The revolutionary potential of ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’, a religious-patriotic anthem of the nineteenth century that has become one of the national emblems of traditionally understood Polish society, and has its place in patriotic celebrations as well as the Catholic Church until today, may not be obvious. It is however fruitful to consider it within the broader soundscape of nineteenth-century protest.

An anthem (both as a musical form and as a cultural phenomenon) is already a special subject for a song studies analysis. ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ comes in multiple versions, with various transcriptions and amendments in lyrics occurring across the century. The anthem of people seeking liberation from the occupying foreign authority transmogrified into the song of peasants, workers, other nationalities, and so on. It makes it sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly the authors of each version – the most notable study by Dioniza Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa collects hundreds (!) of sheet music and lyrical variations.³See Dioniza Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, „Boże, coś Polskę”: monografia historyczno-literacka i muzyczna, Instytut Wydawniczy Pax: Warsaw 1999.

Hitherto, studies have focused on musicological analysis of the melody and the form, and/or literary analysis of the text, together with meticulous efforts to identify all creators.⁴The most notable studies are Krzysztof Bilica, „Boże, coś Polskę” Felińskiego-Kaszewskiego. Inspiracje i echa. Pieśń polska. Rekonesans. Odrębności i pokrewieństwa. Inspiracje i echa: studia, ed. Mirosław Tomaszewski, Akademia Muzyczna w Krakowie: Kraków 2002, pp. 197–221 and Bogdan Zakrzewski, „Boże, coś Polskę” Alojzego Felińskiego, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich: Wrocław 1983. The illustration below showcases just one of many versions, here with Polish and German lyrics. An English translation of the first verse and chorus follows.

O God, You have watched for so many years
O’er Poland, preserved in your almighty light;
Cast your almighty shield of protection around her
To ward off the evils now set to assail her.

See, at Thy altars, we below implore You:
Restore to our homeland its freedom again!

What seems equally important, however, is the social and historical context of how people actually sang this piece, which has been somewhat neglected in the studies so far. The examples of singing vary from Polish and Lithuanian processions which in 1861 were commemorating the 1569 union of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,⁷“Czas”, 24 August 1861, no 193, p. 1; “Dziennik Poznański”, 22 August 1861, no 191, p. 2–3. The newspapers claimed there were 30 000 people taking part in this celebration. to roughly 40 journalists, students, and intellectuals meeting secretly in a private apartment and singing spontaneously among their scholarly discussions.⁸Stefan Żeromski, Dzienniki, vol. 3 (11), Czytelnik: Warsaw 1956, p. 26.

As we read sources such as newspapers or diaries, it appears from multiple singing occasions (both public and private) that the song would belong to the many, that people would pick up the chorus even if the lyrics had changed, and that the vast majority actually somehow knew it, thanks either to the tradition or to circulating songbooks. I will not dive deeper into private, or semi-private singing during ‘illegal’ gatherings in apartments; it is however worth mentioning that this created a new acoustemology in which people singing sotto voce were simultaneously listening for the footsteps of police coming. Diaries seem to convey this tension between willingness to express oneself through singing and awareness of political consequences particularly well.

Another important context to bear in mind is that, after three partitions, Poland was divided and occupied by three different states; Warsaw, stripped of its capital city function, became the largest city of one of the Russian Empire’s provinces, the furthest to the west. Among numerous political and legal consequences of this situation, the most vital for my analysis is the prohibition of any public demonstrations – except for religious processions. That is why any occasion inspired by the Catholic Church calendar – Corpus Christi, May and August celebrations dedicated to the Virgin Mary, funerals – became a chance for not only solemn public gatherings but also political manifestations.

What makes ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ a fascinating subject for a sound historian is also its erratic biography across the nineteenth century. Ironically, the anthem originated as a song for Tsar Alexander I who, allegedly, had heard the English anthem ‘God Save the King’, and wished to have a similar song for himself. It later evolved towards ‘Боже, Царя храни!’ (‘Boże, cara chrani!’), which did become the anthem of the Russian Empire.¹²Dioniza Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, „Boże, coś Polskę”: monografia historyczno-literacka i muzyczna, Instytut Wydawniczy Pax: Warsaw 1999, p. 15. Polish opera singer Janina Korolewicz-Waydowa (1876–1955) noted that the Russian anthem was sung in the Warsaw Opera House on any occasion related to the ruling family, such as birthdays and anniversaries, which, according to her diary, many Varsovians deemed intimidating.¹³Janina Korolewicz-Waydowa, Sztuka i życie. Mój pamiętnik, second edition, ed. Adolf Gozdawa-Reutt, Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich: Wrocław – Warszawa – Kraków 1969, p. 57. ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ soon changed its lyrics, particularly the final cry ‘Save our King, oh Lord!’, which became ‘Please give us back our Fatherland, oh Lord!’, marking the common shift from the belief that the Kingdom of Poland established in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna could actually become an independent state, towards the disappointment of tsarist politics.

Around the time of the November Uprising (1830–31) ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ was one of many patriotic and military songs, including most notably ‘Dąbrowski’s Mazurka’, which today is the anthem of Poland.¹⁴Wawrzykowska-Wieciochowa claims that in 1830, upbeat, military songs were more prevalent. It could have been still present in people’s minds that ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ had been a song praising the tsar. Dioniza Wawrzykowska-Wierciochowa, „Boże, coś Polskę”: monografia historyczno-literacka i muzyczna, Instytut Wydawniczy Pax: Warsaw 1999, pp. 47–8. ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ reappeared in the common imagination in 1861, when a so-called fever of religious-patriotic demonstrations took over the society, preceding the January Uprising of 1863–4. These ebbs and flows of the song resurfacing in the particular moments of Polish history are notable; the sources often say the song ‘was remembered’ or ‘rediscovered’ by society. Its final resurfacing was during the 1905 revolution. In my analysis I focus on two of these historical moments – the beginning of the so-called fever of manifestations in 1861, and the beginning of November 1905.

The communal and public singing of the anthem during religious processions of 1861, with their solemn and transcendental atmosphere, became a way to express collective longing for an independent state. Singing would often be spontaneous – a single initiator was enough to make the crowd sing. What is also extremely important here is the mass of bodies moving together as the procession went across the city – a vital element of psychological, community bonding through singing. To call this period a ‘fever’ reflects the staggering number of religious gatherings and Masses organized by different professional groups, which eventually was considered as a sign of disrespectful chaos and anarchy, according to the diarists of several activists.¹⁷The January Uprising of 1863–4 produced a significant corpus of diaries, providing not only an account of events but also political analyses of that time. The questionable solemnity of this singing seemed apparent within the wider context of the soundscape of protest – since apart from ‘God, Thous Hast Poland’, another crucial element of the 1861 manifestations were incidents of rough music.¹⁸The phenomenon of rough music, or ‘kocia muzyka’ in Polish (whose name is closer to German ‘Katzenmusik’) is well recognized in English scholarly tradition but almost non-existent in wider Polish studies; it was therefore a challenge for me to disentangle the co-existence of these two tools of protest in Warsaw. On rough music see particularly: Edward P. Thompson, Rough Music Reconsidered, “Folklore”, 1992, v. 103, no 1, pp. 3–26; Stephen Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914, University of California Press: Berkeley – Los Angeles – Oxford 1999; Russell P. Dobash, R. Emerson Dobash, Community Response to Violence against Wives: Charivari, Abstract Justice and Patriarchy, “Social Problems” 1981, v. 28, no 5, pp. 563–581; A. James Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship. Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life, Routledge: London – New York 1992; Stephen Frank, Popular Justice, Community and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870–1900, “The Russian Review”, 1987, v. 46, no 3, pp. 239–265; Palmer Bryan D., Discordant Music. Charivaris and Whitecaping in Nineteenth-Century North America, „Labour / Le Travail”, 1978, v. 3, pp. 5–62. Such disturbances rang out in stark contrast to solemn procession singing, and thus disorderly noise-making and the ridiculing of authority was a vital sonic element of protest used during these manifestations. For the diarists, however, the targeting of individuals with rough music was more reminiscent of an early modern witch hunt.

The January Uprising of 1863–4 was severely suppressed by the Russian state and was followed by dramatic instances of Russification. Some authors – in both contemporary sources and later studies – would claim that Polish society in the second half of the nineteenth century was both literally and metaphorically silenced, deprived of political and cultural institutions and of universities, and with members of the elite forcibly exiled.

Silencing as a tool of political oppression is well recognized in sound studies, although new studies may complicate this sonic relationship with power. Was silencing equally perceived by the elites and by those more concerned in the everyday life of the city, for instance? Regardless of this interesting problem, I would claim that the silencing amplified yet another resurfacing of ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ during the 1905 revolution – it was once again revived in society and, given the accumulation of years in political dependency, was imbued with even greater melancholy and longing towards freedom. An anonymous, maybe apocryphal memory of the ‘old woman with grey hair’ hearing ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ wove the song more closely into the history of the nation in the intervening period.²²Boże, coś Polskę!, “Świat Kobiecy”, 11 November 1905, v. 1, no 45, pp. 513–14.

During the 1905 revolution, meetings of the younger generation with veterans of the January Uprising, involving shared singing, were not uncommon.²³Manifestacja młodzieży, “Nowa Reforma”, 24 January 1905, v. 24, no 19, p. 2. From this period it is worth focusing upon just one day, 1 November 1905, when the so-called constitutional manifesto had been announced, filling people with hope of regaining independence; demonstrations flooded the city. The manifesto had been announced in response to a massive wave of workers’ strikes in Russia and Poland throughout 1905; it was soon to transpire that the manifesto served more as a valve to temporarily relieve the social tension. On 1 November, however, as we read in newspapers and diaries, the city exploded with joy; and as we listen to the accounts it is worth paying attention to the language describing the soundscape of that day:

Warsaw returned to life and heard again the massive and overwhelming voice of the common cry … Apartments’ windows were hit by the song, the cries, and the massive wave of mixed voices … The streets were flooded with countless processions, with patriotic singing and working-classes slogans. ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ [and] ‘Dąbrowski’s Mazurka’ led the crowds which, calm and solemn, listened to their tribunes … Suddenly in Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, in the early evening, a true hurricane started. Singing and joyful cries merged into one massive roar, which made the windows shake.²⁴Dzień 1 listopada, “Kurier Warszawski”, 2 November 1905, v. 85, no 303, pp. 1–2.

And so on, and so on: workers and intellectuals were singing along the poor; impromptu speeches could be heard in various parts of the city; the orchestra from the circus was ordered to play ‘La Marseillaise’; opera singers refused to continue their scheduled performance, appeared on the Opera House terrace and led the crowd in singing one more time.

This sketch of two case studies already provokes a plethora of questions for historical song and sound studies. The fact that one song has encompassed so many semantic and emotional meanings, from religious, national, patriotic, to the song of protest, prompts the question of what the song does to people. Instantly, there is the question of the ontological integrity of the piece, which has changed so many times across the decades and morphed into so many, sometimes contradictory, forms.

What might be particularly fascinating for a historically oriented researcher is the longue durée of the song and its sporadic reappearances at specific moments of history.²⁸I should maybe clarify here that obviously ‘God, Thou Hast Poland’ did not go unheard in the years other than the ones I have discussed – it just seems less pronounced in the sources. To complicate the song studies perspective with its wider historical context, it is also interesting to listen to how the song coexisted with other sonic tools of protest and how it was used and reused by people often labelled in the source as just ‘the crowd’. In this particular context a fundamental question of nation and nationality also arises – we could use the Andersonian idea of imagined communities, or the acoustic communities of Barry Truax and Bruce Smith,²⁹See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso: London 2006; Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England. Attending to the O-Factor. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1999; Barry Truax, Acoustic Communication, Simon Fraser University: Burnaby 1984. to diversify the political and sociological understanding of the nation. In terms of the sonic relations of power, it is also worth analysing how the police response legitimised the extraordinary status of the song – one police report from 1905 quite literary called it a ‘revolutionary anthem’.³⁰Raport carskiej policji o postawach religijnych Polaków demonstrowanych w płockiej katedrze w sierpniu 1905 r. Wiek XIX w źródłach. Wybór tekstów źródłowych z propozycjami metodycznymi dla nauczycieli historii, studentów i uczniów, ed. Melania Sobańska-Bondaruk, Stanisław Bogusław Lenard, PWN: Warsaw 1998, p. 438. These are just a few suggestions to open up various paths for historical song studies practice.