The Anthems ofthe World

Short enough for one side, and sold to everyone.

An anthem fitted a ten-inch disc perfectly, so the record companies pressed them from the very beginning — military bands first, then opera singers, then, from 1917, whole boxed sets of the Allied anthems sold as a patriotic subscription. What you hear here is not the modern arrangement: it is the anthem as a Paris guard band, a Berlin regimental band or a Tokyo naval band actually played it, with the empires and the borders of the day still intact.