The Battle Hymn of the Republic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a patriotic anthem, written by Julia Ward Howe, that was made popular during the American Civil War. The original words and music were written in 1853 by South Carolinian William Steffe. It was alternately called "Canaan's Happy Shore" or "Brothers, Will You Meet Me?" and was sung as a campfire spiritual. The tune spread across the United States, taking on many sets of new lyrics.

A man from Vermont named Thomas Bishop joined the Massachusetts Infantry before the outbreak of war and wrote a popular set of lyrics titled "John Brown's Body" (after the radical abolitionist) which became one of his unit's walking songs. Bishop's battalion was dispatched to Washington, D.C. in 1862. Returning from a public review of the troops, Julia Ward Howe sang with them. Her companion, the Reverend James Clarke, suggested to Howe that she write new words for the fighting men's song, and the current version of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was born [1].

However, according to writer Irwin Silber (who has written a book about Civil War folksongs), the song Mrs. Howe heard was not about John Brown the abolitionist but a Scotsman, also named John Brown, who was a member of the 12th Massachusetts Regiment. An article by writer Mark Steyn provides some background behind the story: Apparently, the men of John Brown's unit had made up a song poking fun at him, and it was this song they sang when Mrs. Howe passed by. Mrs. Howe, and everyone else who heard it, assumed (not unreasonably) that song was about John Brown the abolitionist.

Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was first published on the front page of The Atlantic Monthly of February 1862. The sixth verse written by Howe, which is less commonly sung, was not published at that time.

1 Influence on later culture
2 Score
3 Lyrics
4 Notes
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 Further reading
8 External links

[edit] Influence on later culture

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated" (1901) was Mark Twain's mocking parody of the lyrics, from the "point of view" of an American industrialist inspired by then-recent events of the Spanish and Philippine Wars. The melody of the song is the basis for the popular union song "Solidarity Forever", written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915. Paratroopers during World War II made up another variation, "Blood on the Risers". In 1960 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus with a recording that replaced the line "let us die to make men free" with the more cheery "let us live to make men free", a variation that has since caught on to some extent. In 1994, on the occasion of the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Daryl Hall – with the choral group The Sound of Blackness using the tone of the anthem – sang the official song of the event, "Gloryland".

[edit] Score

One version of the melody, in C major, begins as below. This is an example of the mediant-octave modal frame.

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" melody beginning

[edit] Lyrics

Image:Battle Hymn of the Republic.jpg

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

Chorus

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with my condemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,

Since God is marching on."

Chorus

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

Chorus

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

Chorus

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,

He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,

So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,

Our God is marching on.

Chorus

[edit] Notes

↑ The clause "let us die to make men free" is the most explicit reference to the Union soldiers and the fight to end slavery. In later years, when this song was sung in a non-military environment, this line was sometimes changed to "let us live to make men free".
↑ The sixth verse is often omitted. Also, a common variant changes "soul of Time" to "soul of wrong", and "succour" to "honor".

[edit] Trivia

The Battle Hymn was played at the funerals of Robert F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Judy Garland sang the song on her weekly television show in 1963 as a tribute to John F. Kennedy, who had died just that week [2].
The Battle Hymn was played at the conclusion of the National Service of Prayer and Remembrance on Friday, September 14, 2001.
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, and In the Beauty of the Lilies, by John Updike, are two novels that take their titles from the hymn.
Alexander Glazunov's Triumphal March, op. 40 (1892), composed for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, uses the tune throughout [3].
The tune of the song has been used in 43 films to date, the first being Mother Machree in 1928 and the most recent The Manchurian Candidate in 2004.
The tune was used for the Northern Irish football anthem, "We're Not Brazil, We're Northern Ireland"
The melody of the song (without the chorus) is used in the nursery rhyme Little Peter Rabbit
An episode of Andromeda is called To Loose The Faithful Lightning.
In the movie The Right Stuff, John Glenn (played by Ed Harris) hums this tune during the tense reentry of his space capsule after learning of a technical malfunction.
The chorus of the hymn is featured in the song "An American Trilogy," made famous by Elvis Presley.
The first line of the hymn is also adopted in "These Things Take Time" by The Smiths: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the sacred wunderkind / you took me behind a dis-used railway line".
The first verse and chorus of the hymn can be heard in the background at the end of "In the Name of God," a song from Dream Theater's seventh album, Train of Thought.
The Christian Metal band Stryper recorded a heavy metal version of the hymn for their 1985 debut album Soldiers Under Command. Since then, has been used as the intro to all their concerts.
"Glory Glory Colorado," one of the fight songs of the University of Colorado, takes its tune from the Battle Hymn.
Just before each University of Georgia football game begins, a lone trumpeter stands in the Southwest corner of Sanford Stadium and plays the first phrase, with the entire Redcoat Band joining after the first phrase. The UGA band also plays the entire song after home victories. The same is practiced at the beginning of basketball games, with the trumpeter at center court and the pep band joining in the song.
The tune is used in football chants in England, originally sung by supporters of Tottenham Hotspur F.C., but since spreading to other teams, with versions such as "Glory Glory Man United".
At the end of each Ole Miss sporting event, the band plays a song entitled "From Dixie With Love", which combines the southern tune "Dixie" with the Battle Hymn. Ole Miss fans sing verses from both songs.
The Battle Hymm is played by the University of Minnesota Marching Band during the pregame show of Minnesota Golden Gopher football games in tandem with its trademark "swinging gates" formation. It is also played by the pep band at the end of a Men's Hockey series sweep [4].
The Japanese electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera uses the melody of the song in their in-store advertising jingle. The lyrics are in Japanese and are about buying cameras and electronics.
In Turkey, the Hymn is sung as a Scout camp song with Turkish lyrics by both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.
Jewish-American comedian and parody artist Allan Sherman recorded a parody of this on his 1962 album My Son, The Folk Singer. The song, entitled "The Ballad of Harry Lewis", was about a cloth cutter (Harry Lewis) in the garment district of New York City, who worked for one Irving Roth. A choice line from the parody: "He was trampling through the warehouse,/Where the drapes of Roth are stored."
Schoolchildren all over the United States have sung an irreverent variation of the song beginning "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school...".
Another wanton parody is a racist rendition recorded by Johnny Rebel and featured in the movie American History X, sung by Ethan Suplee, as well as on South Park.
Yet another parody, "Hang Jeff Davis to a Sour Apple Tree/Down went McKinsey to the bottom of the sea", has now become one of the official songs of the University of Pennsylvania.
William R. Forstchen's The Lost Regiment science fiction book series features four books whose titles are taken from lyrics from the song (Terrible Swift Sword, Fateful Lightning, Battle Hymn and Never Sound Retreat).
A Civil War wargame released in 1975 was named Terrible Swift Sword.
The song plays as the soundtrack in The West Wing episode 20 Hours in America, Part I.
British cult band Half Man Half Biscuit (a favorite of John Peel) recorded a track called "Vatican Broadside", which was sung to the melody of the song but with lyrics including the lines "The singer out of Slipknot went to Rome to see the Pope" "..and the Pope said to his aide:" and the chorus: "who the fucking hell are Slipknot?" "..in relation to me getting out of bed."
In the 1960s absurdist classic The Principia Discordia, the tune is renamed The Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy, with new lyrics that include the line "Grand and Gory Ol' Discordja" as part of the chorus.
In the 1989 film UHF, after Stanley Spadowski gives the inspirational speech, "Life is like a mop. Sometimes life gets full of dirt and crud and bugs and hairballs and you gotta clean it out. You gotta stick it in here and rinse it off and start all over again. And sometimes life sticks to the floor so much that a mop, a mop, it's not good enough. You gotta get down there with like a toothbrush, you know, and you gotta really scrub 'cause you gotta get it off. But if that doesn't work, you can't give up. You gotta stand right up. You gotta run to a window and say, 'These floors are dirty as hell, and I'm not gonna take it any more!'" this song plays in the background.
"Blood on the Risers", a World War II paratrooper song, had its melody taken from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".
Peter Wilhousky wrote a concert arrangement used by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and other ensembles of voice and instruments [5].
Many members of the Boy Scouts of America are familiar with the tune as the campfire song, "Pink Pajamas"
Basis of the drinking song Godiva's Hymn used by many engineering faculties

A fan favorite and popular song played by the Auburn University Marching Band at sporting events is a variant of the song entitled "Glory Glory to Ole Auburn".

[edit] See also

William Weston Patton

[edit] Further reading

Jackson, Popular Songs of Nineteenth-Century America, note on "Battle Hymn of the Republic", p.263-4.
Scholes, Percy A. (1955). "John Brown's Body", The Oxford Companion of Music. Ninth edition. Londong: Oxford University Press.

[edit] External links

1917 Sheet Music at Duke University as part of the American Memory collection of the Library of Congress
Easybyte - free easy piano arrangement of The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Julia Ward Howe - by Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott
The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Facsimile of first draft

Patriotic music of the United States	Image:Flag of the United States.svg
"America the Beautiful" \| "Ballad of the Green Berets" \| "Battle Cry of Freedom" \| "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" \| "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean" \| "For The Dear Old Flag, I Die" \| "God Bless America" \| "God Bless the USA" \| "Hail Columbia" \| "Hail to the Chief" \| "The Liberty Bell" \| "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" \| "Over There" \| "PT-109" \| "The Stars and Stripes Forever" \| "The Star-Spangled Banner" \| "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere" \| "This is My Country" \| "This Land Is Your Land" \| "Yankee Doodle" \| "The Yankee Doodle Boy" \| "You're a Grand Old Flag" \| "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"

Patriotic music of the United States

Image:Flag of the United States.svg