” The Star- Spangled Banner” is the National Anthem of the United States of America.
The lyrics come from the “Defence of Fort M’ Henery”, a poem written by American lawyer, Frances Scott Key on September 14, 1814, after he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy during The Battle of Baltimore in the war of 1812.
Key was inspired by the large United States Flag, with 15 stars and 15 strips known as the “Star-Spangled Banner”, flying triumphantly above the Fort after the battle.
The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a social club in London. Smith’s song, “To Anacreon in Heaven”, with various Lyrics, was already popular in the United States.
This setting, renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner”, soon became a popular patriotic song. With a range of 19 Semitones, (the distance between two adjacent notes on a piano or guitar, and the smallest interval in Western music.) it is known for being very difficult to sing, in part because the melody sung today is the soprano part. Although the poem has four Stanza’s, only the first is commonly sung today with the second to fourth being rarely sung, (A group of lines that are grouped together to form a unit within the poem, usually separated from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation).
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was first recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889.
On March 3,1931, the United States Congress passed a joint resolution (46 stat. 1508), making the song the official national anthem of the United States, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law, The resolution is now codified at 36 U.S.C 301 (a).