Here is a little background on the music that was played this morning at the service.

Prelude: Coming Home, by Carolyn McDade

If you don’t know Carolyn McDade by name, you probably know some of her songs. Three that we do often at UUFC are Come Sing a Song With Me, We’ll Build a Land, and Spirit of Life.

A few weeks ago a book of songs by Carolyn McDade appeared in the music office. It sat there for a few weeks until I finally found some time to play through the songs. I found one called Coming Home which had a tuneful melody and nice chords. Jumping ahead to this morning, I was still trying to decide what to play for a prelude, and I remembered this song. 

If you know the song, you may not have recognized it. Or you might have only recognized little snippets of it. Before I started at UUFC I worked with another music director who always encouraged me to improvise. He had an interesting strategy that worked surprisingly well: play a version of a song in such a way that people barely recognize what it is. The idea is to use the song as a jumping off point, but to make yourself invent variations on the chords, melody, and rhythm. I do this often for the prelude – sometimes with songs we’re singing on that service, and other times like today I pick other songs.

I wish I could find a publicly available recording for you, but I haven’t been able to find one. Here are the lyrics of the chorus:

Offertory: Aria from the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach

There is a well-known story about this piece that may or may not be true, but I’ll tell you anyway. The story goes that Bach wrote it at the request of Count Kaiserling, an insomniac who  asked Bach for a set of variations to help cheer him up when he couldn’t sleep. Goldberg was the name of the harpsichordist who lived with the count and was probably the first performer of the Goldberg variations. 

I chose it because I wanted to play something that represented part of the musical ancestry of so many of the songs we sing on Sunday mornings. If you ever look at the index of composers in the back of the hymnal, you’ll see quite a few songs are either composed or harmonized by J.S. Bach, and there are many more that are emulating the choral style for which Bach is well-known. For what it’s worth, that includes pretty much any of our hymns that sound like they should be played on the organ.

It’s a theme with variations, but I only played the theme this morning. I highly recommend listening to the entire piece in one sitting someday. Although it was written for the harpsichord, one of the most famous recordings of the Goldberg Variations is done by a pianist named Glenn Gould. Here is a video where you can watch him play it. He is known for his quirky mannerisms and humming along to the music, which makes it kind of fun to watch as well as listen to:

Postlude: In My Life, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

I played “In My Life” by the Beatles for a few reasons: first because the lyrics talk about the past and how some things change, and others stay the same, and all have an impact on today, so I thought it had some connection to today’s theme about history and learning from the past. Second, because it contains a short Baroque-sounding solo in the middle of the song, so I thought it might tie in nicely with the Bach piece I played for the offertory. 

After the service Carl, our current board president told me an interesting story about that solo. I was practicing it this morning and realized that it was kind of tricky to play, and I was having some trouble with it. Apparently George Martin, the person who played it on the album, had trouble with it too. Carl told me that the solo was actually recorded at half speed and sped up for the album, which made me feel better. 

I found this recording of the solo the way it was recorded at half speed, and then the original recording where the solo is sped up:

I hope you found it interesting to hear about the music. Usually a handful of people come up to me after a service and ask me about things I played, so I wrote this in case there are others who are also curious but didn’t come up and ask.

David Servias