Music of Middle-earth

The music of Middle-earth consists of the music mentioned by J. R. R. Tolkien in his Middle-earth books, the music written by other artists to accompany performances of his work, whether individual songs or adaptations of his books for theatre, film, radio, and games, and music more generally inspired by his books.

The Danish Tolkien Ensemble has set all the songs in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to music.

Music is at the heart of the Ainulindalë ("The Music of the Ainur"), the creation myth that begins The Silmarillion. Music and singing are mentioned also in the many songs embedded in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, especially in the accounts of places such as Rivendell. Scholars have noted that while readers often skip Tolkien's poetry and songs at a first reading, these in fact are highly relevant and give insight into the meaning of his books.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy is accompanied by Howard Shore's long, varied, and prizewinning score. The Tolkien Ensemble has set all the songs in The Lord of the Rings to music. Both popular and classical musicians have been inspired to compose music by Tolkien's writings.

Tolkien

Music and song are mentioned throughout Tolkien's legendarium, in the Tolkien scholar Bradford Lee Eden's view "most obviously" in the Ainulindalë, but also importantly in the culture of the Elves, the Hobbits, and the Riders of Rohan.^[1][2]

Ainulindalë: The Music of the Ainur

Further information: Ainulindalë

The Ainulindalë (Quenya: "Music of the Ainur") is the creation account in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the first part of The Silmarillion as published posthumously in 1977. He drafted it in 1919 and rewrote it in 1930. It tells of the creation of Arda by the deity Eru Ilúvatar. It describes the immortal Ainur as "children of Ilúvatar's thought". They are taught the art of music, which becomes the subject of their lives. The Ainur sing alone or in small groups about themes Ilúvatar gives them; he proposes a unified plan for them all: a collaborative symphony where they would sing together in harmony. However, the most powerful of the Ainur, Melkor, disrupts the harmony repeatedly with his "loud, and vain" music.^{[T 1][3]} Scholars such as Marjorie Burns have noted the work's basis in the Prose Edda of Norse mythology, and in Tolkien's Catholicism; with parallels between Eru Ilúvatar and God, and between Melkor and the rebellious Satan, in the Genesis account.^[4][5] The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger notes Tolkien's faith, describing his vision of Arda as "a great instrument in God's hands".^[6]

The Hobbit

Lake-town welcomes Thorin

The King beneath the mountains,
The King of carven stone,
The lord of silver fountains
Shall come into his own!

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, ch. 10 "A Warm Welcome" (first verse)

The Hobbit contains 10 songs of various kinds, from light-hearted to reflective. The first is the Dwarves' joking song "Chip the glasses and crack the plates" as they wash up after dinner in Bilbo's home, Bag End, before setting out on their quest.^{[T 2]} The last is Bilbo's version of "The Old Walking Song" in the final chapter;^{[T 3]} three more versions of the song appear in The Lord of the Rings, each adapted to its context.^[7]

The Lord of the Rings

Further information: Poetry in The Lord of the Rings

A Hobbit song

Ho! Ho! Ho! to the bottle I go
To heal my heart and drown my woe.
Rain may fall and wind may blow,
And many miles be still to go,
But under a tall tree I will lie,
And let the clouds go sailing by.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, book 1, ch. 4 "A Short Cut to Mushrooms" (first verse)

The Lord of the Rings contains over 60 poems and songs, an unusual feature for 20th century novels.^[8] The verses include songs of many genres: for wandering, marching to war, drinking, and having a bath; narrating ancient myths; of praise and lament (elegy), sometimes reflecting Old English poetry.^[8] Brian Rosebury writes that the distinctive thing about Tolkien's verse is its "individuation of poetic styles to suit the expressive needs of a given character or narrative moment",^[9] giving as examples of its diversity Gollum's "comic-funereal rhythm" in The cold hard lands / They bites our hands; the Marching Song of the Ents; the celebratory psalm of the Eagles; the hymns of the Elves; the chants of the Dwarves; the "song-speech" of Tom Bombadil; and the Hobbits' diverse songs, "variously comic and ruminative and joyful".^[9]

Lynn Forest-Hill writes that Tom Bombadil controls his world with song, in a manner recalling the hero Väinämöinen in the Finnish epic, the Kalevala;^[10] indeed, he only speaks in metre.^[11][10]

Corey Olsen states that Tolkien's poems and songs help to connect the reader to his work's deepest themes. Thus, Aragorn explains that the Riders of Rohan "are wise but unlearned, writing no books but singing many songs". As Olsen states, the emphasis of the poem that Aragorn chants, the ubi sunt lament "Where Now the Horse and the Rider?", may "do nothing to move the plot along", but shows how Elves may view mortal men, and supplies "a poignant context both for the memory of Eorl the Young and for the heroic deeds which are to follow".^[2]

David Bratman writes that even though there is no sheet music in Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, we do "surprisingly" have "a very good idea" of how some of it should sound.^[12] In 1952, Tolkien recited part of The Lord of the Rings for George Sayer to record. The songs were mostly spoken, but Tolkien sang the song of the Stone Troll (sung in the novel by Sam Gamgee), unaccompanied and in a "rough and untrained" voice, but as Bratman comments, "but surely so was Sam's."^[12] Sayer states in the liner notes of the LP album of the recordings that Tolkien sang the song to "an old English folk-tune called The Fox and Hens." Bratman states that this is a variant of "The Fox and the Goose" or "The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night".^[a][12] He comments that Tolkien sings in a major key, like Cecil Sharp's "southern English melodies" for the song. Bratman finds this "appropriate", noting Tolkien's comment that the Shire "is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village" of around 1897. In short, Bratman concludes, Tolkien intended readers to imagine Hobbits as "English country folk singing English folk songs."^[12]

In adaptations of Tolkien's books

Settings of Tolkien's songs

Donald Swann's 1967 song cycle The Road Goes Ever On contains six of Tolkien's songs. Five are set to music devised by Swann; the sixth, the Quenya song "Namárië", is set to a melody resembling a Gregorian chant, which Tolkien hummed to Swann. The scholar of music Emily Sulka sees Tolkien and Swann using the poems and music to link the story of the novel with "the road always continuing, even when one's individual travel is finished". She finds Swann's account of Tolkien's poems "highly effective".^{[T 4][14]}

The Danish group The Tolkien Ensemble set all the poetry in The Lord of the Rings to music, publishing it on four CDs – An Evening in Rivendell (1997), A Night in Rivendell (2000), At Dawn in Rivendell (2002), and (with Christopher Lee) Leaving Rivendell (2005). The project was approved by the Tolkien family and the publishers, HarperCollins. Drawings by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark were used to illustrate the CDs.^[15] The settings were well received by critics.^[16][17]

Peter Jackson's films

Main articles: Music of The Lord of the Rings film series and Music of The Hobbit film series

Music appears in two forms in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings film trilogies. Firstly, there is Howard Shore's long, varied, and prizewinning score for The Lord of the Rings and then in the score for The Hobbit,^[18] not heard by the characters. Secondly, there are the diegetic songs and instrumental music of Middle-earth, which the characters are meant to have heard in the films' narratives. A few of the diegetic songs are Tolkien's, such as the walking song "The Road Goes Ever On", or the hobbits' drinking song "To the Bottle I go"; others, like "The Funeral of Théodred", sung by Miranda Otto playing Éowyn, are wholly invented.^[19]

Based on Tolkien's works

 

The Dutch composer and trombonist Johan de Meij's first symphony, in 5 movements, is entitled The Lord of the Rings.

Further information: Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien § Music

A substantial body of music has been created on the basis of Tolkien's works, in a wide range of genres from classical to many kinds of popular music including jazz, blues, country and western, new age, heavy metal, and psychedelic.^[1]

Classical music

In 1988, the Dutch composer and trombonist Johan de Meij completed his Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings". It had 5 movements, titled "Gandalf", "Lothlórien", "Gollum", "Journey in the Dark", and "Hobbits".^[20][12] In 1996 the Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen assembled materials intended for a ballet into his Symphony No. 7 The Dreams of Gandalf. In the view of the Tolkien scholar David Bratman, both works mainly aim not to tell the story but to create a mood, though de Meij's fourth movement, "Journey in the Dark", is programmatic. Bratman notes, too, that Sallinen's "Gandalf" movement contains a theme based on the letters of his name: as the names of the notes run from A through G, not covering other letters like L or N, the theme spells out GADAF, "a striving, rising theme – all the succeeding notes are in the octave above the initial G."^[12] De Meij's symphony also contains a "Gandalf" movement, which Bratman describes as "marked by a full, striving theme, and later breaks into a fast ride on [the great horse] Shadowfax".^[12]

Popular music

The popularity of The Lord of the Rings with a young audience from the 1960s saw its themes and characters reflected in the work of several popular musicians.^[1] Progressive rock or "prog rock" is often referred to as "Hobbit rock" due to its frequent use of fantasy, fairy tale, medieval and related lyrics, imagery or sounds, whether it is related to The Lord of the Rings or not.

In 1970, the Swedish musician Bo Hansson released an instrumental concept album entitled Sagan om ringen;^[21] it was released internationally as Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings in 1972.^[21]

Led Zeppelin's songs "Ramble On", "Misty Mountain Hop", and especially "The Battle of Evermore" duet sung by Robert Plant and Sandy Denny on their untitled 1971 album, make references to several characters and events from The Lord of the Rings,^[22][23] including Sauron, the Ringwraiths,^[24] Gollum, and Mordor.^[15] The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism treats "Ramble On" as "fantasy medievalism", writing that Plant makes use of the feeling of nostalgia combined with the "haunting, pastoral soundscape" that together set up "the destructive world of war in opposition to an idealized and Arcadian peaceful home".^[23]

From the 1980s onwards, many heavy metal acts have been influenced by Tolkien.^[25] For instance, the German power-metal band Blind Guardian's 1998 album Nightfall in Middle-Earth consists of songs about and narration of parts of The Silmarillion.^[26][27][28]

The 1991 album Shepherd Moons by the Irish musician Enya contains an instrumental titled "Lothlórien", in reference to the forest home of Galadriel's elves.^[29]

Analysis

Eden describes Flieger's 2002 Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World^[30] as "the most important and influential book on both language and music in Tolkien's works", discussing how the two are interwoven as "central themes" throughout The Silmarillion.^[1] Stratford Caldecott's 2003 Sacred Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien analyses Tolkien's mythology from a Catholic point of view, stating that Tolkien's writings "are very much like a musical composition".^[1] Eden notes that Tolkien discounted his own musical abilities, but writes that Tolkien's "recorded readings and his recitations of Elvish would indicate otherwise".^[1]

Notes

1. The melody can be heard on YouTube.^[13]

References

Primary

1. Tolkien 1977, Ainulindalë
2. Tolkien 1937, ch. 1 "An Unexpected Party"
3. Tolkien 1937, ch. 19 "The Last Stage"
4. Swann, Donald (music); Tolkien, J. R. R. (poems) (2002) [1967]. "Foreword to the Second Edition". The Road Goes Ever On (2nd ed.). HarperCollins. p. 5. Book with CD

Secondary

1. Eden 2013, pp. 501–513.
2. Olsen 2013, pp. 173–188.
3. Eden, Bradford Lee (2003). "The Music of the Spheres: Relationship between Tolkien's Silmarillion and Medieval Religious and Cosmological Theory". In Chance, Jane (ed.). Tolkien the Medievalist. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-28944-3.
4. Carter, Lin (2011). Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord Of The Rings. London: Hachette UK. p. pt 16. ISBN 978-0-575-11666-5.
5. Burns, Marjorie (1998). "All in One, One in All". In Agøy, Nils Ivar (ed.). Between Faith and Fiction: Tolkien and the Powers of His World. Oslo. ISBN 978-91-973500-0-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
6. Flieger 2005, Chapter 1: The Motives.
7. Shippey 2005, pp. 210–211.
8. Kullmann, Thomas (2013). "Poetic Insertions in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings". Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate. 23 (2): 283–309.
9. Rosebury 2003, p. 118.
10. Dettmann, David L. (2014). "Väinämöinen in Middle-earth: The Pervasive Presence of the Kalevala in the Bombadil Chapters of 'The Lord of the Rings'". In John William Houghton; Janet Brennan Croft; Nancy Martsch (eds.). Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey. McFarland. pp. 207–209. ISBN 978-1476614861.
11. Forest-Hill, Lynn (2015). ""Hey dol, merry dol": Tom Bombadil's Nonsense, or Tolkien's Creative Uncertainty? A Response to Thomas Kullmann". Connotations. 25 (1): 91–107.
12. Bratman, David (2010). "Liquid Tolkien: Music, Tolkien, Middle-earth, and More Music". In Eden, Bradford Lee (ed.). Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien. McFarland. pp. 140–170. ISBN 978-0-7864-5660-4.
13. Rodgers, Jimmie. "The Fox and the Goose]". The Orchard Enterprises.
14. Sulka, Emily (2017). "J.R.R. Tolkien and the Music of Middle Earth". Channels. 2 (1). Centennial Library: 111–118. doi:10.15385/jch.2017.2.1.6. ISSN 2474-2651.
15. Burdge, Anthony; Burke, Jessica (2013) [2007]. "Popular Music". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 538–540. ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
16. Weichmann, Christian. . The Tolkien Ensemble. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
17. Snider, John C. (March 2003). . SciFiDimensions. Archived from the original on 19 October 2006. Retrieved 14 May 2020.
18. "The 2004 Academy Award Winners". The New York Times. 1 March 2004. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
19. Adams, Doug. "Plan 9 Interview". The Music of The Lord of the Rings. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
20. "The Lord of the Rings Der Herr der Ringe Symphony No. 1 Sinfonie Nr. 1". Rundel. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
21. Snider, Charles (2008). The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock. Strawberry Bricks. pp. 120–121. ISBN 978-0-615-17566-9.
22. Greene, Andy (13 December 2012). "Ramble On: Rockers Who Love 'The Lord of the Rings'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
23. Carlos, Caitlin Vaughn (2020). "'Ramble On': Medievalism as a Nostalgic Practice in Led Zeppelin's Use of J. R. R. Tolkien". In Meyer, Stephen C.; Yri, Kirsten (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism. Oxford University Press. pp. 530–546. ISBN 978-0-19-065844-1.
24. Inman, Davis. "Behind the Song: Led Zeppelin, 'The Battle of Evermore'". American Songwriter. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
25. Greene, Andy (16 August 2017). "Ramble On: Rockers Who Love 'The Lord of the Rings'". Rolling Stone. from the original on 16 August 2017.
26. "Nightfall in Middle-Earth / Unplugged Västeras Blind Guardian". Metal-Archives. 28 October 2021. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
27. Eden, Bradford Lee (2010). Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4814-2.
28. Nightfall in Middle Earth: AllMusic Guide Review
29. Ryan, Roma (2002). Only Time — The Collection (Booklet notes, pages 15, 16, 19, 21). Enya. Warner Music. 0927 49211-2.
30. Flieger 2002.

Sources

• Eden, Bradford Lee (2013). "Music". In Lee, Stuart D. (ed.). A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien. Wiley Blackwell. pp. 501–513. ISBN 978-1-119-65602-9.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2005). Interrupted Music: The Making Of Tolkien's Mythology. Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-824-0.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2002). Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World. Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-744-9.
• Olsen, Corey (2013). "Poetry". In Lee, Stuart D. (ed.). A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien. Wiley Blackwell. pp. 173–188. ISBN 978-1-119-65602-9.
• Rosebury, Brian (2003). Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-59998-7.
• Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (Third ed.). Grafton (HarperCollins). ISBN 978-0261102750.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937). Douglas A. Anderson (ed.). The Annotated Hobbit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (published 2002). ISBN 978-0-618-13470-0.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Silmarillion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.

Further reading

• Eden, Bradford Lee (2010). Middle-earth minstrel : essays on music in Tolkien. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5660-4. OCLC 647917172.
• Eilmann, Julian; Schneidewind, Friedhelm (2019). Music in Tolkien's work and beyond. Zurich. ISBN 978-3-905703-39-9. OCLC 1122741750.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Steimel, Heidi; Schneidewind, Friedhelm (2010). Music in Middle-earth. Zurich: Walking Tree Publishers. ISBN 978-3-905703-14-6. OCLC 671484754.