Music of Middle-earth

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

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.

Music is at the heart 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

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

Riders of Rohan.[1][2]

Ainulindalë: The Music of the Ainur

Further information: Ainulindalë

The

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 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.

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]

Eorl the Young and for the heroic deeds which are to follow".[2]

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

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

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 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

country and western, new age, heavy metal, and psychedelic.[1]

Classical music

In 1988, the Dutch composer and trombonist

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

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. ^ a b c d e f Eden 2013, pp. 501–513.
  2. ^ a b Olsen 2013, pp. 173–188.
  3. ISBN 978-0-415-28944-3
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-575-11666-5
    .
  5. 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. ^ a b Kullmann, Thomas (2013). "Poetic Insertions in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings". Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate. 23 (2): 283–309.
  9. ^ a b Rosebury 2003, p. 118.
  10. ^
    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. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7864-5660-4
    .
  13. ^ Rodgers, Jimmie. "The Fox and the Goose]". The Orchard Enterprises.
  14. ISSN 2474-2651
    .
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0
    .
  16. ^ Weichmann, Christian. "The Lord of the Rings: Complete Songs and Poems (4-CD-Box)". The Tolkien Ensemble. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
  17. ^ Snider, John C. (March 2003). "CD Review: At Dawn in Rivendell: Selected Songs & Poems from The Lord of the Rings by The Tolkien Ensemble & Christopher Lee". 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. ^
    ISBN 978-0-615-17566-9
    .
  22. Rolling Stone
    . Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  23. ^
    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. Archived 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. ISBN 978-0-7864-4814-2
    .
  28. ^ Nightfall in Middle Earth: AllMusic Guide Review
  29. Warner Music
    . 0927 49211-2.
  30. ^ Flieger 2002.

Sources

Further reading
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