Maybe it was the pressure of being put on the spot.

Like many a seasoned performer before an American ballgame, Addison Nguyen, taking a break between classes at Chaffey Community College in Rancho Cucamonga, froze part way through an impromptu version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” when asked if she could sing the national anthem.

Just before the twilight’s last gleaming, she giggled and gave up.

“I didn’t even know there were four verses,” Nguyen said.

She’s not alone.

With the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key’s patriotic anthem approaching in September, millions of Americans will sing the song this summer, be it on Independence Day, at sporting events or during patriotic rallies.

Like Nguyen, who first learned it at Hemlock Elementary School in Fontana, most will flub a line two and laugh at themselves for forgetting lyrics they’ve sung countless times.

What they may not know is that “The Star-Spangled Banner” as sung today is a truncated version of a four-verse War of 1812 song. And with its approaching anniversary, those often-forgotten verses are seeing a new dawn.

A song for Baltimore

Key was a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet in 1814, tasked with obtaining the release of William Beanes, a physician from Upper Marlboro, Md., who was taken by the British after they withdrew from Washington, D.C.

From a truce ship in the Chesapeake Bay, Key watched on Sept. 13 as bombs from British vessels fired through the night on Fort McHenry in Baltimore, which, with 50,000 residents, was the nation’s third-largest city at the time. According to the Maryland Historical Society, the keeper of Key’s final draft, the city, drenched with rain, was dark except for the rockets and bombs exploding overhead.

On the morning of Sept. 14, Fort McHenry’s flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes to represent the Union at the time, still flew. It inspired Key to write the “The Star-Spangled Banner” as Baltimore’s residents were looking for a sign they were still free.

“My favorite verse is the second verse,” said Kristin Schenning, education director for the Maryland Historical Society. “The first verse, he’s asking a couple questions. The second verse is actually when he tells you what happened.”

Indeed, “On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,” Key saw the flag as it caught “the gleam of the morning’s first beam, in full glory reflected,” shining in the stream.

Schenning said the lyrics, which historians say were written in downtown Baltimore’s Indian Queen Tavern, were later printed in the form of a handbill, titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” and distributed throughout Baltimore. They were set to the music of a song titled “To Anacreon in Heaven,” which had been created by an amateur music society in London, and which somesay was a drinking song, although this is widely disputed.

The Maryland Historical Society also houses original broadsides of the song, which was adopted by Congress in the 1931 as the official national anthem.

“A lot of folks know the first verse very well, but it’s not necessarily common knowledge how many verses there are, or what they’re talking about,” Schenning said.

“The third verse, it’s the most unpopular,” Schenning said. “It goes into the ‘English as the enemy’ thing. It’s not necessarily a popular sort of verse that people go to all the time, but it’s very interesting and reflective of the time, the second war with the British. The fourth verse got very popular after 9/11. It’s more kind of philosophical and talks about the country as a whole and patriotism, and gets into that idea of manifest destiny, and ‘then conquer we must, when our cause it is just.’”

The revival of interest in the fourth verse, with its mention of a country “blest with vict’ry,” could be attributed to the song’s coming 200th anniversary, said Katherine Baber, assistant professor of music history at the University of Redlands, adding that recitals across the country are including “The Star-Spangled Banner” in its entirety.

Some talk of “the lost verses” being rediscovered — a YouTube video with millions of views shows a former Marine who “became aware” of another verse and sings the fourth, which includes “In God is our trust” — but Baber said scholars would never say the verses have been lost.

“They only fairly recently went out of vogue,” Baber said. “These are not lost. They’ve always been there.”

Anthem tinkering

Baber said the shortened version of the song we sing today represents a rather American tradition.

“What we’ve done is sort of evolved gradually to a consensus, which, when you think about it, is a pretty democratic thing to do,” she said.

According to www.starspangledmusic.org, which is run by musicologist Mark Clague of the University of Michigan, “The Star-Spangled Banner” replaced “Hail Columbia” as the de facto national anthem as it grew in popularity through the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. As the country entered World War I in 1917, the song was the official anthem for the U.S. Army and Navy.

But that was also around the time that verses began to be dropped from popular renditions of the song, since the British had become an ally to the United States, historians say.

A three-verse version, as arranged by John Stafford Smith for the Armed Services, in use during World War I, was selected in The Code for the National Anthem of the United States of America in 1942, Baber said.

The 1942 code also allows for the singing of a single verse. The 1931 act of Congress did not specify an arrangement, only that “The Star-Spangled Banner” would be the national anthem, Baber said.

Baber said the song is not difficult for musicians but poses problems for singers because of its wide range. Rather than the “Olympic-style event for singers” it has become, she said, it was meant to start with a single voice, then the last two lines of each verse sung by the audience — a call and response designed to provoke a sense of community.

“It’s actually in triple time, three beats to a bar, so it’s supposed to lilt,” she added. “A lot of recent performances do it in 4/4 or common time, adding a beat to the bar so it sounds more reverent.”

The Maryland Historical Society has loaned Key’s original manuscript of the “Star-Spangled Banner” lyrics to the Smithsonian, where it has joined, for the first time, the flag Key saw at dawn’s early light, until July 6.

“It’s this relationship between the anthem and flag: as one becomes more popular so does the other,” Schenning said. “And you really don’t see that with a lot in other anthems, and the flag means a lot to Americans in a way that’s not always the same in other cultures. But it is here, and the reason is because of the song.”

Contact Josh Dulaney at 562-714-2150.