Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

I have almost arrived at the dialogue portion of the books, but before I launch into the story, I will review the epigraph. The infamous poem, which begins with the line “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky”, technically appears opposite the copyright page for each physical book in a three book set of The Lord of the Rings, after the Introduction by Peter S. Beagle but before the Forward by J.R.R. Tolkien. I don’t know why the book was set this way, as I would have placed the epigraph after the Prologue, but since the edition of the book I use was released the same year my parents were born, I was not around to set the publisher straight.

In any case, the epigraph existed in-universe as a song, and so I decided to make it the first song in the hypothetical musical. Before I release the next Billboard Top 100 hit, which appears at the bottom of the page, I researched a range of topics pertaining to the song. I learned more about epigraphs found in other books, verified the difference between the word epigraph and the many other words that sound like it, investigated the Fach system for determining vocal type, decided whether to write the piece for a cappella or with orchestra accompaniment, and studied the musical styles of famous composers.

What Is an Epigraph, Anyway?

Epigraphs are fairly popular in both literary and pop fiction. Many of the modern books previously discussed in this series have great choices for epigraphs. When early 19^th century science fiction founder Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley introduced Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, she borrowed a relevant quote from the mid-17^th century epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton:

“Did I request Thee, Maker, from my clay

To mold me Man? Did I solicit Thee

From darkness to promote me…”

For the longtime readers of the blog, Milton & Paradise last appeared in “Races: Maiar, Wizards, & Balrogs” in a comparison between Odin and Satan introduced by Tolkien scholar Matthew James Gidney, while Shelley & Frankenstein appeared in “Races: Valar, Part 1” in a review of variations on the Greco-Roman god Prometheus as a comparison to the Vala Aulë Mahal.

While this quote is a suitable first taste of the book to follow, not all epigraphs match the book following them. The epigraphs to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by J.K. Rowling is a rather lengthy quote from, of all people, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania William Penn plus a quote from The Libation Bearers by 5^th century BC Athenian playwright Aeschylus. (He last appeared in “Races: Valar, Part 1” as the author of Prometheus Bound alongside Shelley.) Russian novelist and terrible person Leo Tolstoy (last appearing in “Framing Device”) quoted the first line of Deuteronomy 32:35 at the beginning of Anna Karenina, which in English is sometimes translated to “It is mine to avenge; I will repay”.

Rarest of epigraphs are materials written by the author. F. Scott Fitzgerald was guilty of this, as he quoted Thomas Parke D’Invilliers, his own pen name and a character from his first book, This Side of Paradise, in the epigraph for his best-known book, The Great Gatsby. That may seem convoluted enough, until one considers that the epigraph appearing in The Lord of the Rings is purported to be J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of a song sung by Gandalf, itself a translation of a song from the Black Speech of Mordor, a line of which is inscribed on the Ring.

Epigraph vs. Epitaph vs. Epithet vs. Epigram

I have struggled with distinguishing these four words for a long time, evidenced by a handful of errors in past posts that have been corrected, but henceforward shall struggle nevermore. This topic has been covered previously on the educational website ThoughtCo. but without the lovely etymological additions that seem necessary for this philology-focused series. All four words use the prefix epi- from Greek meaning “on, upon, above… toward, among”.

The current meaning of epigraph — a quote at the beginning of a book — attests from 1844. However, the original meaning was an inscription on a physical object often made of stone and appeared around the 1620s, the same time the Mayflower came to Plymouth. The suffix -graph means writing or recording and appears in photograph, telegraph, and all by itself as graph.

Epitaph has a similar meaning to the original definition of epigraph as an “inscription on a tomb or monument”. It arrived in English around the mid-1500s, around the time Elizabeth I became Queen of England. In the context of The Lord of the Rings, Balin’s tomb contained an epitaph written with Cirth runes. For all my visits to cemeteries, I have seen few grave markers with epitaphs except for a broken headstone with the mystery poem kept at the Berkley Historical Society in Berkley, MA.

An epithet is a description appended to or replacing the name of a person or thing. In Ancient Greece, Homer used epithets liberally in The Odyssey and The Iliad, from rosy-fingered Aurora and grey-eyed Athena to white-armed Hera and the wine-dark sea. Epithets appeared in Norse-Germanic mythology as gods and heroes took on many nicknames. Philologist and Germanic culture expert Rudolf Simek recorded a huge number of epithets in his Dictionary of Northern Mythology, including “all-father” and “the one with the flaming eyes” for Odin and björn or beorn meaning “bear” for Thor. Likewise in the Legendarium, the creator deity Eru Ilúvatar was sometimes called the All-Father, and Sauron was noted for his flaming eyes, while Beorn and his descendants were Men who could shapeshift into bears.

An epigram is a brief but witty poem or statement, similar to a one-liner. The word appeared in English during the mid-1400s. An epigram could be an epitaph should it be written on a grave. Additionally, the Greek word epigramma meant writing on a tomb or monument, the same meaning as epitaph today. As for well-known epigrams, Benjamin Franklin wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanac, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing”, although English historian Thomas Fuller seemingly coined an older version of the quote. Transcendentalist activist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay “On Friendship” that “The only way to have a friend, is to be one”. In The Fellowship of the Ring, an epigram might be split between two characters during a conversation. After Frodo remarks, “I think one of [Sauron’s] spies would—well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand”, Aragorn cannot help but reply with a laugh, “I see. I look foul and feel fair. Is that it?” (194-195)

The Fach System for Voice Types

The word Fach rhymes with the composer’s name Bach and means “compartment” in German. It’s actually short for the word Stimmfach or “voice-compartment” and is used by advanced opera singers to explain what roles best suit their singing style. While a classic choir contains sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses, Fächer describe a more specific note range, strength of the voice, and ability to sing trickier passages, also known as coloratura. Each singer in my hypothetical musical will receive a Fach, although the demo reels performed by non-professional singers will not convey how each part is intended to sound.

In the Epigraph, Elanor sings first. Her Fach is a Charaktersopran or Soubrette, meaning that she is a soprano with a light voice and not a lot of embellishments. She is not alone in this classification, as Pippin sings Soubrette as a boy soprano in this range for the first half of the musical. In the world of opera, parts with Fach are typically young girlfriends or little boys, including the titular character’s girlfriend Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro [The Marriage of Figaro] by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the child Sesto in Giulio Cesare in Egitto [Julius Caesar in Egypt] by George Frideric Handel. As an aside, I once watched a production of Giulio Cesare in which Sesto was sung by a grown man, and Giulio by a woman wearing a business suit, both parts perfectly executed but with the singers surrounded by an avant-garde set, and to this day am baffled by what I witnessed.

Moving on, the next bracket contains mezzo sopranos and contraltos. Merry and Frodo both fell into this larger category, as it is commonly used for young male leads. However, their different singing style cause them to receive different Fächer. In the first half of the musical, Merry will be a straightforward and loud singer with a higher pitched voice, placing him in the Lyrischer Mezzosopran or lyric mezzo soprano category. He is alike in voice but not personality with immature and flirtatious Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro. Frodo is a Koloratur-Mezzosopran or coloratura mezzo-soprano with a lighter sound and more flexibility in his voice, enabling him to sing fancy trills and runs like some depictions of Giulio in Giulio Cesare.

The next bracket down are tenors, spelled the same in English and German, with three singers in this category. Sam is a Tenor Leggero or Tenore di grazia in Italian, as he can sing nearly as low as the “average” tenor but also the higher range of the mezzo sopranos as a controlled falsetto, along with possessing a lighter sound. I chose this for him since it matches my own vocal range, so at least I would not have to change the pitch on one character. Gimli is a Charaktertenor or dramatic tenor with a full, strong sound like his evil dwarf counterpart Mime in Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner. Legolas might be a Lyrischertenor or lyric tenor, characterized as much by a youthful and pretty face as a flexible voice.

A step below are the baritones, literally meaning “deep tone” and filling in the supposed gap between tenor and bass. These characters are typically strong men who may have great political power but not necessarily common sense. Aragorn is the Heldenbariton or dramatic baritone found in German opera like the warrior Telramund in Lohengrin by Wagner. Finally, the lowest level is the bass, and these characters are typically mature men or villains. Gandalf is a Schwerer Spielbass or dramatic comic bass — while he is capable of being serious, he would rather have a good laugh — and Figaro in Le nozze de Figuro is a younger example.

A Cappella or Orchestra?

With my vocal types determined, it was time to figure out whether the song would be sung with or without my mighty MIDI orchestra. A cappella has long been the most common type of singing found around the world. The word came to English in 1868, although it had previously been spelled alla capella directly from Italian and arriving in 1824. The phrase literally means “to chapel” referring to its popularity in church music. While the chants of Christian monks stretch back several centuries, the oldest known recorded a cappella appears on a stone cylinder found in Turkey, written in ancient Greek, and dated to the 2^nd century AD. Named the Seikilos Song or the Seikilos Epitaph for the early mistaken belief that it was a headstone, inscriptions around the words indicate the melody.

I was originally going to use a cappella for the entire song but determined that the middle section featuring the ghostly voices of the Fellowship needed instrumental backup. My selection of instruments will be explained in-depth during later posts but notice how each character received different instrumentation with their song line. The kantele that appears with Legolas’s line is a Finnish folk instrument similar to a dulcimer, while the buisine that comes in with Aragorn is a medieval fanfare trumpet.

A Note on Musical Style

The contrast of Elanor’s a cappella with the full sound of the Fellowship plus an orchestra achieved the dramatic shift in attitude I wanted to accomplish. I hoped to mirror the style of two brilliant composers who were terrible people: Richard Wagner and Phil Spector.

Wagner was the biggest opera star in his day with musical blockbusters inspired by European folklore like Tristan and Isolde, Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Lohengrin. I wake up every morning to an alarm of “Ride of the Valkyries”, although this does not make me any more excited to leave my cozy bed. Besides harkening back to well-known stories, Wagner used two other techniques that I want to employ in the hypothetical musical: gesamtkunstwerk and leitmotif.

According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera — have you noticed I can find a reference book about anything? — the term gesamtkunstwerk literally means “total work of art” and sprang from a bunch of essays written by Wagner between 1849 and 1851, not so unlike my blog. His idea was that a performance could combine many types of media to create an even better artwork. The sets of a stage required architecture, sculpture, and painting, while the performers combined drama, dance, music, and costume. Meanwhile, leitmotif is a little musical theme that occurs again and again throughout a musical work, often exceeding three hours in length, which reminds the audience who the characters are and what they are thinking. If the hundreds of Wagnerian leitmotifs overwhelm the reader, you might try listening to fun and less demanding soundtracks like Star Wars or other pieces by John Williams or children’s symphony Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev.

If this was all there was to Wagner, I would have nothing more to say. Unfortunately, between racist remarks in his writings, negative themes in his operas, and adoption of his music by the Nazi party, Wagner has become associated with anti-Semitism. His music is unofficially banned in Israel with protests springing up around concerts that dare to schedule his music. Despite the adverse influences in his work, he continues to be among the most popular Classical music composers.

Phil Spector’s layered, “robust”, even overpowering sound shares similarities with Wagnerian scoring, which featured massive orchestras and doubled or tripled parts. In fact, in the 1989 biography He’s a Rebel, researcher Mark Ribowsky reported that “Spector envisioned himself as a rock-and-roll Richard Wagner”, even comparing “River Deep—Mountain High” performed by Tina Turner in 1970 as “a rock-and-roll Der Ring des Nibelungen”. Ironically, Spector had Russian-Jewish ancestry, but he seemed to separate the art from the artist.

Spector’s “Wall of Sound” approach was beloved by some musicians and critics but hated by others. I found it successful in “The Long and Winding Road” from the album Let It Be by The Beatles published in 1970, but the sound drowns out other singers and bands. As for actions in his personal life, Spector abused his ex-wife Ronnie Bennett until their divorce in 1974, murdered actress Lana Clarkson in 2003, and died in prison in 2021. The creators of the most beautiful work can do the ugliest things; “seem fairer and feel fouler” as Frodo would say.

Now for Our Featured Presentation

The creation of this musical piece took several months as I composed in the sheet music program MuseScore. The melody came easily to me, as I had sung it in my head for years. I wanted the piece to be easy for the average reader or viewer to sing, which meant not too much movement up and down the scale plus a steady rhythm. After initially writing the entire song as a cappella, I realized I wanted more contrast between Elanor’s singing alone in the office and the ghostly voices of the Fellowship. Once I established a visual for the song, to be revealed in a future post, I decided to create an orchestra out of the instruments I had assigned to the characters. The sound should feel full and medieval because of the multiple parts on the same notes and the use of older instruments like the kantele and the viols.

My final struggle was recording the voices. Since I am not a professional singer and do not have the widest vocal range, I relied on the pitch changing tool found in Audacity, the recording program. I tried a few different microphone setups and eventually got just fine results. I was able to sing almost all the parts with varying amounts of pitching without distorting the sound too severely. I tried to use accents to disguise the fact that it was just me singing, and I think I did a decent job of this. However, the voice of Gandalf proved too low. I ended up recruiting my editor (also known as my dad and available for hire at reasonable rates) to sing the lowest part. This is no Broadway performance, but it’s not any worse than some other demo reels completed on much larger budgets. If you have any tips on how to refine my recording process or would like to donate your voice to the project, let me know! Otherwise, enjoy the first song on the hypothetical album.