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Pastimes : Music Jukebox -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (2787)	8/2/2009 9:29:35 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Respond to of 32431

The Anacreontic Song was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London, who gathered regularly to perform concerts. The song is commonly (albeit incorrectly) referred to as To Anacreon in Heaven, which is not the title, but rather the opening line of the lyrics. These barristers, doctors, and other professional men named their club after the Greek court poet Anacreon (6th century BC), whose poems, "anacreontics", were used to entertain patrons in Teos and Athens. His songs often celebrated women, wine, and entertaining . . . . In all probability some drinking did occur at Society meetings, but the primary purpose of the Society (and its song) was to promote an interest in music. [The song] was commonly used as a sobriety test: If you could sing a stanza of the notoriously difficult melody and stay on key, you were sober enough for another round. The tune was probably composed (there is only one known firsthand account, by Society member John Samuel Stevens) by a member of the Society, John Stafford Smith from Gloucester, to lyrics by the Society's president, Ralph Tomlinson. Smith wrote the tune in the mid-1760s, while still a teenager. It was first published by Longman & Broderip in London in 1778/1779. scribalterror.blogs.com