Changing Our National Anthem

Unfortunately, I read Colman McCarthy’s column (“This Song Is Your Song and Should Be Everyone’s,’ Op-Ed Page, Dec. 18). Gag! “This Land Is Your Land” as our national anthem ? He’s got to be kidding. I wasn’t aware that our great country was “made for us.” We are lucky to live here. It is primal conceit to assume it was all put together just for us good old United States people.

As for the music, Woody Guthrie is OK in his genre (so is Irving Berlin, so is Leonard Bernstein, so is J.S. Bach). But Guthrie’s monotonous little song, each phrase of which has almost the same rhythm and is stuck in the same narrow range--think about it--somehow lacks the grandeur of a national anthem.

The world’s great national anthems, “Finlandia,” the “Marseillaise” (yes, it’s warlike, but how many Americans understand French?), and “God Save the Queen,” are all taken. They are stirring and memorable national anthems, probably more loved for their music than for their texts.

Of our present choices, I prefer “America the Beautiful.” As music, its rhythm is also repetitious, but the phrases are longer, and the melody soars.

Perhaps a better solution would be to commission one of our composers to write a national anthem that is good music and at the same time will appeal to the broad base of musical taste.

With some changes here and there, which some talented poet could effect, Katherine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful” is fine. I’ll go along with leaving God out of it, although I wonder to what party McCarthy attributes the wonders of nature, the Republican?

“This Land Is Your Land”? Pardon me, Guthrie-lovers, but must the cultural wasteland that the United States is becoming be constantly helped along by the musical tastes of the Colman McCarthys?

E.L. DIEMER

Santa Barbara