Anthem - Intellect

Signifying Europe
‘Marche en rondeau’ was in 1954 adopted by the EBU as a jingle for its newly launched
disseminations. There seems never to have been any serious discussion of adding any
lyrics, nor any such need, since nobody expects any viewer/listener to join in singing
such a televised jingle.
Charpentier composed his most famous Te Deum in D (one of total six) in the Jesuit
Saint-Louis church in Paris. In the late seventeenth century, the Jesuits were suspected
of supporting Spanish interests in France. Charpentier had studied with Carissimi in
Rome, and he brought modern profane sounds into the conservative church music,
with straightforward and symmetric melodies and charmingly sonorous choruses.
The only 1.5 minutes long Te Deum prélude is an anthem of the march type, and the
composer himself characterised it as ‘bright and very warlike’. It starts with an upward
swing closely reminiscent of ‘La Marseillaise’. However, while the latter continues with
fanfare motifs calling people to rise against authorities, the former instead continues
with neatly rounded melodies to conciliatory harmonies. While ‘La Marseillaise’ has
radical or liberal republican and universalist associations, Charpentier’s march instead
seems to attract rather conservative and nationalist French royalist fans, judging from
the many comments like ‘Vive la France!’ and ‘Vive le roi!’ found under recordings at
various YouTube sites, where for instance ‘darlingelf ’ says ‘I wish that when I die my
soul is magically transported to the time of the Grand Monarch!’ and gets support
from ‘Sallieri1’: ‘Heil to the Old Europe! Beautiful! Anthem of christian, strong world!
Nowadays our civilisation is dead … R.I.P.’ 432
A reviewer has described it as ‘a rousing bit of splendor out of which we moderns
have constructed a musical icon of Louis XIV’s France’, combining ‘martial, dance-like,
and intimate’ aspects into a piece that ‘evokes the close unity of church and state’. 433
In the twentieth century, the media, headed by television, can be said to have taken
the place of religion, recontextualising the same music to now instead evoke public
service’s close unity of media culture and nation states.
With the EU, UEFA and EBU anthems, a wide range of west and central European
influences balance each other. EU selected the German-Austrian-Dutch Beethoven,
UEFA opted for Händel with his English basis while importing also German and
Italian styles, and EBU chose the French Charpentier with some Spanish and Italian
tints. Together they significantly cover the most influential of the original EU national
traditions, though less relevant for the eastern and also northern part of Europe. All
of them manage to symbolically elevate the bodies they represent, but while the
European anthem has a republican, almost plebeian and modern ring, uplifting not
by ceremonial brilliance but by quasi-natural, balanced perfection, the two others
are firmly anchored in a traditional aristocratic and royal context. EU’s hesitation to
the ‘Ode to Joy’ lyrics for being ‘too universal’ has no counterpart for the other two
anthems, and it may well be that the republican spirit of Beethoven is less bound
to Europe than the monarchist mentality found in Charpentier and Händel, though
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