May 24, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Friday, May 24.
If you are one of the local readers of these little daily thoughts, I urge you to attend this Monday's Memorial Day event at 11am in the courtroom of our historic courthouse. The local VFW does an amazing job of putting these patriotic programs together and I know that everyone who attends will be blessed. If you live outside of Shelby County, Texas, I urge you to attend a Memorial Day program in your area, or at the very least, I hope you'll pause on Monday to remember the sacred purpose of this holiday. I hope you'll take a moment to remember the fallen.
In the ceremony here on Monday, we'll be singing and playing several patriotic songs, including The Star Spangled Banner. The historical and cultural features of our National Anthem's story could fill a dozen of these devotions. Its' birth under cannon fire in Baltimore Harbor. The many famous renditions from Super Bowls to Woodstock. The polarizing effect it seems to have on many Americans in this new millennium. But this morning, I focus on one particular feature of The Star Spangled Banner... it's hard to sing!
Why is it hard to sing? Because it has a wide musical range. It spans 12 scale tones (do-re-mi), and so it has the range of a 12th. That's wider than the range of the average human voice. The majority of songs have a range of an 8th or less. This includes songs like Amazing Grace, Jesus Loves Me, and Happy Birthday. These songs are easy to sing. We don't have to make sure we start them down low so that we can manage the high part. They're comfortable for our voices. When you expand the range to a 12th, you find songs like O Holy Night and The Lord's Prayer, songs that have traditionally been performed by trained soloists - not by groups of untrained singers.
And so, The Star Spangled Banner is hard to sing. And to be honest, if I had been a congressman in 1931, when it was voted to be our National Anthem, I would have probably voted for America the Beautiful. That's my favorite patriotic song. It speaks of "purple mountain majesties," instead of "bombs bursting in air." And it has a range of an 8th - much easier to sing! But maybe there's a metaphor, an object lesson here about living in a democracy. The National Anthem may not be my favorite song, but it's still my anthem. In the same way, we may not like a certain law, but we still respect the Rule of Law. And we may not like a particular president, but we respect the Office of the Presidency.
And so, as Americans, we rise at the beginning of a ballgame, or on Memorial Day. We place our hands over our hearts. And we do our best to sing... our song.
Meet you back here on Monday,
Bro. David
