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Anacreontic Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Anacreontic Society was a popular gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London, named in honor of Anacreon, a lyric poet of Greece who lived and wrote in the sixth century B.C. The society's patron saint was Anacreon, the "convivial bard of Greece." The organization was founded in the mid-1700s.
While the society's membership, one observer noted, was dedicated to "wit, harmony, and the god of wine," their primary goal (beyond companionship and talk) was to promote an interest in music. The society presented regular concerts of music, and included among their guests such important musicians as Franz Joseph Haydn, who was the special guest at their concert in January 1791.
The lyrics of the Anacreontic Song, the first four words of which are "To Anacreon in Heaven" were written by Ralph Tomlinson, who had been president of the society. John Stafford Smith wrote the tune in the mid-1760s, while still a teenager. It was first published by Longman & Broderip in London in 1778/1779.
It soon became a popular drinking song on both sides of the Atlantic, with . But the melody, if not the original lyrics, would acquire even greater fame after Francis Scott Key, an attorney, wrote "Defence of Fort McHenry" while detained on a British ship during the night of September 13, 1814, as the British forces bombarded the American fort. This song, consisting of Key's text "Defence of Fort McHenry" and Smith's tune "To Anacreon in Heaven", is today known as "The Star-Spangled Banner".