SAN JOSE—Apple Inc.’s employee-only memorial service on Wednesday for Steve Jobs at the company’s Cupertino, California headquarters featured performances by Coldplay and Norah Jones, but it was a recording of Jobs himself that brought down the house.

At CEO Tim Cook’s direction, Apple played a recording of its co-founder and former CEO reciting the lines to its famous “Think Different” commercial, which was created soon after he returned to head the company in 1997.

According to Cook, Jobs, who died on October 5 at age 56, wrote the commercial’s famous lines, which began, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers” and was accompanied by pictures of famous luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan and the Rev. Martin Luther King.

The words in the original commercial were read by actor Richard Dreyfuss; Cook said Jobs didn’t want his own voice to be used because he didn’t want Apple to be thought of as just his company.

With Jobs’s voice filling the quad in the middle of its Cupertino campus and surrounding the crowds of employees gathering there, “suddenly you could hear everyone in the place trying to hold back tears,” said one employee who attended the ceremony. “It was the best moment of the day.”

The event marked a chance for Apple’s workers to remember Jobs, who, with Steve Wozniak, founded the company in 1976 and then led its amazing resurrection after returning to the company in 1997 after a 12-year absence. The event was broadcast to employees at remote offices and Apple stores.

In addition to Cook, others who spoke at the ceremony included former Vice President Al Gore, who is an Apple board member; Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and also an Apple board member; and Jony Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, according to the employee. Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, attended the ceremony but did not speak, the employee said.

Apple workers lined up early in the morning to attend the memorial service at the company’s campus at 1 Infinite Loop. The ceremony, which began at 10 a.m. and ended about 90 minutes later, marked the life of Jobs, who died after battling pancreatic cancer.

People streamed in along De Anza Boulevard at the headquarters, many from the campus’s satellite offices, some carrying banners. Shuttle buses brought workers in from more distant locations. Many mourners carried their Apple notebooks to the service.

Thousands of Apple workers sat or stood in the middle of the company’s main campus in Cupertino before the beginning of the service, according to video taken from a helicopter flying overhead by local NBC affiliate KNTV. Other employees were standing on balconies or patios overlooking the center common area. On a wall, there was a multi-story-high picture of Jobs.

Coldplay and singer Norah Jones both played at the memorial service, the employee said. Coldplay performed four songs, including “Fix You.”  “It was so fitting for a memorial,” the employee remarked. “That was very sweet.”