Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square is streamed online every Wednesday at 12:00 noon MDT. Piping Up! can be viewed on TheTabernacleChoir.org, the Choir’s YouTube channel, the Choir’s Facebook page, and Broadcasts.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. When concerts are concluded, they are available for on-demand viewing on the Choir’s website, YouTube and Facebook.

These programs continue the tradition of noon organ recitals at Temple Square—a tradition that has lasted for more than a century. The concerts are produced without an audience and comply with all COVID-19 guidelines. Each concert will feature a different Tabernacle or Temple Square organist and is hosted by Luke Howard.

Repertoire

Organist: Linda Margetts

1. Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .John Longhurst
2. a. Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Clay Christiansen
    b. O Filii et Filiae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Pierre Dandrieu
3. a. Come, Come, Ye Saints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . arr. by organist
    b. An Old Melody: Prelude on "How Great the Wisdom and the Love" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . arr. by organist
4. Toccata on "Amazing Grace". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Christophber Pardini

Focus Piece

An on-going feature of Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square is a focus piece with additional inspirational background on a specific repertoire selection. Written by host Luke Howard, a professor of music at Brigham Young University, the focus piece connects the music in a unique way to lift and inspire listeners.

“O filii et filiae” (P. Dandrieu)

The musical form of a “theme and variations” seems relatively straightforward: you hear the theme, and then you hear the variations. It doesn’t require a knowledge of key relationships, thematic transformation, or developmental motifs, or the ability to tell the difference, for example, between a real answer and a tonal answer in a fugal exposition. It’s a simple principle, but that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. And in the best examples of “theme and variation” music a remarkable complexity and intricacy can emerge through the seemingly unassuming repetition of a single idea.

Variation forms were especially popular in the baroque era, from passacaglias and chaconnes to romanescas, folias, and ground basses. Musicians were routinely expected to improvise variations on a theme spontaneously, and these improvisations often formed the basis of later, notated compositions. The interest and musical complexity of these variation sets comes not from the unifying theme, obviously, which is inherent in every variation, but rather in the motifs, ornaments, rhythmic subtleties, chromatic additions, and nuances that accumulate throughout the work as a whole.

It’s not totally unlike generations in a family tree, with each individual drawing from a common heritage, but expressing unique details in their appearance, character, and spirit that then influence the next generation. And as children created in the image of God, we, in all our marvelous diversity and individuality, have reason to celebrate that we are variations on a glorious, divine theme.

Linda will now play “O filii et filiæ”—“O Sons and Daughters”— a set of keyboard variations on an Easter hymn, composed by the early 18^th-century French organist Pierre Dandrieu.