On the Internet, videos are popular, which states: the music of the anthem “Banner, strewn with stars” is borrowed from the Russian romance “Has-Bulat Obthaly”. We checked whether this is so.

On YouTube and other video services Available Several videos, the authors of which offer the viewer to verify the stunning similarity of the melody of the American anthem and the Russian romance. Some even declare that we are not talking about coincidence, but about direct plagiarism. In 2016, a small plot on this topic even Showed The Sunday time program.

To figure out whether plagiarism is possible in principle, it is necessary to find out when both works were created. The romance "Has-Bulat Obthale", also known as "Elegy", written poet and officer Alexander Ammosov. This text on the Caucasian theme popular in the middle of the 19th century was first published on November 16, 1858 in the newspaper Russian Disabled. Olga Agrenev-Slavyanskaya later shifted the poem to the music: according to one version-having come up with a new melody, according to the other-having processed the already existing one. In any case, the romance became widely known by the end of the 19th century.

The song "Banner strewn with stars", although I became The US national anthem only in 1931 appeared much earlier. A poem that formed it base, wrote In September 1814, Francis Scott Ki, who watched the siege of the Fort McGenry. The next month is the song for the first time performed In public in Baltimore.

Music for a long time It was considered The national, and only in the 1970s, did the US Congress library get to the bottom of the truth: this melody was created by British composer John Smith. Back in 1776, she first sounded as an official song by Anacreontic Society, an amateur music club in London. The words of the Club Ralph Tomlinson wrote the words to the melody of Smith. No later than 1783, notes and poems were publishedAnd soon the composition to anacreon in Heaven became popular not only in Britain, but also on the other side of the ocean - there Francis Scott Ki found out about it. At the end of the 19th century, the song, which united the British melody and poems of the American poet, recognized the official in the US Navy, and in 1916, President Woodlon Wilson proposed making it a hymn of all the armed forces.

Thus, the music of the Russian romance, albeit very similar to the anthem of the United States, appeared later. We were not able to find studies that confirm that the melody of Smith, created several decades earlier, served as a source of inspiration for Agrene-Slavic. But to approve the opposite in any case is wrong.