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Our recording and sheet music projects provide and audio and lyrical history of “The Star-Spangled Banner” from 1773–2014.

Most educational resources produced by the Star Spangled Music Foundation are available free of charge on this website and through our Youtube channel. You can also listen to our complete Poets & Patriots recording on Spotify.
In the effort to make souvenir, high quality, hard copies of our materials available, we are selling a few select items. Purchase of these materials covers some of the cost of production and helps provide support to the Foundation as a whole. We appreciate your purchase and its message of support.
Payment: you can purchase any of the items below through their Lulu.com or PayPal link or by sending a check to Star Spangled Music Foundation / 1610 Argyle Crescent / Ann Arbor, MI 48103. Please include a description of the item you wish and your mailing address, plus an email address or phone number at which you can be contacted.
Recordings
Poets & Patriots: A Tuneful History of “The Star-Spangled Banner” ($20 [or 2 for $35], including shipping within the United States, add $5 for international shipping)

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Description—this double CD, souvenir edition includes copies of both discs in a slimline jewel case plus a 24-page, full color  booklet providing contents listings, a capsule history of Key’s patriotic song, and artist biographies. Disc One includes 17 tracks that trace the music history of the “To Anacreon in Heaven” tune from 1775/76 London through the Battle of Baltimore, with Francis Scott Key writing his famous lyric. It concludes with a historically informed performance of the original sheet music notation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for solo voice and chorus. Disc Two traces the journey of Key’s lyric from patriotic song to national anthem, showing how the tune echoed in American life through political campaigns, the temperance movement, and abolitionist argument. Five selections trace the future anthem’s increasing symbolic weight during the Civil War. Initially the song is claimed by both north and south, yet within a year the Confederacy is saying “Farewell to the Star Spangled Banner.” Using the talents of students and faculty of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, the recording offers both unique historical information and exceptional artistry. The choruses are directed by Grammy-winning director Jerry Blackstone. Musicologist Mark Clague researched and selected the songs, while soloists including Prof. Scott Piper, and graduate voice students Justin Berkowitz, Nicholas Davis, Nicholas Nestorak, Leann Schuering, and Jacob Wright, assisted by a chorus of a dozen more, bring the songs to vivid life. Twenty-two of the thirty-seven tracks are recorded here for the first time anywhere.
Books
Star Spangled Songbook is now published. Edited by Mark Clague and Andrew Kuster with historical introductions by Mark Clague. View contents here.
Purchase a copy for $24.95 via Lulu.com by clicking here.
Description—The Star Spangled Songbook tells a largely forgotten story of the United States of America—of the symbiosis of both anthem and nation—in more than seventy songs with full text and performable sheet music. These all-new scholarly editions reveal the remarkable story of “The Star-Spangled Banner” beginning with the melody’s roots as an 18th-c. English musicians club anthem and vehicle for early American political parodies that predate Francis Scott Key’s lyric. The anthem itself is shown in twenty distinct arrangements revealing its symbolic and musical transformation from song of celebration to national hymn—from its original 1814 arrangement as a solo song with choral refrain to the World War I “Service Version” and then to Igor Stravinsky’s beautiful (yet infamous) setting and a brand new through-composed version of all-four verses by American composer Michael Gandolfi. Alternate lyrics reveal the wide-ranging and popular American cultural practice of broadside balladry and explore the political use of Key’s patriotic inspiration to elect presidents, agitate for labor rights, and argue for the abolition of slavery. Other songs by Francis Scott Key and the melody’s composer John Stafford Smith are featured. Created for vocalists, teachers, and anyone fascinated by American history, the Star Spangled Songbook reveals a surprising and rich history through the nation’s song of citizenship.