Today’s Double Patriotic Video

As a dual US/UK citizen, I have almost forgotten the lyrics to the US patriotic hymn “America” (“My country ’tis of thee/Sweet land of liberty/To thee we sing”) as the lyrics I now normally sing to this tune are “God save our gracious Queen/Long live our noble Queen/God save the Queen!”

However, at the end of the 19th Century the American composer Charles Ives, as an 18-year-old organ prodigy, wrote Variations on America, which took the old tune as an inspiration for a tango, among other musical genres.

In honour of both my citizenships then, I found this video which presents various American images to the music of Charles Ives. Enjoy, and Happy Independence Day to all the USans among you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 03:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Today’s Double Patriotic Video”

  1. disjecta says:
    04/07/2010 at 05:26 pm

    Charles Ives was a visionary!

  2. spwebdesign says:
    05/07/2010 at 12:43 am

    Thanks for posting this. I hadn’t enjoyed anything distinctly American today, and Charles Ives is one of my favorite composers.

    Happy 4th!