Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Ethiopia

Music by Solomon Lulu Mitiku (b 1950). Words by Dereje Melaku Mengesha (b 1957). Adopted in 1992.

This anthem replaced Ityopya, qidä mi (music by Daniel Yohannes Haggos, words by Assefa Gebre-Mariam Tessama), adopted in 1975. This in turn had replaced the imperial anthem Hail Ethiopia, land elect (music by K. Nalbandian, words by a group of Ethiopians), which was adopted in 1930 at the coronation of Haile Selassi I.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Pankhurst: ‘The Ethiopian National Anthem in 1940 [1941]: a Chapter in Anglo-Ethiopian Wartime Relations’, Ethiopia Observer, xiv (1971), 219–25; xv (1972–3), 63–6

National anthems

Faeroes

Music by Peter Alberg (1885–1940). Words by Símun av Skarthi (1872–1942).

Tú alfagra landmítt became the national anthem in the late 1930s when it superseded Eg oyggjar veit by Frisrikkur Petersen (1853–1917) with music by Hans Jacob Højgaard (b 1904).

National anthems

Fiji

Music based on a traditional Fijian song. Words by Michael Prescott (b 1928).

National anthems

Finland

Music by Fredrik Pacius (1809–91). Words by Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–77).

The words were written in 1846, the music two years later, and the anthem was first sung at a students’ gathering on 13 May 1848. Pacius’s melody is also used for the Estonian national anthem (see Estonia).

National anthems

France

Music and words by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760–1836). Adopted in 1795.

La Marseillaise was written in a single night in April 1792 as a marching song for Marshal Lukner’s army of the Rhine. It was first sung by Mayor Dietrich of Strasbourg at his own home and was performed a few days later by the band of the Garde Nationale. Its popularity throughout France became assured when it was taken up by a battalion of volunteers from Marseilles, who sang it as they entered Paris in July the same year. It thereafter became known as La Marseillaise, though it had already been printed in Strasbourg under the title Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin. An attempt was made during the Second Empire to replace the anthem with another of a less ‘revolutionary’ character, Partons pour la Syrie, in the composition of which Queen Hortense, mother of Napoleon III, is said to have had a hand. After the fall of Napoleon III La Marseillaise was immediately reinstated.

The authorship of La Marseillaise has often been contested, and claims to the music have been made on behalf of Dalayrac, Gossec, Grétry, Méhul, Ignace Pleyel and several others. Pleyel did, in fact, provide the music for another of Rouget de Lisle’s patriotic poems, Hymne à la liberté, but there is nothing to suggest that the composer of La Marseillaise was other than Rouget de Lisle himself.

The melody has been quoted by many composers, including Philipp Carl Hoffmann (set of variations, 1795), Salieri (Palmira, regina di Persia, 1795), Jean-Baptiste Lucien Grison (Esther), Schumann (overture Hermann und Dorothea, Faschingsschwank aus Wien and Die beiden Grenadiere), Wagner (Les deux grenadiers), Litolff (overture Maximilian Robespierre), Liszt (Heroïde funèbre), Tchaikovsky (overture 1812), Arnold Mendelssohn (Der Bärenhäuter, 1900), Siegfried Ochs (Im Namen des Gesetzes, 1888) and Debussy (Feux d’artifice).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Rouget de Lisle: La vérité sur la paternité de La Marseillaise (Paris, 1865)

F.K. Meyer: Versailler Briefe (Berlin, 1872)

F.N. Le Roy de Sainte-Croix: La Marseillaise et Rouget de Lisle (Strasbourg, 1880)

F.N. Le Roy de Sainte-Croix: Le chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin, ou La Marseillaise (Strasbourg, 1880)

A. Loth: Le chant de La Marseillaise: son véritable auteur (Paris, 1886) [incl. facs. of orig. MS]

C. Pierre: La Marseillaise: comparaison des différentes versions variantes (Paris, 1887)

J. Tiersot: ‘L’auteur du chant de “La Marseillaise”’, ZIMG, ii (1900–01), 155–7

C. Pierre: Les hymnes et chansons de la Révolution (Paris, 1904/R)

R. Brancour: La Marseillaise et le chant du départ (Paris, 1915)

E. Newman: ‘Rouget de L’Isle, “La Marseillaise”, and Berlioz’, MT, lvi (1915), 461–3; also in Birmingham Daily Post (19 July 1915)

J. Tiersot: Histoire de La Marseillaise (Paris, 1915)

L. Fiaux: La Marseillaise: son histoire dans l’histoire des français depuis 1792 (Paris, 1918)

V. Helfert: ‘Contributo alla storia della “Marseillaise”’, RMI, xxix (1922), 622–38

E. Istel: ‘Die Marseillaise: eine deutsche Melodie?’, Die Musik, xvii (1924–5), 801–13

L. Garros: Rouget de Lisle et La Marseillaise (Paris, 1931)

D. Fryklund: ‘Om Marseljäsen i Sverige’, STMf, xvii (1935), 81–107

J.G. Prod’homme: ‘Comment La Marseillaise fut connue à l’étranger à l’époque de la Révolution’, RMI, xl (1936), 307–12

H. Wendel: Die Marseillaise: Biographie einer Hymne (Zürich, 1936)

D. Fryklund: Marseljäsen (Hälsingborg, 1942)

G. de Froidcourt: Grétry, Rouget de Lisle et La Marseillaise (Liège, 1945)

F. Chailley: La Marseillaise: étude critique sur ses origines (Nancy, 1960)

J. Klingenbeck: ‘J. Pleyel und die Marseillaise’, SMw, xxiv (1960), 106–19

H. Luxardo: Histoire de la Marseillaise (Paris, 1989)

B. Sonntag: ‘Die Marseillaise als Zitat in der Musik: ein Beitrag zum Thema “Musik und Politik”’, ‘Nach Frankreich zogen zwei Grenadier’: Zeitgeschehen im Spiegel von Musik (Münster and Hamburg, 1991), 22–37

National anthems