I am seeing a flurry of reports that Beyoncé lip-synced her performance of the National Anthem. To me, this isn't such a big deal. It's not like I paid $200 for a seat at one of her concerts.
Heck, even Yo-Yo Ma "bow-synced" on his cello at the last Inauguration. Performance conditions at the Capitol at an event that huge are beyond challenging, especially during the bleak Washington midwinter.
Anyway, I'm only a little disappointed to hear this news. Regardless of whether it was a live or studio performance, Beyoncé sang our anthem very well.
People have disagreed with her improvisations here and there, but even that doesn't bother me. Brace yourselves, dear music colleagues, but in my opinion it was tastefully done.
Our anthem derives from a Renaissance galliard (dance form). During their time, galliards would have been decorated in performance with ornaments and "divisions", which is exactly what Beyoncé did, albeit in a modern, "pop" manner.
Renaissance treatises on the art of musical performance discuss the ubiquitous abuse by singers and instrumentalists when it came to ornamenting a melody, stating it was often done without regard to the rules of counterpoint and, less objectively, taste. That criticism sounds familiar. We have all heard "pop" performances of the National Anthem by artists whose renditions make us cringe. For me, it's not because they're pop artists. Rather, it is their performance choices when it comes to improvisation and style that cause my dislike. To me, Beyoncé chose to add her modern embellishments in a way that did not harm the underlying melody and served the purpose of decoration well, but in, um, a very modern context.
She also sang convincingly, handling the technical challenges well.
To those music colleagues out there gasping in disbelief, yes, it's true. Sandy-Wayne has mellowed out.
