British Patriotic Song - “Rule, Britannia!”

“Rule, Britannia!” is a British patriotic song, originating from the 1740 poem of the same name by James Thomson and set to music by Thomas Arne in the same year. It is most strongly associated with the Royal Navy, but is also used by the British Army.

The song was originally the final musical number in Thomas Arne’s Alfred, a masque about Alfred the Great, co-written by James Thomson and David Mallet and first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, on August 1, 1740.

“Rule, Britannia!” soon developed an independent life of its own, separate from the masque of which it had formed a part. First heard in London in 1745, it achieved instant popularity. It quickly became so well known that Handel quoted it in his Occasional Oratorio in the following year. Handel used the first phrase as part of the Act II soprano aria, “Prophetic visions strike my eye”, when the soprano sings it at the words “War shall cease, welcome peace!”

The song assumed extra significance in 1945 at the conclusion of World War II when it was played at the ceremonial surrender of the Imperial Japanese Army in Singapore. A massed military band of Australian, British and American forces played as Supreme Allied Commander Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma arrived.

“Rule, Britannia!” (in an orchestral arrangement by Sir Malcolm Sargent) is traditionally performed at the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms, normally with a guest soloist (past performers have included Jane Eaglen, Bryn Terfel, Thomas Hampson, Joseph Calleja, and Felicity Lott). It has always been the last part of Sir Henry Wood's 1905 Fantasia on British Sea Songs, except that for many years up until 2000, the Sargent arrangement has been used. However, in recent years the inclusion of the song and other patriotic tunes has been much criticized—notably by Leonard Slatkin—and the presentation has been occasionally amended. For some years the performance at the Last Night of the Proms reverted to Sir Henry Wood’s original arrangement. When Bryn Terfel performed it at the Proms in 1994 and 2008 he sang the third verse in Welsh.