Which song was written first, God save our Queen or My Country tis of thee?

Question

They both have the same melody.

Answer 1

The first I guess

Answer 2

God Save Our Queen/King.
The US just half-inched the melody because they couldn't come up with something original.

Answer 3

No-name is right with his long answer.

But all these anthems are bland, and we're tired of them.

Maybe it's time we all held a great big tournament to choose some new ones.

Speaking of which, how did the months-long series US-Eurovision Song Contest spinoff work?

Answer 4

1977, Sex Pistols. Lyrics by John Lydon


Oh, you didn't mean God Save 'The' Queen did you?

Answer 5

Yep, same song. British version came first. American love to rip off tunes. The "Star Spangled Banner" is an old tavern song.

Answer 6

God Save the Queen as the writter of My Country tis of thee wasnt born till after 1800.
The origin of the tune is surrounded by uncertainty, myth and speculation. In The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy Scholes devotes about four pages to this subject. He points out the similarities to an early plainsong melody, although he points out that the rhythm is very distinctly that of a galliard and gives examples of several such dance tunes that bear a striking resemblance to "God Save The King". He quotes a keyboard piece by Dr. John Bull (1619) which has some strong similarities to the modern tune, depending on the placing of accidentals that at that time were unwritten in certain cases and left to the discretion of the player; see musica ficta. He also points to several pieces by Henry Purcell, one of which includes the opening notes of the modern tune, set to the words "God Save The King".

The first definitive published version of the present tune appeared in 1744 in Thesaurus Musicus as a setting of the familiar first verse. Undoubtedly, the song was popularized in the following year (with the landing of Charles Edward Stuart). It was certainly sung in London theatres in 1745 with, for example, Thomas Arne writing a setting of the tune for the Drury Lane Theatre.

Scholes' analysis includes mention of 'untenable' and 'doubtful' claims, as well as 'an American misattribution'. Some of these are:

A tale, widely believed in France, that the tune ("Grand Dieu Sauve Le Roi"), was written by Jean-Baptiste Lully to celebrate the healing of Louis XIV's fistula. Lully set words by the Duchess of Brinon to music, and the tune was pirated by Handel. Translated in Latin under the name "Domine, Salvum Fac Regem", it became the French anthem until 1792. After the battle of Culloden, the Hanover dynasty would have adopted this melody as the British anthem. Scholes points out gross errors of date which render these claims untenable, and they have been ascribed to a 19th-century forgery, the Souvenirs of the Marquise de Créquy.
James Oswald. He is a possible author of the Thesaurus Musicus so may certainly have played a part in this story, but is not a strong enough candidate to be cited as the composer of the tune.
Dr. Henry Carey. Scholes refutes this attribution, firstly, on the grounds that Carey himself never made such a claim. Secondly, when the claim was made by Carey's son (as late as in 1795), it was accompanied by a request for a pension from the British Government on that score. Thirdly, the younger Carey claimed that his father had written parts of it in 1745, even though the older Carey had died in 1743! It has also been claimed that the work was first publicly performed by Carey during a dinner in 1740 in honour of Admiral Edward Vernon, who had captured the Spanish harbour of Porto Bello (then in Colombia, now Panama) during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
Scholes recommends the attribution "traditional" or "traditional; earliest known version by John Bull (1562–1628)." The English Hymnal (musical editor Ralph Vaughan Williams) gives no attribution, stating merely "17th or 18th cent."

Traditionally, the first performance was thought to have been in 1745, when it was sung in support of George II after the defeat of his army at the Battle of Prestonpans by the Jacobite claimant to the English and Scottish thrones, Charles Edward Stuart, whose forces were mostly Scottish. To express this support verse 6 was added, but as its call to crush the rebels now suggests an anti-Scottish sentiment it is rarely (if ever) sung nowadays. Because of this sixth verse, the anthem may cause great offence when sung in some parts of Scotland.

Johann Christian Bach composed a set of variations on "God Save the King" for the finale to his sixth keyboard concerto (Op. 1) written c. 1763.

Joseph Haydn was impressed by the use of "God Save the King" as a national anthem during his visit to London in 1794, and on his return to Austria wrote a tune to the national anthem, the "God Save Emperor Franz" (Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser), for the birthday of the Emperor Franz of Austria. The tune of "God Save the King" was later adopted for the Prussian national anthem Heil Dir im Siegerkranz.

Ludwig van Beethoven composed a set of seven piano variations in the key of C major to the theme of "God Save the King", catalogued as WoO.78 (1802–1803).

Muzio Clementi, another composer who used the theme to "God Save the King", placed this theme into his 3rd symphony in B major. This work is dubbed the "Great National" and is catalogued as WoO. 34.