"" (; ) is the

national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European ...

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

. The origins of it are in the

Central Europe Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern Europe, Eastern, Southern Europe, Southern, Western Europe, Western and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in ...

activism Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from ...

of the 19th century. Its main themes are a storm over the Tatra mountains that symbolized danger to the Slovaks, and a desire for a resolution of the threat. It used to be particularly popular during the 1848–1849 insurgencies. It was one of

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

's dual national anthems and was played in many Slovak towns at noon; this tradition ceased to exist after Czechoslovakia split into two different states in the early 1990s with the

dissolution of Czechoslovakia The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on December 31, 1992, was the Self-determination, self-determined Partition (politics), partition of the federal republic of Fifth Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia into the independent ...

Origin

Background

Twenty-three-year-old

Janko Matúška Janko Matúška (10 January 1821 – 11 January 1877) was an ethnic Slovak poet, activist, occasional playwright, and clerk of the court in the Kingdom of Hungary. He is best known as the author of the Slovak national anthem, "Nad Tatrou sa blý ...

wrote the lyrics of "Nad Tatrou sa blýska" in January and February 1844. The tune came from the folk song " Kopala studienku" () suggested to him by his fellow student Jozef Podhradský, a future religious and

Pan-Slavic Pan-Slavism, a movement that took shape in the mid-19th century, is the political ideology concerned with promoting integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had ruled the South S ...

activist and gymnasial teacher, when Matúška and about two dozen other students left their prestigious Lutheran

lyceum The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies among countries; usually it is a type of secondary school. Basic science and some introduction to ...

Pressburg Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

(preparatory high school and college) in protest over the removal of

Ľudovít Štúr Ľudovít Štúr (; 28 October 1815 – 12 January 1856), also known as Ľudovít Velislav Štúr, was a Slovak revolutionary, politician, and writer. As a leader of the Slovak nationalism, Slovak national revival in the 19th century and the c ...

from his teaching position by the Lutheran Church under pressure from the authorities. The territory of present-day Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Austrian Empire then, and the officials objected to his Slovak nationalism. "Lightning over the Tatras" was written during the weeks when the students were agitated about the repeated denials of their and others' appeals to the school board to reverse Štúr's dismissal. About a dozen of the defecting students transferred to the Lutheran gymnasium of

Levoča Levoča (; ; ) is the principal town of Levoča District in the Prešov Region of eastern Slovakia, with a population of 14,256. The town has a historic center with a well-preserved town wall, a Gothic architecture, Gothic church with the talle ...

. When one of the students, the 18-year-old budding journalist and writer Viliam Pauliny-Tóth, wrote down the oldest known record of the poem in his school notebook in 1844, he gave it the title of ''Prešporskí Slováci, budúci Levočania'' (Pressburg Slovaks, Future Levočians), which reflected the motivation of its origin. The journey from Pressburg (present-day

Bratislava Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

) to Levoča took the students past the

High Tatras The High Tatras or High Tatra Mountains (; ; ,'' Vysoki Tatry''; ; ), are a mountain range along the border of northern Slovakia in the Prešov Region, and southern Poland in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. They are a range of the Tatra Mountains ...

, Slovakia's and the then

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

's highest, imposing, and symbolic mountain range. A storm above the mountains is a key theme in the poem.

Versions

No authorized version of Matúška's lyrics has been preserved and its early records remained without attribution. He stopped publishing after 1849 and later became clerk of the district court. The song became popular during the Slovak Volunteer campaigns of 1848 and 1849. Its text was copied and recopied in hand before it appeared in print in 1851 (unattributed, as ''Dobrovoľnícka'' – Volunteer Song), which gave rise to some variation, namely concerning the phrase ''zastavme ich'' ("let's stop them") or ''zastavme sa'' ("let's stop"). A review of the extant copies and related literature inferred that Matúška's original was most likely to have contained "let's stop them." Among other documents, it occurred both in its oldest preserved handwritten record from 1844 and in its first printed version from 1851. The legislated Slovak national anthem uses this version, the other phrase was used from 1920 to 1993 (as the second part of the anthem of

with

Kde domov můj "" (), known in English as "Where My Home Is", is the national anthem of the Czech Republic. It was composed by František Škroup and written by Josef Kajetán Tyl. History The piece was written as a part of the incidental music to the co ...

). On January 1, 2025 at midnight, the public broadcaster

Slovak Television and Radio Slovak Television and Radio ( ), in short STVR is a nationwide public broadcasting, government-owned corporation, state-funded organisation in Slovakia. Its headquarters are located in Bratislava and led by General Director Martina Flašíková. ...

first introduced the a partially revised version of its national anthem. This updated rendition features a modernized melody and a slightly slower tempo. Notably, the new arrangement includes the sound of the

fujara The fujara () is a large wind instrument of the tabor pipe class. It originated in central Slovakia as a sophisticated folk shepherd's overtone fipple flute of unique design in the contrabass range. Ranging from 160 to 200 cm long (5' ...

, a traditional Slovak folk instrument, in the final seconds of the melody. The arrangement was overseen by Oskar Rózsa and his musical assembly. Public opinion on the change remains divided. While some have welcomed the modernization of the anthem, others question the necessity and quality of the revision as well as the procedural aspects of the change. Critics pointed out that the revision of national anthem should have taken place through an open competition and not assigned directly to Rózsa, who has embraced extreme right-wing talking points and conspiracy theories held by the culture minister

Martina Šimkovičová Martina Šimkovičová (; born 29 August 1971) is a Slovak television presenter and politician. From 2016 to 2020, she served as a member of the National Council. Since October 2023, Šimkovičová has been serving as the Minister of Culture of ...

and her head of cabinet Lukáš Machala. Additionally, the comments by Rózsa, who in response to criticism claimed his version of the anthem was not for liberals, who should "crawl into their holes" as their time in Slovakia was ending were met with widespread condemnation. Additionally, the new version of the anthem was poorly received by critics who labeled it a "kitch" and "sad funeral music". Finally, critics argue that the cost of revision, which amounted to approximately €50,000, was too large and that these funds could have been better allocated to sectors such as education or healthcare. High Tatras south 2

National anthem

On 13 December 1918, only the first stanza of Janko Matúška's lyrics became half of the two-part bilingual

Czechoslovak Czechoslovak may refer to: *A demonym or adjective pertaining to Czechoslovakia (1918–93) **First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38) **Second Czechoslovak Republic (1938–39) **Third Czechoslovak Republic (1948–60) ** Fourth Czechoslovak Repu ...

anthem, composed of the first stanza from a Czech operetta tune, ''

'' (Where Is My Home?), and the first stanza of Matúška's song, each sung in its respective language and both played in that sequence with their respective tunes. The songs reflected the two nations' concerns in the 19th century when they were confronted with the already fervent national-ethnic activism of the

Hungarians Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are an Ethnicity, ethnic group native to Hungary (), who share a common Culture of Hungary, culture, Hungarian language, language and History of Hungary, history. They also have a notable presence in former pa ...

and the

Germans Germans (, ) are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language. The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, constitution of Germany, imple ...

, their fellow ethnic groups in the

Habsburg monarchy The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities (composite monarchy) that were ruled by the House of Habsburg. From the 18th century it is ...

. During the Second World War, "

Hej, Slováci "Hey, Slavs" is a patriotic song dedicated to the Slavs and widely considered to be the Pan-Slavic anthem. It was adapted and adopted as the national anthem of various Slavic-speaking nations, movements and organizations during the late 19th and ...

" was adopted as the unofficial state anthem of the puppet regime

Slovak Republic Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's ...

. When

split into the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

and the

in 1993, the second stanza was added to the first and the result legislated as Slovakia's national anthem.

Lyrics

Only the first two stanzas have been legislated as the national anthem.

Poetics

One of the trends shared by many Slovak

Romantic poets Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Neoclassical ideas of the 18th c ...

was frequent versification that imitated the patterns of the local folk songs. The additional impetus for Janko Matúška to embrace the trend in ''Lightning over the Tatras'' was that he actually designed it to replace the lyrics of an existing folk song. Among the Romantic-folkloric features in the structure of ''Lightning over the Tatras'' are the equal number of syllables per verse, and the consistent a−b−b−a

disyllabic A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

rhyming of verses 2-5 in each stanza. Leaving the first verses unrhymed was Matúška's license (a single matching sound, ''blýska—bratia'', did not qualify as a rhyme): :— Nad Tatrou sa blýska :a - Hromy divo bijú :b - Zastavme ich bratia :b - Veď sa ony stratia :a - Slováci ožijú Another traditional arrangement of Matúška's lines gives 4-verse stanzas rhymed a−b−b−a with the first verse made up of 12 syllables split by a mid-pause, and each of the remaining 3 verses made up of 6 syllables: :a - Nad Tatrou sa blýska, hromy divo bijú :b - Zastavme ich bratia :b - Veď sa ony stratia :a - Slováci ožijú

Notes

References

External links

Anthem of the Slovak Republic
– A page at the official website of the

President of Slovakia The president of the Slovak Republic () serves as the head of state of Slovakia and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The people directly elect the president for five years, for a maximum of two consecutive terms. The presidency is essent ...

featuring various audio files of the state anthem * Slovak National Anthem
sheet music, lyrics

Slovakia: ''Nad Tatrou sa blýska'' - Audio of the national anthem of Slovakia, with information and lyricsarchive link
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nad Tatrou sa blyska European anthems National symbols of Slovakia Slovak songs National anthems Slovak Uprising of 1848–49 Compositions in G minor