The DU Lounge

aint_no_life_nowhere

(21,925 posts) Fri Feb 22, 2013, 04:23 AM Feb 2013

What was the French National Anthem before La Marseillaise?

"Grand Dieu Sauve Le Roi" (Great God Save The King). Yes, it’s the same melody as “My Country Tis Of Thee” and the British “God Save The Queen”. The composition of this piece is not without some controversy among music historians it would seem. The earliest recorded performance was noted in the memoirs of The Duchess of Brinon who wrote the French words and stated that she presented her poem to the Musical Director of French King Louis XIV, Jean Baptiste Lully (who himself was an Italian who had adopted French citizenship and was a major Baroque composer) who then set it to this music. The Duchess then had the words and music performed for the King by the singers of a girls’ school to wish the King a safe recovery from a painful anal fistula from which he as then suffering. The piece would have then been heard by German composer Frederic Handel who passed it off as his own to the British crown, selling it but changing the word “King” to the word “Queen”. The piece also supposedly was used in the Russian court (briefly under Alexander I). British musicologists have called into question the truthfulness of the Duchess’ account (there may be a certain resistance to admit this out of national pride) but can’t seem to point to another clear origin for it or dispute the fact the piece was performed for Louis XIV to help him recover from his anal fistula.

We’ll probably never know the whole story; there were no recording devices back then, but it’s a controversy about this anthem I never knew before.