Santa Barbara AHEPA Chapter 243

TV stations don't play the Olympic Anthem when athletes win medals, but they do blast it whenever the host network goes to commercial, comes back from commercial, or airs a commercial about their stellar Olympic coverage. Considering the piece of music gets so much airplay, you'd think the Web would offer all sorts of information on the composer. Alas, that's not really the case. The oft-played tune was written by a Greek composer named Spyros Samaras. Details on him are sparse, but this page from the 2004 Summer Games in Athens includes a few interesting tidbits. Samaras, already well-known for his operas, worked with Greek poet Costis Palamas on the anthem. As far as we can tell, Palamas wrote the words first and Samaras added the music later. Perhaps we shouldn't admit this, but we didn't even know there were lyrics. The anthem was first performed at the Summer Games in Athens in 1896. The reaction was positive. After all, it is an inspirational piece of music. In 1958, the International Olympic Committee named it the official anthem of the Olympics, and it's been played at every opening ceremony since 1964 (according to Wikipedia). As for how many commercials it's appeared in, who knows?