The 2026 Winter Olympic Games begin on February 6 at sites across Lombardy and Northeast Italy, and viewers around the world will watch in awe as the best athletes on the planet display physical feats that we can only dream of doing ourselves. But there\u2019s one portion of the Olympics that intrigues us music fanatics the most: the national anthems that blare through the loudspeakers of the arenas as the winners receive their medals, and the flags of the countries they represent are hoisted in celebration. This tradition, which began more than 100 years ago at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, reframes what the Olympics can be. It\u2019s not only an opportunity to witness physical achievement across the globe, but also a chance to hear each other\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, we all like to hear our own country\u2019s national anthem, but sometimes hearing a song we\u2019ve never heard before (that an entire country considers an anthem) is something special. We asked Berklee Online instructors to put aside any national pride for their country\u2019s participation in the Olympics and muse on what their favorite national anthems are, from a strictly musical standpoint. Here are the gold medalists!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Selected by:<\/strong> Alison Plante<\/a><\/strong> This is a question that takes me back, since my very first music job (during the summer between high school and college) was creating MIDI versions of all the national anthems for the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia<\/a>\u2014at the time distributed on that cutting edge technology, CD-ROM. I remember two things from the dozens of hours I spent on this: first, that a huge number of anthems were versions of either \u201cGod Save the King\u201d or \u201cLa Marseillaise\u201d\u2014obviously byproducts of colonialism\u2014and that my favorite anthem was the one for Tajikistan<\/strong>, \u201cSurudi Mill\u00ed,\u201d since it had so much character and distinctiveness when compared to the rest. I don\u2019t know if Tajikistan will win many medals in Tokyo, but its anthem gets the gold in my book!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Program Director, Film Scoring Master\u2019s Degree
<\/a>Course Author, Film Scoring Skills 1: Collaboration and Communication<\/a> <\/em> <\/strong>
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