Anthems (8) -- Three from the Balkans

Someone online mentioned that the Romanian national anthem was “the best” – so I decided to give it a listen.  I was surprised by what I found.  It sticks in my mind much more than many of the other anthems I’ve listened to.  I suppose that is a “plus” – at the very least, the Romanian national anthem is “memorable.”

 

Except that…I can’t persuade myself to actually like it.  I find it a little creepy.  I apologize (to my Romanian colleagues) for that, since I understand that it is a venerable old anthem, predating the Communist era.

Of course, it could just be the recording I found on YouTube:  Very macho-sounding men singing about Romans rising again to greatness, bringing back the glory of Trajan.  Somehow, I think of that film, 300, and people yelling “This is Sparta!”

Whereas…  I expected to like the Hungarian national anthem.  I’ve known the title for nearly forty years, since the time when I was engaged to an ethnic Hungarian-American.  I’d never actually heard the anthem, so I thought “Now, at last!”

I’m not sure what I expected it to sound like.  Maybe I thought it would sound something like the Hungarian dances I’ve danced for these several decades.  But it sounds like a hymn—which is okay, except that it is a slow, classical-music hymn; on the whole (perhaps) not very interesting—however much meaning and emotion it may call forth for Hungarians.  This hymn also predates the Communist era; in fact predates the revolutions of 1848.  But it’s slow and tranquil, not (to my mind) stirring, full of national pathos, guilt, and penance.

The Greek national anthem, I now realize, I have known almost as long as my own American national anthem.  That’s because, when I was nine or ten, my mother joined a book club where my family was sent, monthly, a book, recording and slides about a different country.  This was about the time I learned “The Star-Spangled Banner.”  However, from the book/recording/slides devoted to Greece, I also learned the Greek national anthem—just the music, not the words.  I didn’t know what it was; I didn’t know it was the national anthem.  I actually only confirmed that last week.  But there it is—as familiar to me as—well, myself.  I’ve been humming this song since I was nine.  It seems perfectly natural to me.  So I’m biased; I can’t be neutral about the song.  Which says something about it, I suppose.  It’s an ode to Freedom—but it’s the music I love.