
played on the funeral
of Otto von Habsburg in Vienna in 2011.) This melody is the
national
anthem of Germany to this date. The text
was added to by
Hoffmann
von Fallersleben in 1922.
The anthem consists
of three stanzas.
The first one – was also sung during the Nazi era – in European countries
it caused revulsion. Women’s organisations
protested against the
second stanza in Europe. Therefore only the third stanza is sung as a
national anthem in German practically since 1991.
No comments:
Post a Comment