2024 the best national anthem of the world review
Price: $261.00 - $32.99
(as of Nov 05, 2024 09:48:08 UTC - Details)
National anthems encompass a wide variety of music, from folk tunes to religious praises, from patriotic hymns to victory marches. Some songs exalt the beauty of the nation, while others boast an historical event. More than a few are simply brief fanfares without words. Yet strangely, the uniqueness of each anthem makes them similar, because it reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of the world, and every nation's priceless contribution.
From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, this exhaustive reference source is an up-to-date collection of national anthems from most of the 192 sovereign countries in the world. Besides providing music sheets arranged for piano, the book also includes lyrics in the original language of each country along with an English translation, if applicable. Non-Latin texts are also displayed as much as possible, usually coming with a transliterated version in the sheet music so that they can be sung. In addition to the anthems, each entry includes a quick fact box containing historical background of the country, facts about the nation itself, and a short account of how the song came to be the national anthem.
Publisher : Scarecrow Press (September 22, 2003)
Language : English
Hardcover : 720 pages
ISBN-10 : 0810848473
ISBN-13 : 978-0810848474
Item Weight : 4.23 pounds
Dimensions : 8.92 x 1.71 x 11.18 inches
Reviewer: Jesse Mendoza
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Five Stars
Review: Includes sheet music with Official keys.
Reviewer: paologusmao
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Do not even think of it ...
Review: If today you are looking for a the best book on national anthems, you should still choose the 10th edition of "National Anthems of the World" by W L Reed and M J Bristow (ISBN 0304363820). What you should certainly not do is buy this book. It is nothing but a waste of money. Here is why.Without doubt, the author Xing Hang has taken efforts to gather the most up-to-date information in the field, and it is obvious that he spent many hours on the internet finding the latest information. Moreover he includes valuable information, also largely drawn from the internet, on the history of each anthem, and he displays many anthem lyrics in their original scripts (Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic etc). He is also honest enough not to claim certain anthems to be still valid today-for example the anthems of "instable" countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia-, and instead to leave these anthems out of the book altogether.On the other hand the book was published in late 2003, and still it does not contain a number of new national anthems that have become official quite long time before the publication, especially the new national anthems of Rwanda and East Timor. Besides I am quite unsure whether the national anthem of Micronesia is correct (Reed/Bristow have a different anthem composed by Brahms which was introduced in 2001). Since the book boasts being so up-to-date, getting to know more about these new anthems was a major motivation for me to try this book. And I was deeply disappointed.If you appreciate correct spelling, solid paper, good printing quality and an attractive layout, this book gives you still another load of reasons not to buy it. There are more than just a few typing errors. The printing shows through and was obivously scanned from mediocre inkjet prints. The layout itself reveals Microsoft's run-of-the-mill templates.As for these points, the latest edition of Reed/Bristow surpasses Xing Hang's book by far, although it has quite some typeset errors, too.However, the most convincing reason not to spend a single cent for this book is the typeset of the melodies. If only a lay musician had thrown a glance on the scores before the book was published! He might have helped to avoid such a disaster. The fact that dotted crotchets and their following quavers are mostly (though not always) replaced by awkward triplets reminds you of that notorious Midi Chinese. It is certainly far away from professional musical notation. You will again and again try to decode completely confusing notations and absolute non-sense times. At very many places you will even find wrong notes or you won't find them at all where you could expect them. As a result-and that is no exaggeration-many tunes are hard to recognise as such anyway. And to call the scores below the melody lines piano arrangements will make every amateur pianist break out in tears.Rearding all these facts and recalling the hefty price I paid for this book, there is only one thing I would like to know: Dear publishers, how could you risk your reputation and waste a single sheet of paper for such a heap of trash?And dear Amazon readers: Do not even think of it ...