SAB Voices and Piano, with Optional Orchestration
Patriotic
Words by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)
Music by John Stafford Smith (1750-1836)
Arranged by Earlene Rentz
Optional Orchestration
Free with purchase: Orchestral Score and Independent Parts
Moderate to Advanced Difficulty
Also Available: SATB
Duration ca. 4:24
In 1814, a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key was aboard a British prisoner of war ship in Baltimore Harbor to negotiate the exchange of British and American prisoners. While aboard, he realized that the British were going to wage one more attack on Fort McHenry, and he was not allowed to get off the ship. He experienced the attack with the prisoners aboard the ship, and when the fog and smoke cleared, he disembarked, and went home to Baltimore. He immediately penned the words of our National Anthem, approved as such on March 3, 1931 by Congress. This arrangement begins with the second verse of the anthem, establishes the mood of that perilous night in 1814, and includes a narrator and audience participation
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