Composition
The tune was probably composed by a member of the Society, John Stafford Smith from Gloucester, to lyrics by the Society's president, Ralph Tomlinson. Smith wrote the tune in the mid-1760s, while still a teenager. It was first published by The Vocal Magazine (London) in 1778.
These barristers, doctors, and other professional men named their club after the Greek court poet Anacreon (6th century BC), whose poems, "anacreontics", were used to entertain patrons in Teos and Athens. His songs often celebrated women, wine, and entertainment.
The connection with Anacreon, along with the "drinking" nature of the lyrics, have caused many people to label "The Anacreontic Song" a drinking song. Due to the difficulty of singing the song, this claim is highly dubious, although the chorus certainly suggests Bacchanalia with its lyrics "And long may the sons of Anacreon intwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus' vine."
The song, through its bawdy lyrics, gained popularity in London and elsewhere beyond the Anacreontic Society. New lyrics were also fashioned for it, including several patriotic titles in the United States. The most popular of these at the time was Robert Treat Paine Jr.'s Adams and Liberty (1798).
Read more about this topic: To Anacreon In Heaven
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)