It is not the most exhilarating national anthem, and few people know it by heart. But the “Swiss Song” has so far resisted all replacement attempts, after defeating the former “independent mountains”, tried too close to “God Save the King”, the hymn of the United Kingdom.
Leonhard Widmer and Alberich Zwyssig came from two opposite worlds. The first was a liberal-radical progressive of Protestant confession, the second a Cistercian monk, therefore Catholic. However, a friendship was born between them. Leonhard Widmer, in addition to holding a partition store frequented by the religious, was also a poet. In 1841, he asked Alberich Zwyssig to set one of his poems to music.
The monk recyclated a liturgical song which he had composed a few years earlier. The result: the Swiss Songa hymn that mixes God, mountains and morning light in a spiritual and patriotic mixture. The French -speaking lyrics are due to the Vaud pastor Charles Chatelanat.
>> The choirs, the soldier and the harmony of Bex interpret the national anthem, the “Swiss Cantics”, in August 1966:
But it took decades before the Swiss Song accesses the status of national anthem. First of all, because hymns (not just in Switzerland) were often confined to national ceremonies until the broadcast of radio and television. Not touching a large audience, their formalization has long remained low in the list of priorities of the authorities. The Federal Council had also pointed out several times that it was not its competence to impose it.
Second, the Swiss Song had a competitor, also sung during official demonstrations: Ô Independent mountainsof the poet and professor of philosophy Johann Rudolf Wyss.
God Save the… Cantique
The two texts were very different. By putting aside the non -literal translations of the German original, the content of the first stanza of the Song of Widmer/Zwyssig can be summarized as follows: the beauty of the Alps, illuminated by the morning light, inspires a great faith and a desire to pray for the fatherland.
Johann Rudolf Wyss’s poem, on the other hand, is much more direct in its content. A brutal paraphrase could be: “Oh, that it is beautiful to die while fighting for the fatherland! I hope it will happen to me; I am not better asking.”
According to the international geopolitical situation, one or the other of the hymns benefited from more favors. In 1961, called yet another time to decide the question, the Federal Council provisionally appointed the Swiss Song as a national anthem. A “provisional” anthem that was going to last 20 years, until April 1, 1981, when he became the official hymn of the country.
However, it was not the pacifist spirit of the time that tipped the scales, but above all a musical problem. Indeed, Ô Independent mountains was sung on the air of God Save the Kingas was the case for several national hymns (that of Liechtenstein, for example, is still musically identical to that of the United Kingdom today). However, the resemblance was starting to cause a certain embarrassment during international sporting events.
>> On September 8, 1963, the Calendar program in the history of French -speaking Swiss television devoted a report to the change of anthem in September 1961:
Article Original: Zeno Zocatelli (Swi Swissinfo.CH)
Adaptation: Julien Furrer (RTS)
