Composer John Stafford Smith and the Star-Spangled Banner

Composer, church organist, musicologist (student of music) and collector of manuscripts, he’s just one of 48 famous Smiths in my trusty and somewhat hefty biographical dictionary. He’s number 28 of these eminent worthies and has sadly one of the shortest bios of the lot, but it’s a good one: ‘John Stafford Smith (1750-1836), English composer. The tune of The Star-Spangled Banner has been attributed to him’ which means that this Gloucester boy’s composition is ‘woven into the fabric of American culture’.

John Stafford Smith was born in Pitt Street, Gloucester, on March 30, 1750, and was baptised in the Cathedral. Clearly born on the correct side of the street, being the son of the organist, Martin Smith, who was hammering out such reverberating music between 1743-82. Smith attended the Gloucester Cathedral School where he was to be a boy-singer, and later became a chorister at the Chapel Royal in London (1761) and a pupil of the London-born composer and organist William Boyce (1711-79). Just like Beethoven, Boyce became quite deaf but continued to compose.

Smith became one of the first dedicated collectors of the manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and became a close friend of his son, Johann Christian Bach (1735-82). Smith is regarded as the first English chap to have become a truly serious musicologist, publishing A Collection of English Song (1779), perhaps the first such scholarly edition published in this country according to a much later musicologist Nicholas Temperley.

The rather distinctive Court of Probate in Pitt Street, Gloucester, the street where John Stafford Smith was born in 1750. PHOTO:PHILAFRENZY He amassed quite the library as he harvested literally thousands of priceless manuscripts and publications, then devoted his time to researching and recording the history of music; his Musica Antiqua (1812) being a valuable reference on the subject and widely considered to be his magnum opus as he related the history of music from the 12th century to his present day (the 18th century).

It was certainly by the 1770s, thanks to his time at the Chapel Royal, that Smith had become an acknowledged composer and organist – a ‘composer of distinction’, indeed – someone with a reputation for unique and innovative tunes, and this no doubt led to his election into the Anacreontic Society, which numbered among its members such luminaries as lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson, his mate and biographer James Boswell, and portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds. It seems that Smith may have nudged his way into the Society a few years earlier, however, whilst still fully forging his reputation; 1766 being given as his year of joining this august if slightly tipsy body.

John Stafford Smith is best known, though, for composing The Anacreontic Song in 1773, which was published with words only in 1778 and then with music in around 1780. The words came courtesy of the society president, Ralph Tomlinson (1744-78), a Cheshire-born lyricist. It was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gents’ club of like-minded amateur musicians.

Bust of Anacreon. John Stafford Smith joined fellow high-ranking males in paying homage to the hard-drinking ancient Greek at the Anacreontic Society. Photo: Louvre Museum The catchy tune would be adopted by other composers and writers, including the American lawyer Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) whose poem Defence of Fort McHenry celebrated an event in the War of 1812, fought between the US and the UK. Key’s words and Smith’s tune would eventually coalesce in The Star-Spangled Banner, adopted as the US national anthem in 1931. So, yes, a lad from Gloucester did indeed have a part to play in the composition of that famous American ditty.

The Society sounds like a hoot. It was a typical gentlemen’s club of the time – the male-only preserves proliferating towards the end of the 18th century – this particular one having a vibrant life between 1766-92, which would actually make Smith a founder member. It was named from an ancient Greek poet, Anacreon (c.573-495 BC) who was known for his drinking songs and love odes.

The odes to love may have been a bit wasted on Smith, though; he never married. Stuffed full of wealthy men of a certain age and a certain social rank, the Society met regularly on Wednesday evenings to enjoy a bit of mutual musical appreciation whilst chucking liberal amounts of nosh and booze down the gullet. A ‘singing and drinking club’ would be a fairly accurate description, I fancy.

The Star-spangled banner, the words put to John Stafford Smith's music that would eventually become the US national anthem in 1931. Photo: 'The Star-spangled Banner: a patriotic song' arr. Thomas Carr, 1814 In 1784, Smith became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, then organist for the Chapel Royal (1802), and Master of the Children (1805-17), a title awarded to a musician who’s put in charge of the musical training and perhaps education of choir boys (at the time, but choir girls today as well). He also became a lay-vicar or lay-clerk at Westminster Abbey (a pro singer in a cathedral) in 1785, and was also organist at the Three Choirs’ Festival when it was held in his home city of Gloucester in 1790. Shortly after this, he’d work with the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) during his visit to London (1791-92), a jaunt he repeated over 1794-95.

That Anacreontic anthem must have been quite a versatile tune as it got re-used quite a bit during the 18th and 19th centuries, for different purposes and by different pressure groups. For example, it was adopted by the temperance (anti-booze) brigade, which was ironic considering the shedloads of alcohol imbibed by the Anacreontic lads while they belted out their song. There are some hard-hitting lines in the temperance version: ‘Oh! Who has not seen by the dawn’s early light, Some poor bloated drunkard to his home weakly reeling, With blear eyes and red nose most revolting to sight!’ Then there was another version written for the abolitionists (anti-slavery): ‘Oh, say do you hear, at the dawn’s early light, The shrieks of those bondmen, whose blood is now streaming From the merciless lash, while our banner in sight’.

John Stafford Smith died in London on September 21, 1836, aged 86, and was buried at St Luke’s, Chelsea. It is oft asserted that Smith died of a grape-pip lodged in his windpipe, which would be quite extraordinary as that was precisely the fate that had lain in wait for Anacreon all those years before. Smith has a memorial plaque in the north aisle of Gloucester Cathedral, which incorporates both the US and UK flags and is also flanked by the flags: ‘In memory of John Stafford Smith, 1750-1836, who, born in this city son of Martin Smith organist of the cathedral 1743-1782, was a composer of distinction, a well-known musical antiquary, and organist of the Chapel Royal London. He will long be remembered as composer of the tune of the National Anthem of the United States of America’.

As far as the US anthem is concerned, it seems that Smith’s part in the composition may not have been fully appreciated or long remembered until the 1970s, when a librarian in the Library of Congress’s music division in Washington DC did a bit of digging. Smith’s part is worth recalling, though, because the American anthem has been described as ‘the most anthemic of anthems’ and that’s partly down to a largely unheralded musician of Gloucester.

Memorial to John Stafford Smith in Gloucester Cathedral. Photo: PicturePrince CHRONOLOGY