My Country, ‘Tis of Thee or God Save the King

On an American air base in the island of Okinawa, I grew up singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” before I learned that the same tune was known as “God Save the Queen” or “God Save the King” depending on the monarch in the United Kingdom. In fact, it is the official national anthem of Great Britain. Interestingly, the hymn known as “America” is considered one of five national anthems in America, along side “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.” In this blog post, I introduce an instrumental solo arrangement for the high G ukulele.

In the key of G major, the hymn starts on G (the tonic) on the first beat in 3/4 time. Playing block chords (single down strokes on the ukulele) is the usual way to accompany a hymn. There are several ways to play these block chords. One is to flick with your strumming hand’s index finger. Another is to strum as down strokes (down strums). You can also fingerpick the notes all at the same time. Finally you can “roll” your fingers so they sound like a fast arpeggio.

As a pianist, my fingers want to move constantly. Unlike the fingers on the organ all trying to sustain without breathing, I enjoy movement. In part two of this piece, I break the chords into eighth note tuplets. We can now make use of the high G string which makes fingerpicking fun.

This chord melody arrangement doesn’t require deliberate accent of melodic notes. They do come out anyway. In the next variation, I break the chords into triplets.

As there are four verses in “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” and even more in “God Save the King,” we can modulate up a whole step to the key of A for the final verse. To do this, play an E7 chord after the final G chord to trigger or signal the key change. (E7 is the dominant of A.)

The E chord is not popular on the ukulele despite having many guises (possibilities). Before every A chord, we can switch to the more palatable E7 chord.

In the second line of this verse, the E chord is so short before F#m that we can get away with substituting the E with an E7 chord as well.

As a teenager Charles Ives wrote variations on this theme for the organ in 1892 and played it in church. Or did he improvise on the theme and then wrote it down? The organist E. Power Biggs (1906-1977) discovered it, performed it, and published the final version of Variations on America in 1948. Since then, it has been adapted for reed quintet, orchestra, and other instrumental ensembles (see the long list).

As far as I know, there’s not yet a theme and variations for the ukulele, whether low G or high G. Why not?

Who wrote the original tune? Was it John Bull? Henry Carey? Or someone else? Here’s a scholarly article that discusses the authorship.