Anthem - Intellect

Signifying Europe
soothes their nerves. They may of course also have a nice picture on the wall, but
lifting eyes to really look at it demands a break from desk work that is not in the same
way required, at least on a subliminal level, to enjoy music while working.
These traits also combine to make music particularly suitable for collective
interaction, to a higher extent than most other modes of communication, except
possibly for dance (with which it is as a rule fused, as silent dancing is a rarity). Music
lends itself to be made collectively not only for but also by groups, in heterophonic
or polyphonic modes of communal expression, while for instance images or words
tend to demand exclusive momentary concentration and thus function in a more
monologic or dialogic way.
Visual symbols are typically integrated in lots of settings, both solemn and vernacular.
Flags can be sighted all year round, and logos may appear on car number plates as
well as on printed and electronic documents, for instance. Anthems are drastically
different. Few people hum them several times a day: instead they are brought forward
on festive occasions. They are less ‘banal’ or ‘unwaved’ in Michael Billig’s sense. Other
kinds of music may well be heard in the background, as soundtracks to everyday life,
but anthems have too strong a symbolic force to lend themselves to such banalisation.
Being actively performed at distinct ceremonial events, they are often the focus
of attention, performing a kind of sacralising function of consolidating a kind of
communion. Benedict Anderson has talked of ‘a special kind of contemporaneous
community’ suggested by poetry and songs, for instance national anthems as sung on
national holidays, when they give rise to ‘an experience of simultaneity’, an image of
‘unisonance’ and a ‘physical realization of the imagined community’, as ‘people wholly
unknown to each other utter the same verses to the same melody’, connected by nothing
but ‘imagined sound’. 339 Among the main symbols discussed so far, one may argue that
the flag is the most integrated and vernacular one, followed by the motto, then the
anthem, with the day at the other extreme, as the whole point with Europe Day is to
be a unique annual event supposed to be consciously celebrated, even though it may
in this respect largely be seen as a failure so far. While a motto can be hinted at often
in political discourses, and a logo may be integrated in a large number of settings, an
anthem is more apt to be used on special occasions, when there is cause for a common
celebration of shared matters, for instance on national holidays. In Klaus Bruhn Jensen’s
terms, anthems belong to ritualised ‘time-out culture’, while flags can also take part in
the ‘time-in culture’ that is an integrated part of ordinary everyday life. 340
Music thus has a strong potential for both collectively constituted and emotionally
charged expression. Being a piece of music, the European anthem has the characteristic
capacities for emotionally involving and bodily anchored community building, but
these capacities are typically confined to ceremonial events rather than integrated in
everyday life.
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