The Making of "Majulah Singapura" as We Know It

Bernard
Going back to the year 2000, we made one other change. The original key of “Majulah Singapura” is G major. And in that key the highest note is E above C, which is one octave above C, E5 if I’m right.

It’s not easy to sing for many people. In fact, I didn’t always hit that note all the time. Now it wasn’t as bad as “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which is notoriously difficult to sing, you know, but it’s such a magnificent tune, so they retained it. So I thought, hey, this is our chance to make the anthem singable.

So I propose to lower it from G major to F major. One whole tone down. This would make the highest note instead of E down to D, which is much more singable than the E. And so that’s why today the key of the anthem is F major.

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past. Some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

Jimmy
It will come as a surprise to many, but Singapore’s national anthem as sung every day by thousands of schoolchildren every day is not the original version of the song. The original version is actually longer than what we’re now familiar with. In addition, it was also sung in a different key from how it is sung today. In fact, “Majulah Singapura” wasn’t even meant to be Singapore’s national anthem.

It was actually written to mark the reopening of the Victoria Theatre in the late 1950s. This is not as unusual as it appears. Quite a few national anthems began life as something else. The American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, was a poem set to the tune of a popular British song. The tune for “God Save the King” comes from medieval plainchant.

Closer to home, the melody for Malaysia’s national anthem, “Negaraku”, has its origins in a popular 19^th-century French song, “La Rosalie”. Here to tell us all about the history of “Majulah Singapura” and about national anthems in general is Emeritus Professor Bernard Tan, a man who has done a tremendous job excavating the archives to unearth the original score for “Majulah Singapura”. He helped change the key for the song, and who told Lee Kuan Yew a minor fib about the song when asked. Prof Tan is a retired professor of physics, a well-known composer, and is also the man who helped found the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. For reasons that shall become clear later on, we’re recording this podcast in Prof Tan’s living room.

Thank you for inviting us into your lovely home and hosting us today, Prof. How are you?

Bernard
Thank you, Jimmy. Welcome to my humble abode. I’m honoured to be doing this podcast about “Majulah Singapura”, something which has sort of occupied my attention for a lot of years, dating back to 1958, when I was a Form 4 schoolboy, you know.

Jimmy
It’s, I have to say, when I first read your piece and unfortunately you didn’t write it for BiblioAsia, but you wrote it for a different publication about the history of “Majulah Singapura”. I was immediately taken by it because there’s such an amazing story behind it, right? And I think that a lot of people don’t actually know that.

As a schoolboy growing up, you think this is just a song that we sing, but it was actually not meant to be a national anthem to begin with, it wasn’t even a state anthem. Right. You want to tell us a little bit about that? The history of how it came about?

Bernard
Well, I can remember the old Victoria Theatre. As it was before that renovation, which was a much smaller theatre, 500 seats. Well, in the late 1950s, by 1957–58, the city council, there was a city council long ago who were in charge of the Victoria Theatre, decided to do a major renovation. So the major renovation of the property gutted out the old theatre and made a bigger theatre seating, more than 900 seats.

Jimmy
That’s quite a big jump then.

Bernard
You know, it’s quite a big jump. Ironically, the more recent renovation a number of years ago brought the numbers down back to closer to the original.

Jimmy
Oh, that’s so interesting.

Bernard
It becomes more intimate theatre, actually. Well anyway, Zubir Said by that time had become quite a well-known composer. So the city council wanted to have a song for the reopening of the theatre in late 1958. The motto of the city council then was “Majulah Singapura”, which is still our motto.

Jimmy
Oh, I didn’t know that was the motto for the city council.

Bernard
In fact, somewhere around you can find the arms of the city council with this motto there. So, they thought of having a special song based on this motto. Someone thought of Zubir Said, and they wrote to him. He replied immediately. And, I think trying to reconstruct the events, he actually wrote in frivolous speed because he replied to them with a score less than two weeks after he was asked.

Jimmy
Okay, that’s amazing.

Bernard
Now this score, which still exists, at least in copy form, shows that it is a verse plus a chorus, a verse of 16 bars, a chorus of eight bars, repeated, repeated. So it’s 16. 16. Quite good symmetry. We have a copy of that score because in the City Council archives, the then superintendent of the authority was Mr Yap.

He wrote to all the participants in the concert saying you’ve got to learn this new song. So send his score along with you know, many people had not even looked at this score. But later on when I looked at the score, I suspected it might have been in Zubir Said’s handwriting, and later on I was able to show fairly conclusively that it was Zubir Said’s handwriting.

So, it was the original score. Anyway, what happened was that the concert took place, I think it was November 1958 or something like that. And then Singapore got self-government in 1959. Okay. So the government, the PAP [People’s Action Party] government is looking not just for a national anthem, but for the national symbols, the pledge, the crest and the national anthem. And Dr Toh Chin Chye, who happened to be my boss at NUS [National University of Singapore] long ago.

Jimmy
He was a chancellor at the time, right?

Bernard
He was. No, he was the Deputy Prime Minister at the time.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. Okay.

Bernard
He was tasked with the job of looking at creating all these national symbols. But someone told him that you know, the city council has already got a song which may be suitable. And so he called up Zubir Said, listened to the song and said, yeah, it’s okay. But he must have thought at the time that the song was a bit too long.

My suspicion was that he thought that for non-Malay speakers to memorise such a long Malay verse would have been difficult. So he told Zubir Said, can you please shorten the song before we make it into the national anthem. Zubir Said said, done. Now, here comes the strange part of the story. A few months after that, Zubir Said probably was still working on the shortening, and what actually happened was that someone told him that, “Hey Zubir, do you know that tomorrow or day after tomorrow, the Legislative Assembly – there was no Parliament – is going to pass a bill making your song ‘Majulah Singapura’ the national anthem?” or this was a state anthem at the time. So he got a copy of it and saw it indeed had been shortened but done by somebody else and done in a way which he didn’t approve of because musically, it was a bit clumsy.

Jimmy
Right. Okay.

Bernard
So he wrote a really angry letter to S. Rajaratnam, and we know this is true because Zubir’s daughter Rohana retells all of this with the words of the letter in a book on her father. So thankfully, what happened was the bill was withdrawn.

Jimmy
Oh, you mean the bill was withdrawn?

Bernard
Yeah, the bill was withdrawn. Well, as far as I know, the bill was withdrawn. And a couple of months later, we know that the actual bill was passed with Zubir Said’s approved shortening. And that is an interesting history you know, the unapproved shortening. Now, I was sort of a secondary school boy at the time, but the government had decided to issue little, little cards with the national anthem to the school kids and to the public.

And you know something? I don’t know whether this is a fake memory, but I can remember looking at a version of the song, which is not today’s National Anthem. In other words, unapproved.

Jimmy
Oh, if they distribute. You think you seem to.

Bernard
I think I’ve seen it, but I have searched high and low on my house. And I found copies of the card with the approved version. Right. I’m trying to find out whether someone has got it because I think it exists. So anyway, once it was approved and all that official recordings were made, Zubir Said wrote in his own handwriting a handwritten copy of the official version of the shortening with piano accompaniment and all of that sort of thing. And that was the one issued as a card to all the school kids in the public later.

Jimmy
I wonder if you could, you know, play us these three different versions. And, you know, maybe annotate it.

Bernard
Annotate it over. Okay. I will try to do that. Now, the original version. And I’m just going to play the 16-bar verse because the chorus is the same for all of them. Okay. So here in my bad piano playing is the original version.

[Music playing]

Okay. Those are the 16 bars.

Jimmy
Oh, that’s very interesting.

Bernard
The method of shortening this was to cut out eight bars. Eight bars would still have been symmetrical with the chorus and eight-bar phrases [are] musically standard. Okay. Now the version which was shortened without Zubir Said’s approval took out eight bars, but took out eight bars in a different way from what he was going to do later.

Here is the unapproved version as I remember it.

[Music playing]

Now, you listen carefully to that. You know that it’s not the current.

Jimmy
It’s not current. And I’m not a musician by any stretch of imagination. So what would be the problem?

Bernard
Okay, fair enough. Which eight bars are to be removed. Now the removal of the eight bars in the middle of it goes like this.

[Music playing]

Then transits to this.

[Music playing]

Now, musically it is not incorrect. But in the balance of a phrase, it’s almost like someone wrote a paragraph and cut out the key parts of the paragraph and at the ending of the paragraph goes a certain way, and you don’t know why it goes that way.

Jimmy
There’s no logic.

Bernard
There’s no logic to it. Something is missing. Zubir’s version which we all know took out eight bars. But of course, I can play this even though you’d know this very well. It sounds so much more natural.

Jimmy
Yeah. It does. I mean, I don’t know if it’s because of the version I always hear.

Bernard
You wouldn’t guess it had been shortened, actually. Right?

Jimmy
Exactly. It doesn’t sound like it’s been shortened.

Bernard
So Zubir was of course unhappy with this. And you know to this day, the mystery remains as to why after Toh Chin Chye had asked him to shorten it officially from the Deputy Prime Minister. How come someone else had asked somebody to do the shortening, and without reference to Zubir, was going to have it passed in a bill and the legislation. It doesn’t make sense.

Jimmy
It’s crazy.

Bernard
And this is a mystery which I’m going to leave for some future historian to dig up in the archives.

Someone did it who had enough musical knowledge to do the shortening but didn’t have enough musical sensitivity to do the shortening in a musically logical and flowing way. That’s all I’m going to say. So it really is a mystery to this day. I leave it for some future historian to work it out.

Jimmy
Well, I’m glad that Zubir Said was able to learn about it and intervene in time. I mean, he would be very upset.

Okay. So actually speaking of historians you know, part of what you had to do was actually to be a historian yourself in writing the original piece about “Majulah Singapura”. What were some of the challenges that, you know, you said that it was something that was on your mind for quite a while?

Bernard
The challenge was really to take my own memories of what had happened, because I knew that there had been an unofficial shortening, and I must have heard it because I was able to recreate the original unapproved shortening, even though I have not found any manuscript of it, you know. But at least Rohana’s book proves to me that there was an unofficial shortening.

So my task was to find out, get the sequence of events, but Rohana’s book tells the most important part that her father had been alerted. So I went back, and I was interested to learn about how the piece commission was in the first place. And then I got archives to lend me the volume of the correspondence and found, I think it was already known that it was for that specific reopening of the Victoria Theatre.

But knowing how he had been in their correspondence was interesting, actually. And the most interesting part was that the handwritten manuscript that Mr Yap of the Victoria Theater sent to all the participants, asking them to learn the song, had been completely overlooked.

Jimmy
What do you mean, completely overlooked?

Bernard
We know that this was a handwritten copy of the “Majulah Singapura”, but no one had ever asked.

Jimmy
Oh, sorry, the original version, right?

Bernard
The original version. The longer version. But no one ever asked where did this come from? Is it from Zubir Said? And that’s when I decided to look at his score and found this peculiarity of his handwriting. [In] the lowercase p, the vertical is extended beyond the curved part.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Bernard
And then I had another stroke of luck because later on I came across Rahim Jalil, the brother of the author.

Jimmy
Right. Iskandar Jalil. 

Bernard
Iskandar Jalil. Now, Rahim Jalil. What actually happened was that Zubir had, for most of his life, lived in an apartment in Joo Chiat. Okay. Rahim bought the apartment and of course, became a friend of Zubir. He must have bought it directly from Zubir. And when Zubir actually shortened the national anthem and wrote the official version with piano parts and all that, he gave a copy of the manuscript to him.

And I was privileged to look at it. And because there’s a cover page with Zubir‘s signature and then looking at that manuscript, you see that in the words of the anthem, the same lowercase p with the vertical sticking out. Then I decided this must be interesting, because it’s the same lowercase p as in what Mr Yap sent to all the people.

I thought it was worth investigating. And of course I am not a handwriting expert. It’s a very specialised field. But I went straight to the handwriting expert in HSA Health Sciences Authority. He does all of the analysis for the government.

Jimmy
Oh, for courts presumably.

Bernard
Yeah. So I went to him and I said, look, here are two examples. I’m sorry, I cannot give any further examples because it’s Zubir Said’s handwriting, maybe I did give one or two, but these are the two key ones. So after pondering and looking, he said, “I think I can say with reasonable probability that it is written by the same person.” I said, “Can you say you’re sure?” He said, “You only gave me these two or three samples.”

So I thought about it. Hey, he’s the expert, if he said it is reasonably probable that the two people [are the same], it’s good enough for me.

Jimmy
Okay.

Bernard
So, I went back to the archives and said hey, you all don’t know this, but this thing which in fact in your website you also use this, you also use this, but you have never said it is Zubir Said’s handwriting. But now I can tell you Zubir Said’s handwriting. And secondly, it’s very likely what Zubir sent to the city council after less than two weeks of writing the song.

So this is the original manuscript. Okay. And archives said okay, okay, we believe you. I said this is just a copy you know, where’s the original, you know, with Zubir Said’s ink and all that.

Jimmy
Right.

Bernard
Unfortunately, they told me that we have been through a long period of renovation, you remember? And we start all our stuff in seven or eight different places. That is going to take a long, long while to unearth it. I don’t know, maybe they found it, but they haven’t come back to me.

Jimmy
Alas. Thank you actually for doing all that work. And actually uncovering, as it were, a copy of the original score.

Bernard
There was a bonus in that sense.

Jimmy
And it’s so wonderful to be able to see his actual handwriting. So in the original score that he had written, there wasn’t a fanfare introduction.

Bernard
No, it was just the melody starting from the part with words.

Jimmy
That’s right. But he also wrote that fanfare introduction.

Bernard
Yes, of course he did that. Now, when was the fanfare introduction introduced? The problem is actually I suspect that he might have added it on for the concert in 1952. Because we do have a copy of the programme. There was an orchestra and a chorus and a choir.

Jimmy
Okay. So that makes sense, if you have a full orchestra.

Bernard
An orchestra and choir were conducted by someone I know, the late Paul Abisheganaden. Very well-known musician. And certainly, Paul was the one who did the orchestration and the region for the choir. At that point of time, I think it’s very possible, very likely, that he had tacked on the fanfare introduction.

But we can only be sure from a recording made on the 12th of May 1959, which is in the archives, and that recording by a military band and the choir definitely has the introduction. And that’s a long version, by the way. And that’s around.

Jimmy
So, that’s a long version?

Bernard
That’s a long version. It’s a long way. In fact, there’s some narration to that and it talks about songs of Singapore, so I do not know. Is it Radio Singapore? It comes from an open videotape. Whose provenance I don’t know, we have to find out from the archives. So it could have been a programme that they broadcast. I have no idea.

And interestingly at around the same time, the date [mentioned in] my article, the Duke of Edinburgh made a visit to Singapore. And it was a, he had a giant gigantic parade and assembly on the Padang. And there was quite an obscure, and we know that the original version of “Majulah Singapura” was sung at the time, but again, no recordings. And we know that because I was there for the performance.

Jimmy
Right.

Bernard
I was standing in front of it.

Jimmy
Of course, you remember the fanfare?

Bernard
Yes, I think so. Can I swear to that? I’m not sure, but I think the fanfare [was there].

Jimmy
It’s been a while.

Bernard
Because I think I’m trying to remember the date it was, now that the recording I talked about is 12th May. I think the Duke’s visit was around that time, not too far. So by that time, I think the fanfare had been there. In fact, I suspect that the fanfare was there even in November 1958.

Jimmy
When they first played it.

Bernard
Yes.

Jimmy
Yeah. Because it makes sense. Otherwise, it is too plaintive to just start from there.

Bernard
That’s right, too abrupt. Someone must have said “Zubir, you got to tack on something as an introduction.” And so it would have been easy for them to have done it. Yeah.

Jimmy
After they shortened it and schoolchildren had been singing or mumbling or mouthing the words, I can’t swear that necessarily all of them necessarily knew the words, even though they sang it every day. But around about 2000, there was quite a significant change.

Bernard
Yes, yes, around 2000. I was chairman of a committee assigned by the government to have a new orchestration, in effect, a new recording by an orchestra. And of course, SSO [Singapore Symphony Orchestra] was going to be the orchestra. And I was tasked with the committee to create this new arrangement. So of course, what I did, I knew that going public would be no point.

We all knew who the composers in Singapore were. We asked each of them to submit an orchestration.

Jimmy
How many of them were there?

Bernard
I think what, six or seven? All the ones I could remember. Kelly Tang and a few others. Actually Kelly, who was a very gifted composer, submitted a flamboyant piece, which I really like very much. We thought it’s too flamboyant for an official version, you know?

Leong Yoon Pin submitted something, but we didn’t select it. And another composer Phoon Yew Tien, a good friend of mine had refrained from entering because he didn’t want to compete with his teacher Leong Yoon Pin. So I told him later, we are not selecting Leong Yoon Pin and his work. Would you like to try? So he said yes, he tried. And indeed, his version was the one we selected in the year 2000.

Jimmy
I’m not sure you can do it on the piano, but what are the major differences?

Bernard
The major differences apart from the fact that the SSO recorded it. Of course, the SSO had had different recordings previous to that. Okay. With different composers doing it there was one by an English composer called Elga Howarth.

And there’s another story attached to that Elga Howarth thing. That was done before the SSO was established, when the SSO was founded in 1978–79. A few weeks before the official inauguration concert, the chairman of the SSO, Tan Boon Teik. I said, “Mr Tan, do you know that the national anthem, which you’re going to play, has the original version?”

He said, “Is it? Let’s play it.” He was the attorney general. So things went through my head like is it legal or not, but am I going to question the attorney general. So I got back. I got the score which was being used at the time by Elga Howarth, and I added the eight bars.

Jimmy
Oh, but you edit it based on your memory because you didn’t have the original.

Bernard
Yes, based on my memory. Because I did not have any score of that.

Jimmy
Right. Right. That only came much later.

Bernard
Yeah. But later on when we unearthed the early recordings, my memory was reasonably accurate.

Jimmy
I’m impressed. That’s an incredible memory you had.

Bernard
Actually, I had been, to tell the truth, in 1958 and 1959 I had been so taken up by “Majulah Singapura”. So my own memory and my own history with “Majulah Singapura” dates back to my school days. I actually made a piano arrangement of it, which I cannot find. I don’t know where.

Jimmy
Oh yeah. How old were you?

Bernard
I was like Form 4, Form 5.

Jimmy
Wow. Impressive.

Bernard
Well, I mean, it was not too difficult to do. But anyway, going back to the year 2000, we made one other change. The original key of “Majulah Singapura” is G major. And in that key the highest note is E above C, which is one octave above C, E5 if I’m right.

It’s not easy to sing for many people. In fact, I didn’t always hit that note all the time. Now it wasn’t as bad as “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which is notoriously difficult to sing you know, but it’s such a magnificent tune, so they retained it. So I thought, hey, this is our chance to make the anthem singable.

So I propose to lower it from G major to F major. One whole tone down. This would make the highest note instead of E down to D, which is much more singable than the E. And so that’s why today the key of the anthem is F major. But interestingly enough, even though Zubir had written the original G major, I found one or two printings of the song in F major, so Zubir Said himself had done it down to F major for certain reasons.

Jimmy
Oh, I see. So even originally he was maybe possibly toying between F and G major.

Bernard
I think there could be another reason, because if you want it to be played by a military band, G major is a difficult key. They can do it. But if you bring it to F major, G major is one sharp, F major is one flat. Now, most military band instruments are flat key instruments. B-flat, E-flat.

So it would have been easier. It’s possible that they did it for that reason. Why? I don’t know, like you know, if any of the military men in, leaders are alive, they could tell you, but I suspect it was for that reason.

Jimmy
Okay. And did you meet any pushback? Like, you know, people say, how dare you touch our amazing national anthem.

Bernard
No, but here’s an interesting story. I was the chairman of steering committee. But my friend, who was the key government officer in charge of this, I won’t name him. He said, the pre-cap meeting, you attend.

I said, “I don’t want to attend. You are the government official. You attend.” He said, “You are the one who knows music, you attend.”

Jimmy
Okay.

Bernard
So, I sat for two hours at the Istana waiting for my turn to appear. So when I appeared, I told this and that, and all the keys and all that sort of thing. And in fact, I briefed some of the ministers who I knew. People like Teo Chee Hean – I told him already. So, I didn’t anticipate any problems.

Then at the end of it, after all the questions, Mr Lee Kuan Yew said, “Professor Tan, can I ask you a question?” “Oh, of course you can.” “Would it be possible for the orchestra version to be in one key, the choir was in a different key, and the band was in a different key?”

Actually, of course it would be possible, but it would be very hard to manage. You know, it would have been possible. So you know what I did? I told him, “Senior Minister, no, it’s not possible.”

Jimmy
That took a lot of time.

Bernard
Yeah, but you know something? He said, “No problem, okay.” Now, this is another mystery which future historians have to solve. Mr Lee Kuan Yew, bless his memory, you know, he did a lot, but music was not his thing.

Jimmy
That’s right, actually.

Bernard
We all know that music was not his thing. He went to SSO concerts, more or less compelled by Mrs Lee, who was a great supporter of SSO.

There was one particular concert where I sat directly behind Mr Lee, and he was not paying attention.

Jimmy
Falling asleep?

Bernard
Falling asleep or counting the lights or whatever it is. But I think I can dare to tell this story. I told it in private circles. During the interval, he put on his programme. He was in the front, the old Victoria Memorial Hall, people who remember the front row, there was a low parapet. So during the interval or something, he put his copy of the programme on that parapet.

Jimmy
Okay.

Bernard
Halfway during one of the movements of music, he reached out his hand, he wanted to check something. So he reached out to get the programme. You know what happened? Mrs Lee slapped his hand, and he withdrew his hand double quick time. I’m sorry that I did not have a movie camera to record this, okay, but it happened.

Jimmy
It makes it very, very human.

Bernard
Very human. Then in certain affairs I knew who was the boss.

Jimmy
Yes, of course, of course.

Bernard
I was glad I witnessed that, you know. But blessed Mrs Lee was a fantastic supporter of the SSO.

Jimmy
That’s okay. That’s fantastic. Yeah. But actually, you know, Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s question was not, even though he was not necessarily musically inclined, not a bad question.

Bernard
Not a bad question but I very much doubt he would have understood the notion of key. I don’t know. He’s not known to be a music lover. He didn’t play an instrument. I don’t think he reads music. So how come he could ask this question? We were talking about our current Senior Minister, former PM Lee Hsien Loong, whose brother, Hsien Yang, both are musical people. We know that.

Jimmy
I didn’t know that.

Bernard
Both of them, I think. What? Certainly. Lee Hsien Loong played the clarinet in the Catholic High School band and in fact, he was so good at it that a good friend of mine who was his classmate tells me that he was good enough to play one movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto at some concert, you know?

So he was a good clarinetist. Both he and Hsien Yang were music lovers, you know, and they attended the SSO concerts very often.

Jimmy
Probably not necessarily dragged by the mother, but going willingly.

Bernard
I think they are going willingly, I don’t think they went with their mother, I doubt it.

Jimmy
Okay. But maybe for the people who are not so necessarily musically aware. What would be the challenges of having the national anthem in one key for the orchestra, a different key for the choir, a different key for the military band?

Bernard
Okay, the difficulty would be if you want to sing the national anthem to the band or to the orchestra, then he would have different vocal demands.

Jimmy
Well, of course it makes sense. Yeah.

Bernard
And the higher tone and the pitch. You can do it of course, you know, but it would be sort of very not so neat.

Jimmy
Is that done in other national anthems?

Bernard
No, I think in most other national anthems, the key is the official key.

Jimmy
So, sorry for asking what is obviously a dumb question, but you know.

Bernard
I feel like “The Star-Spangled Banner” is very hard to sing because the notes are very high. But they have never said, okay, let’s lower it so that everybody can sing.

Jimmy
Right.

Bernard
So everyone struggles with the middle part which is impossibly high.

Jimmy
There’ve been a number of different arrangements of “Majulah Singapura” besides the orchestral one. And I think one mildly controversial one was by Ramli Sarip in 2019 and something like that. Right? Dr Rohana.

Bernard
She didn’t like it, I think.

Jimmy
I mean, obviously, it’s her father’s work. Obviously, she’s very upset with anyone sort of mucking around with it. But you know, what for you is your own take on the different arrangements or.

Bernard
Ramli’s performance was simply a solo voice, no instruments, nothing. So in that, in a way, he had a little bit more freedom with the, first of all, with the timing, he could stretch his phrases.

Jimmy
That’s right. Yes, yes.

Bernard
Secondly, he could sort of… Let’s say a note that could have been held. He could make it a little different here and there. It was a very, very personal interpretation.

Jimmy
It was, wasn’t it?

Bernard
Very personal.

Jimmy
Very powerful in that way

Bernard
But when I heard it, I was actually quite moved by it. Because there’s no question that Ramli sang it with deep feeling and love.

Jimmy
Absolutely.

Bernard
So while it may not have been something that could be used in an official occasion, it is still a valid performance of “Majulah Singapura”. And you know, going back to “The Star-Spangled Banner”, you know that they played, they have this big football thing.

Jimmy
Yes.

Bernard
And of course, some of the performances have been very controversial. Also likely sang in the same way as well, but Ramli did not do violence to the “Majulah Singapura”.

Jimmy
No, no, I think it was very popular.

Bernard
It was popular and in fact, as I said, I was supposedly quite touched and moved by his performance because it was very deeply felt.

Jimmy
You could definitely feel that, you could feel that, very personal, very heartfelt.

Bernard
That’s great.

Jimmy
Yeah. That’s it. I was actually very moved as well. We won’t say how old you are, but actually to be honest, you look very young.

Bernard
Oh, don’t worry, I can tell you I don’t mind. I’m 82 this year.

Jimmy
82! I have to say, Professor, I remember when I was an undergraduate, and I would. I don’t want to say how many decades ago, but you know, some decades ago, and I remember you were the dean of science at the time. And I have to say, in my memory, you don’t look very different from those many decades ago.

Oh, so, you know, you obviously have been drinking at the Fountain of Youth.

Bernard
Well, I still get people who remember me in the science and industry quiz.

Jimmy
Oh, in the 60s.

Bernard
That was on TV.

Jimmy
Yeah, yeah. This is why TV is so powerful. That’s right. You’ve lived through a number of different national anthems, right? Right. I think when you were born, you were born during the Second World War?

Bernard
It would have been “Kimigayo”, the Japanese anthem, which I can’t remember to tell you the truth.

Jimmy
Of course you were. You were too young.

Bernard
But of course, for many years, “God Save the Queen”.

Jimmy
After that it would be “Negaraku”.

Bernard
Would have been, 1957. Sorry. The years as an independent, self-governing body were 1959 to 1963.

Jimmy
Yes.

Bernard
“Majulah Singapura” would have been the state anthem. From 1963 to 1965, the national anthem was “Negaraku”. But I suppose legally, “Majulah Singapura” would still be the state anthem.

Jimmy
Yeah, it would be right? Actually that is quite interesting. Right. All these anthems actually have a very different origin, you know, very few anthems written apparently as an anthem.

Bernard
Very few, correct.

Jimmy
And so actually “Negaraku” is also very interesting because it started as the Perlis state anthem.

Bernard
I think Perak state anthem.

Jimmy
And it was the state anthem anyway. Before it was a state anthem, it was inspired by a French love song from the 19th century.

Bernard
Right. So the various versions of this, one of the versions. I know it’s in the book by Malaysian composer, Saidah Rastam. The book is Rosalie and Other Love Songs. It is a great book. Okay. This version which I heard was that the then Sultan of Perak in the 19th century had been exiled to the Seychelles because of some misdemeanor.

Jimmy
Not a bad place to be exiled.

Bernard
Yeah, no, but an emissary arrives from Queen Victoria’s court and says, the Queen would like to have you for tea. Okay, so he goes to Britain. No, some of the stories here that he then asked, we got to play your state anthem. What is it? And then this version of the story has his son, who’s present, quickly hums this tune.

Rosalie hears from the streets of Seychelles, and he tells them this is the state anthem. Then some of the versions of the story have this happening only after he arrives in the UK. But anyway, the interesting thing is that that tune called Rosalie was very, very popular in French chanson. So there’s some dispute as to who is the composer but no question that it was a French song popular on the streets of Seychelles. Know what it is?

Jimmy
Right? Right, right.

Bernard
Then after that, they were adopted as the Perak state anthem, which it is to this day.

And then what happens?

Jimmy
With the same, with the same words?

Bernard
Different. I don’t know what the words are but it cannot be “Negaraku”.

Jimmy
It cannot be “Negaraku”.

Bernard
And after that, the tune has a life of its own. It becomes a popular Malay song, love song, “Terang Bulan”.

Jimmy
“Terang Bulan”, right?

Bernard
I mean, that song is so popular that it has a Mandarin version and a Japanese version.

Jimmy
Cantonese version?

Bernard
Mandarin and Japanese.

Jimmy
Oh, Mandarin and Japanese.

Bernard
And it became a very popular tune, very well known within the region.

Jimmy
And this is before it becomes adopted as the national anthem.

Bernard
Well before that.

Jimmy
Right.

Bernard
Then when Malaysia got independence in 1957, Tunku Abdul Rahman says, we have got to choose the national anthem. So he institutes a worldwide search. You know, he’s got a competition. I don’t know what to know, whether it’s actually a competition or just a search.

When I was doing the research for this thing, to my surprise, two eminent British composers, Benjamin Britten and William Walton, had actually sent their own versions. And I would love to hear what they said. I even never heard it. But those versions were not accepted. And then someone says, you know, the Perak state anthem is very nice.

Why don’t you use it and listen through? Then you decide to use it with different words. And after that, all other versions not “Negaraku” are banned. “Terang Bulan” can never be sung as “Terang Bulan”.

Jimmy
Oh, I see.

Bernard
Not in Malaysia, at least.

Jimmy
Of course.

Bernard
I’m old enough to know “Terang Bulan”. Yeah. Because it is a very well-known song. It’s one of the most popular Malay songs of that year in the 50s.

Jimmy
You have had such a long career as a composer, as a professor of physics, and serving on the board. How do you bring all these things together?

Bernard
Very difficult because very difficult to explain this, because like thousands of other young Singaporeans, but I was, shall I say, forced to learn the piano. So we learn the piano and all that sort of thing. And of course, thank god to my mother for forcing me to learn that. Right. And, but I never thought of music as a career because I knew I was not all that standard to make it.

Jimmy
As a performer, you mean?

Bernard
As a performer or anything else.

Jimmy
Well, you’ve been a composer.

Bernard
You know at that time, I wasn’t a composer. Oh, maybe I did write a few things because. Oh, now I remember at the time where the competition for the national anthem was. In 1963, my late uncle wanted to submit an anthem, he wrote the words and I wrote the music. Vaguely, I remember this, but I must look for this.

No, the memory just hit me.

Jimmy
Oh, right. Right. If you ever. You know, we would love to hear. How old were you when you wrote it?

Bernard
1963 I would have been, probably the competition was in 1962. I would have been Pre-U two.

Jimmy
It’s not bad. I’m sure previously you would have come up with a fairly decent melody.

Bernard
Well, okay. But, I knew I would never make it as a professional musician. In fact, I wanted to be an architect. And I actually applied to Adelaide University too. And I was admitted. You know, I was admitted. A month before my departure, I did it, my mother approached me and says, I think you better don’t do architecture.

Bernard
I wanted architecture because it’s a mix of science and the arts.

Jimmy
Yes, yes.

Bernard
Why can’t I do architecture? You do architecture. You become an architect. All the contractors will take advantage of you and swindle you. So with that, I couldn’t challenge it as I gave it up. I gave up, I went to the University of Singapore to do physics.

Jimmy
Okay, that’s. That’s amazing.

Bernard
I met Ong Teng Cheong and Mrs Ong, you know. Maybe I would have worked for them. Because they were there.

Jimmy
At about the same time?

Bernard
About around the same time. Yeah.

Jimmy
Okay. Yeah. You could, you could well you know, even though you were not an architect, you built a lot of other things. You helped found the SSO.

Bernard
The SSO of course I’ve written about it in more than one article, but basically I was lucky to be around. I mean, the story is complicated because it involved an orchestra. It was the Singapore Philharmonic Orchestra, which spurred Dr Goh Keng Swee to say this is time to do our own orchestra. And he called Mr Tan Boon Teik who was chairman of the youth orchestra. And I think the conversation went something like this. Yeah. Let’s do it this time. And Goh Keng Swee says, “Hey, we need some young guy to do all the running around for us. You know?”

Jimmy
And you were that?

Bernard
Tan Boon Teik said, “I know just one guy.” Sometime in October, I got a phone call. Me. Just a young lecturer. Go to the DPM office. You know, and then when I was waiting outside of the DPM’s office to come out. It was at MINDEF you know?

Bernard
So the SSO was founded at MINDEF.

Bernard
Who came out of his office was S.R. Nathan, who was then director of SID. Who are you? I’m in the physics department. Why do you want to see Dr Goh? I said I haven’t had the faintest idea.

Jimmy
Oh, really? You didn’t know why you had someone.

Bernard
He wasn’t coming out of the office. He was coming in, he had an appointment before me. So he went into the office and came out many, many years later when he was giving a farewell lunch for the SSO as they were departing for some foreign tour.

He said, I tell you all the story that day when I met Bernard at the office, he doesn’t know this. But when I went in and I told Dr Goh this guy, Bernard Tan, was waiting for you. “Oh, he doesn’t know what I got in store for him.” That’s from S.R. Nathan, I cannot prove the veracity of this.

Jimmy
But it must have been very worrying to be summoned to the office.

Bernard
Actually by the time I was in his seat, waiting for him, I more or less figured out that it was going to be about the SSO. I worked closely with Boon Teik at that time.

So I figured it out. Then as in my article that I have written, he asked me the three questions, “Is it time that we start an orchestra?” Now, with Dr Goh, you cannot say “Maybe”, “I don’t know”, all that. Yes or no? I said yes.

“Who is going to conduct the orchestra?” I was ready, “Choo Hoey. He’s in Belgium.”

“Where are we going to house the orchestra?”

I was ready. “We can renovate the Victoria Memorial Hall. So those three questions ultimately led to SSO.”

What actually happened was the orchestra put him in something called the Singapore Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by a Japanese conductor. This is a whole different story. Maybe I’ll tell it one day.

Jimmy
For BiblioAsia.

Bernard
Oh, maybe, maybe we may. But maybe sealed for 50 years.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. Okay.

Bernard
This guy had spurred Dr Goh to tell Tan Boon Teik. Hey, we must do something about this, you know, set up an orchestra.

Jimmy
So how did he spur Dr Goh to [set up an orchestra]?

Bernard
He had done a number of things, telling Japanese companies what not, me claiming to have been given the blessing of Dr Goh, which of course is true, eventually reached Dr Goh’s ears and he felt he had to do something about it. That’s why I thank this guy who was spurring [things on] because this effort, this final successful effort, was not the first one. The many, many efforts. One of them was done by a Singaporean musician who lives in Australia called Simplicius Cheong. [He] also wrote a letter. But I think it didn’t fly because the plans were a bit too grandiose. Okay, so this Dr Goh said we got to start small. We started the 37. Not the full symphony orchestra, started with 37 musicians and I remember I was home, I think.

Bernard
One day, I got a call from Dr Goh. “Hey, Bernard, give me a budget for the SSO tomorrow morning, 9 am.”

Jimmy
Oh my god.

Bernard
What do I know about the budget?

Jimmy
Oh my god.

Bernard
So the first thing is how to figure out the expenditure, the most important musicians’ salaries. I think what I did was okay, Choo Hoey’s salary I could do. I think he’s like a professor. So give him a professor’s salary. The musicians are professionals, like engineers. Look up.

Jimmy
Oh okay.

Bernard
Engineer’s pay. That actually happened and it came out to be about a million Singapore dollars.

Jimmy
Okay. And were you in the ballpark?

Bernard

Yeah. He said it was okay. Okay. See, that was okay. Of course there’s this letter. The first [thing I did], after the meeting in his office, I wrote a letter to Choo Hwee. I sent a copy of the letter to Dr Goh and he sent me a copy of his letter, which is the only letter I have bearing his signature, the only one I can find bearing his signature, in which he scolds me for. And implying to Choo Hoey that we [make] lots of money and all that sort of thing. And that letter was the one that the National Museum exhibited.

Jimmy
Dr Goh was famously tight-fisted, right?

Bernard
He was famous for scolding people. Anyway, bless his soul.

Jimmy
No, but he was such a remarkable person, right? A man of incredible vision.

Bernard
It was a privilege for me to have done something for him even though it was through SSO.

Jimmy
Right. So, now you are 80-what years old?

Bernard
This year, it will be 82 in a few months.

Jimmy|
And you’re still teaching at NUS.

Bernard
I’m still teaching one course per semester.

Jimmy
That’s amazing.

Bernard
And the course I’m teaching is something I’ve been teaching for the last 25 years. It’s called the Science of Music.

Jimmy
Oh, that’s really interesting.

Bernard
It was a well-known course, because anybody can take it. Now, I think you have to be in the College of Humanities and Science, and then you’ve got to have some prerequisite. But for 20 years I taught it with no prerequisites. It was what they called a module that anybody could take to fulfil your other requirements. And in the course I talk about science, the scientific foundations, music, how skills are created, why musical instruments sound different from each other. And then I talk about electronic music and all.

Jimmy
Is it very popular? I’m sure it must be very popular.

Bernard
I capped it at 200 students. In fact, when I first started it in 1999 or 2000, like 400 students every semester and I gave two projects, and the projects are such that I cannot share the marking. So every year I marked 1,000 projects.

Jimmy
Oh, my god.

Bernard
One project was to attend a concert and give me a review.

Jimmy
Okay.

Bernard
And I have an ulterior motive for that, because I want to make sure these guys attend one concert in their whole lifetime.

Jimmy
All right, okay.

Bernard
In fact, that’s very useful for me because even today when I read their essays, wow I learn a lot about K-pop. This and that, it’s so. I mean an 80-year-old guy. I can keep abreast of things happening. And the other project is, they have to use a programme to create a piece of music. It’s a composition project.

Jimmy
Oh, right.

Bernard
And it’s very interesting because I find that even though you don’t know music, you can still create something which is not nonsense. It may not be Beethoven, but it still makes some sense, you know? So I still do this, every semester.

Jimmy
Okay. You sound very animated when you talk about. So it obviously must, must, must give you a lot of joy. Maybe not the marking.

Bernard
Well, even the marking, while it’s tedious. I learned a lot of interesting things from the concert reviews and listening to their music. It’s quite interesting. You know what? Some of the best pieces that people will send me must have come from actual musicians, obviously students. But some of them are really very good.

Jimmy
Are you a K-pop fan as a result of this?

Bernard
Am I a K-pop fan? I must be honest and say I don’t think so. No, not yet.

Jimmy
Not yet.

Bernard
But it’s not only K-pop. They tell me about all of the visiting artists who come and do pop concerts. So it helps you to keep up the rest of what’s going on.

Jimmy
You’ve likened scientific research to writing music. How is that?

Bernard
It’s through the definition of creativity, creativity in writing music, like painting and all that. We understand this, right? It’s a kind of innovation to draw things in you. You re-synthesise things. But scientific research is not often thought of as a creative process. But let me tell you, more scientists think of scientific research as creative process because you have to resynthesise existing theories and have new explanations

It is my belief that the creative impulse in scientific research is no different from that in the artistic.

Jimmy
Right. So it’s just an expression.

Bernard
It’s an expression of the same emotive drive. I’m very convinced of this. That’s why I think that when you want to encourage creativity, you can do it in so many ways. In fact, for like five or six years, I ran an interdisciplinary seminar called creativity in the arts, science and technology and we had a lot of guest speakers, composers, artists, scientists coming to talk.

Jimmy
Oh, it sounds very interesting.

Bernard
I ran this for about six years until the money ran out. This was during the late 90s.

Jimmy
You are very humble and you say you’re not like the world’s best composer, but you have composed music that has been played by the Singapore Youth Orchestra, if I recall correctly.

Bernard
Yes, yes.

Jimmy
And others, you know, have you been composing anything recently?

Bernard
You mentioned Youth Orchestra, when I was chairman for 20 years, we instituted the policy of commissioning one work by a single composer every year. So there’s a body of work with the Youth Orchestra. With the SSO, when it started, it had its ups and downs relating to single composers.

I do remember that there was a bit of a kerfuffle between, okay, even before Lan Shui. Choo Hoey had been criticised by some of my colleagues for not playing enough Singapore composers’ works. But he did so later on when Lan Shui came in. I think that was a bit of a kerfuffle between him, because I think in an interview he was alleged to sort of criticise Singapore composers.

I can’t remember how that ended, but I think we brought the two sides together. But Lan Shui has been quite good, actually. He has actually played a lot of it. He’s played a lot of my work. I’ve written four concertos. The piano concerto for Toh Chee Hung.

Bernard
The violin concerto for Lynnette Seah, the guitar concerto for this young man, Kevin Loh, who was making waves all around the world today. The cello concerto for Noella Yan, the cellist who lives in Australia. And right now I have been stuck for the last five years. I blame the pandemic on a harmonica concerto.

Jimmy
A harmonica concerto, there’s such a thing?

Bernard
Why harmonica? The reason is this. People asked me why I didn’t write a concerto for er hu and all. Now, I don’t think I want to be like some people who just dash into it before knowing the traditions of Chinese music. I may do that one day. But I chose harmonica as my next one because I wanted to write something that was the resonant with the Chinese-speaking community, whom I know very well because in fact, some of my closest friends, both in science and music, are from the Chinese-speaking community.

Jimmy
All right.

Bernard
Because in both areas, the Chinese school students have always dominated in music and science. Well the harmonica, though it’s a Western instrument, it has long resonated with the Chinese-speaking community because after the Second World War, when people didn’t have any money, the masses in China, Korea and Japan took up the harmonica where it remains till today a very popular instrument because it’s cheap.

For a few dollars you can buy a harmonica. So I’ve been working on the harmonica concerto. I’ve got the first and third movements. I even have someone in Singapore who was a very good harmonica player. While I’ve been stuck on the second movement, which is the shortest movement for the last five years, I think I must.

Jimmy
Five years for just the second movement?

Bernard
I have to do it within the next year.

Jimmy
I hope so. We’re putting this on the record so you know, we will hold you to this.

Bernard
Oh thank you, thank you. Okay, I will try it. I will try, yeah.

Jimmy
I was just wondering. I have two more questions. One, can you play something for us that you’ve composed?

Bernard
I wrote something for my son’s wedding but I don’t know where it is.

Jimmy
Okay? Okay. And the other question that has always bothered me. And maybe you are the right person who can answer this. Why were you all forced to play the recorder? Not a harmonica. I mean.

Bernard
That is a good question because we were under the British school system. And of course, the British and the European and the Western people were looking for a cheap instrument, I mean, if you mandated the clarinet, which would have cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. So the recorder, which is actually a Baroque instrument, 500–600 years old, is a wooden piece with holes. Very simple and very cheap to make. So it became the standard musical teaching instrument in British schools. So that was the legacy of British education.

The recorder is not just a child. It is a serious instrument because there are different sizes. And I have to say that it did contribute quite a bit to the music because many people who played the recorder were like “Oh, this is such a similar instrument, I want to learn something else.” So they would go on and learn the oboe and all that. What about the piano? The piano obviously would have been an instrument that many people learned, but how many people could afford a piano, you know. So even though you look at the musical exam, music examinations, more than 90 percent are piano candidates. Yeah. Likewise with the violin. I mean even a cheap China-made violin is a few hundred dollars, you know. So it was costly. Whereas a harmonica like the recorder is a few dollars.

Jimmy
That’s right. Yeah.

Bernard
So no problem. It was a real problem with money, especially after the war.

Jimmy
Well I have to say, numerous teachers who, in my recollection, did not probably know how to play the recorder themselves, attempted to teach bored and unwilling students. And this is my memory of learning how to play the recorder, which I still cannot play.

Bernard
I think I was one of those unwilling students, all of us. Well, the recorder is relatively easy to learn to play a tune.

Jimmy
It is? Okay. Maybe I shall revisit the recorder.

Bernard
Yes. But actually, what actually happened in the 50s, the phenomenon was not the recorder, not the piano, but the electric guitar.

Jimmy
Yes, the electric guitar.

Bernard
It has changed people’s lives, actually.

Jimmy
Yes, right?

Bernard
And the Beatles. Yes. And I mean, if you learned to play the electric guitar in theory, you can play the classical guitar because the fingering is the same. It’s the same, absolutely. But, here I think I will mention that I’m a little agnostic with respect to this type of music. For example, my students, when they write about the concert, you can write about pop, rock, whatever classical, I don’t care. As long as it is music, you know? And when I was in that time, during the 50s, when I was in Form 4, Form 5, I was a keen fan of the Beatles. I have many LP records of the Beatles.

Jimmy
Oh, fantastic. I’m a fan as well.

Bernard
Because their genius was obvious to people like us. Maybe not to others, you know, but in my later years, I sort of lost touch with pop music, and I reconnected later in the 90s you know, but in the 1950s and 1960s. People forget that in the 50s and 60s, that was the golden age of Singapore Pop music.

Jimmy
It was. So many original bands playing original music.

Bernard
Well, the two famous bands were The Quests and The Crescendos. I think Reggie Verghese is still around. The Crescendos were a vocal group. And the lead singer, I don’t remember her name.

Jimmy
Susan.

Bernard
Susan Lim, you’re right.

Jimmy
Susan Lim, I think, yes.

Bernard
The sad part of the story is that she went swimming at Kota Tinggi and went behind a rock and was never seen again.

Jimmy
I know, it was such a tragedy.

Bernard
Such a tragic story. Absolutely.

Jimmy
And she was very young.

Bernard
She was very young. Yeah. Very, very young. Of course I know her sister and they don’t have a body to grieve, but. But The Crescendos and The Quests were almost certainly the two most popular, most successful groups.

Jimmy
Yeah, you’re right. That was the golden age of Singapore pop. I don’t know; I’m not really sure why that was, because you know you had the Beatles, you had the Rolling Stones and yet you still had The Quests.

Bernard
And I think it was a question of this enormous energy coming up from the birth of rock. Just overcame everybody. And I think it was a good thing because strangely enough, I think that was a period when classical music may have been in its doldrums. And I always like to say that we think of classical music as the music that defines history. No, that’s not true. If you look at the history of music in the early part of the 20th century, jazz defines music. Then after that it’s rock that defines music. And these are also the people’s music. And most of the musical energy of that time was I think not in classical but in pop and rock basically.

Jimmy
I think so, I mean not that I’m an expert on music, but you know, we certainly talk about jazz and rock in the 20th century much more than we talk about classical music.

Bernard
And in fact, though we often go down in American culture and all that, I thank American culture for being the progenitors of jazz and rock. Absolutely. Which have stayed with us till today, really defining the whole of pop music, even influenced classical music to a very great extent.

Jimmy
Oh, really? How?

Bernard
Because, if you look at for example, jazz influence, many, many composers, particularly a group of French composers, who used jazzy idioms in their music.

Jimmy
All right. Right, right.

Bernard
But of course now, music is very eclectic. Classical music is broken out of its very esoteric bonds, pseudo music and all that. Then today you’re not beholden to any style. You can write classical music or any sort. And what you try to do is, like all classical music, make it meaningful, well-constructed and that kind of thing.

And Singapore today has many promising young composers, you know, and there was a time I, I’m told today that I’m the oldest classical composer in Singapore because after Mr Leong passed away. But [among] the younger generation there are many, many excellent composers now. So the future of classical music composing in Singapore is actually quite assured.

Jimmy
That’s wonderful to hear. Prof, I want to thank you for coming on the show. I want to thank you also for inviting us into your lovely house and for talking to us, and for giving us the three different versions of the national anthem that you know, so kindly play it for us today, to hear more or to learn more about the national anthem, “Majulah Singapura” and about national anthems in general.

You have to read Bernard Tan’s piece, which will be on the BiblioAsia website, at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. Prof, thank you very much. We await your harmonica concerto, with bated breath.

Bernard
Thank you. Jimmy. You’ll be the first to learn about it.

Jimmy
I hope so. Okay, thank you.

Bernard
Thank you.

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thanks for joining us on BiblioAsia+.

Bernard Tan, “The Search for Home, Truly (and Other National Day Songs),” BiblioAsia 21, no. 1 (April–June 2025).

Rohana Zubir, Zubir Said: The Composer of Majulah Singapura (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012).

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Prof Tan for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.