Commissioned to compose Malaysia’s national anthem, Benjamin Britten struggles with it, only to have it rejected by the government with no reason given.
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However the original national anthem was commissioned to one Benjamin Britten, a notable composer of the 1950s, wrote Alex Marshall in an article appearing in BBC News.
In the article, Marshall, the author of “Republic or Death! Travels in Search of National Anthems”, describes how Britten was approached by the government to compose the anthem in view of Malaysia (then the Federation of Malaya) gaining independence from the British. He said that at the time, the government was in desperate need of a song, and a flag, to commemorate the country’s new status.
Britten – composer of the opera Peter Grimes and the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra – was honoured to be asked, but struggled with the tune, describing it to his friend, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin as a “frightful job” and delivering a finished product which in his own words, was “a curious & I’m afraid rather unsuccessful job.”
Marshall relates how Britten’s fears were realised when the government rejected the anthem outright despite Independence Day fast approaching.
Throwing some folk music in his lap, Britten was instructed to incorporate some local melodies into his composition and as Marshall writes, “Britten obliged, even though he thought the tapes featured some of ‘the oddest noises’ he had ever heard, as well as some appalling ‘mock-Western light music’.”
Marshall says Britten’s second attempt was another fail, and the government picked Negaraku instead, the current anthem for the state of Perak, and already a popular tune often “heard at parties and in cabarets.”
He said the government furnished Britten with no reason whatsoever as to why his composition was rejected but that Mervyn Cooke of the University of Nottingham, a leading Britten scholar who has written about the composer’s relationship with Asia, suggested that it could have been because Britten was English.
Marshall quotes Cooke as saying: “The most likely reason is that on the momentous occasion of their (Malaysia) independence from Britain, they felt it would be entirely inappropriate to have an anthem composed by an Englishman.”
Marshall said Britten himself was “infuriated” but “not surprised” at the rejection and wrote to his publisher, saying: “I was too much in the dark over the whole matter to be able to please them.”
Having only stepped on Malaysian soil for a few hours during a visit in 1956 prior to writing the anthem, Britten was reported to have described it as a “really hair-raising” trip because of the communist guerrillas that he feared would shoot him dead at any time.
The anthem, having disappeared for decades, and played publicly only once at a London concert to celebrate Malaysia’s 50th year of independence, was obtained by Marshall directly from the Britten-Pears Foundation. In a video uploaded on YouTube, the composition is played by Robin Stephenson.
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