Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

Although I am a highly creative person, I have never been good at coming up with titles. Possibly my only other weakness is my ability to be succinct. “The Introduction Song” combines both of these weaknesses as a nearly eight-minute piece to introduce personalities of the Shire and the culture surrounding them. The animatic to come out in many weeks will further show the landscape and various styles of architecture in the area. When creating the basic concept of an introduction song, also known as an opening number, I drew from musicals of the Western canon, considered how this song might be characterized relative to others, constructed leitmotifs to be heard throughout the musical, and referred to other passages in The Lord of the Rings along with one reference outside of Tolkien’s work. I hope I have successfully adapted the opening scene of the epic by weaving together a complex piece made up of catchy showtunes containing lyrics that respected the original text.

Categorizing Songs in Musicals

As I mentioned in “Introduction to the History of Musical Theater” back in April 2024, I learn the terminology of musicals from the popular website Musicals101.com by author, professor, and museum curator John Kenrick. He helpfully provided categories of songs and a list of potential actions to move the plot. During a song in a modern musical, a character must drive the plot forward by making up their mind. This might be Harold Hill convincing the townspeople that they need a boy’s band in River City, Iowa during “Ya Got Trouble” in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man (1957) or Maria deciding to have confidence during “I Have Confidence” in Rogers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (1959).

In “The Introduction Song”, like in the book, the character to undergo this transition was Hamfast “Gaffer” Gamgee. At the beginning of the song, and the original scene in the text, he readily spreads rumors about the Bagginses with occasional scolding directed at those who take the gossip too far. By the end of the song, he fully defends the Bagginses. His lines from the original text read:

“If that’s being queer, then we could do with a bit more queerness in these parts. There’s some not far away that wouldn’t offer a beer to a friend if they lived in a hole with golden walls. But they do things proper at Bag End.”

I rearranged the words into a modern rhyming scheme:

“If that’s being queer,
we could do with a bit of queerness here.

There’s some not far away
that wouldn’t offer a beer
to a friend
if they lived in a hole with golden walls,
but they do things proper at Bag End.”

Another method of categorization focused on the content of the song, which could be sorted into four different groups. Ballads portray the emotions of the character, and love songs are the most common of this type. “Goodnight, My Someone” in The Music Man and “Something Good” from The Sound of Music are two classic examples. Charm songs make the character seem likeable to the audience, with Maria singing “The Sound of Music”, Eliza Doolittle singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” in My Fair Lady (1956), and Mary Poppins singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” in Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964). Julie Andrews originated all three of these roles, perhaps making her the queen of musical charm. Comedy numbers make the audience laugh, like “Shipoopi” in The Music Man and “I Love to Laugh” from Mary Poppins. Finally, some musical scenes include dialogue, like “Little Town” in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) and “You Did It” from My Fair Lady. “The Introduction Song” combines two types into one, as the ‘rustic’ hobbits inhabit a musical scene including dialogue, while Frodo is charming the audience to set himself up as a likeable protagonist.

Patter Songs

Before my research on this topic, I had thought the adjective “patter” referred to the patter of little feet, a description for the gait of children and hobbits. However, this “patter” comes from a different source. The meaning of “talk glibly or rapidly” appeared in the mid-15th century when related to repetitive prayers or “paternoster”, from the Latin term meaning “our father”. I cannot imagine a prayer said so quickly could be very sincere.

Religious commentary aside, patter songs have been popular since the earliest days of Western comic theater. An early form was called pnigos. This passage was spoken as quickly as possible by a Greek chorus with one breath and ended the parabasis, a scene when the chorus spoke directly to the audience without any actors on stage. The pnigos that I saw cited most often appeared in The Wasps by Aristophanes, an Athenian playwright who wrote comedies during the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC.

Since the Romans borrowed all things Greek, Italian comic opera used pattern songs in the 18^th century. Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia [The Barber of Seville] (1816) features the patter song “A un dottor della mia sorte” [“To a doctor of my fate”], which is about three minutes in length due to the extreme speed that the lines are delivered. Another Rossini song, “Sia qualunque delle figlie” [“Be it any of my daughters”] from La Cenerentola [Cinderella] (1817) takes about five minutes since the pattering portion happens nearly four minutes into the piece. In both cases, the singer is a mentally unstable older father concerned about the marital choices of his daughters.

In the mid to late 19^th century, comic opera power duo W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan seemed to add a patter song to their work at every opportunity. The best known was “I am the very model of a modern Major-General” from The Pirates of Penzance (1879), where the mentally unstable older father brags about his accomplishments surrounded by his marriageable daughters. Apparently, composers of a certain period lacked imagination. A fun fact about the song is that it has the same cadence as the leadup to the “can-can” theme in the “Overture” to Orphée aux enfers [Orpheus and the Underworld] (1858/1874) by Jacques Offenbach. Tolkien apparently enjoyed both of these songs, as he utilized the cadence in a pair of poems to be discussed in a future essay.

For modern musicals, the patter song “Rock Island” is the opening number for The Music Man. The song is assumed to get its name from Rock Island County, Illinois, which borders the Mississippi River on the east bank, while Iowa borders on the west bank. The Music Man also uses a patter song for “Ya Got Trouble”, when con artist Harold Hill convinces the parents of River City that they need to buy a band. As for more recent musicals such as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, these quick-spoken lines are technically rap. Miranda does reference “I am the very model of a modern Major-General” with George Washington’s introduction: “The model of a modern major-general/ the venerated Virginian veteran whose men are all/ lining up, to put me on a pedestal”. Miranda apparently believed the original “general” and “mineral” pairing was not a good rhyme without realizing “general” and “pedestal” is not a good rhyme either.

Scenic Songs

The opening song of The Sound of Music, fittingly called “The Sound of Music”, is famous for panning through the clouds to reveal the snow-covered, wind-swept Austrian Alps before descending to the gently flowing rivers and reflective lakes beside which ancient Germanic towns were built. Church bells interspersed with wind instrument solos flow through the musical score as the camera arrives at Julie Andrews as Maria, dressed in a modest dirndl and spinning atop a grassy hill. While I have neither the vocal talent of Andrews nor the budget to fully animate a scene of similar visual caliber, Frodo’s merry skip down the hill from Bag End to Bywater is intended to mimic this carefree movement. However, Frodo is not fully immersed in the natural world during his opening scene. Instead, he rambles down the road winding through little towns.

Fittingly, the opening song “Little Town” from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast showed Belle wandering absent-mindedly through a village filled with people to whom she implicitly felt superior as the less educated townspeople voice their confusion about her “peculiar” and “odd” attitude, which causes some to dislike her. The camera followed Belle as she left her stick style home on the outskirts of the community and walked down the hill to the late Medieval style buildings clustered near the center just as members of the community woke up to start their day. The villagers gossiped about Belle as she passed, oblivious to their cruelty since she was too busy reading her book.

Not all of their comments were cruel. A woman at a hat shop remarked “Now it’s no wonder that her name means beauty: her looks have got no parallel,” which itself is a striking parallel to Frodo’s own physical description of “taller than some and fairer than most” when compared to other hobbits. While Gandalf originally spoke this line as it appeared in “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”, I thought it fitting for little Sam to receive his first sung line of the musical by echoing what must have been a common sentiment. I felt particularly pleased by my invented retort by Ted Sandyman, “That’s how it’s said in polite company, but here, we’re not a polite post”, followed up by commentary from the other ‘rustic’ hobbits declaring, “He’s pale as a ghost and as tall as a tree’. Not only did these lines pack a bonus rhyme by matching “most”, “post”, and “ghost” in addition to “company” and “tree”, but they also foreshadowed characters to appear in the story many chapters or viewing hours later, from the barrow-wight and the ghosts on the Path of the Dead to the Ents and Huorns, or tree-like giants who shepherded walking trees.

Musical Leitmotifs

I had previously discussed leitmotif during my essay on “The Epigraph”, which paired with the first demo recording I released. The concept of associating a short melody with a person, place, thing, or idea was popularized by German opera composer Richard Wagner and later used by other composers like Sergei Prokofiev and John Williams. I use four leitmotifs to construct “The Introduction Song”.

The first leitmotif is “Hobbit Thoughts” which appears as a basso continuo or figured bass underneath the patter song and is sung by the Bywater Quintet, a group of five ‘rustic’ hobbits who represent public opinion. As suggested in my essay on “National Epics”, I used figured bass because I find repeated melody to be annoying, such as its insufferable appearance in Canon in D by Pachelbel, as opposed to ostinato or ground bass, which is lovely. The leitmotif is played by hobbit instruments, including a string quartet, tin whistle, trumpet, and drums. The percussion line should feel similar to the oom-pah-pah rhythm heard in German folk music but without the tuba line, as the instrument seemed too big to be played by little hobbits.

Juxtaposing “Hobbit Thoughts” is “Frodo’s Adventure”. His leitmotif begins in A Major, a fifth above the leitmotif for ‘rustic’ hobbits, to show how he is literally and figuratively living “in a different key” from them. The orchestration of “Frodo’s Adventure” is light compared to the heavy beat of “Hobbit Thoughts”. Frodo sings a simple melody with occasional embellishment over what begins as a sparse backup part covered by the string quartet, flute, and harp but grows more complex with each verse. In Frodo’s second verse, the flute has a playful counter melody. During the third and fourth verses, the countermelody is played in octaves. The fifth verse modulates to E Major, matching the key of modulation for “Hobbit Thoughts”. Also note that the harp will represent Frodo throughout the musical, although details as to why will be discussed in a future essay.

A pair of other leitmotifs to have more importance in future songs are briefly quoted here. The Gaffer sings the “Want” melody when telling Sam, and anyone listening, to be careful when working for their ‘betters’, as protecting his remaining child was implied to be his only desire besides growing potatoes. Towards the end of the piece, when Sam has a brief patter about the upcoming birthday party, an up-tempo version of “Sam’s Love” replaces the “Hobbit Thoughts” figured bass. This melody will appear when Sam sings about Frodo and Bag End but might not consciously be recognized in its speedy form here. Just as the musical needs time to develop its themes, Sam needs time to develop his understanding about his relationship with Frodo, which will not reach his conscious understanding until Book IV.

Intertextual References

While this is the second song to appear in the animated musical, after the “One Ring (Epigraph Version)” in the Prologue, I added music to many of Tolkien’s lyrics and wrote several additional songs before attempting “The Introduction Song”. Kenrick noted that the introduction “is often rewritten or replaced as the rest of the show develops”, so I plotted most of what I wanted to happen before writing this song, and I think my work paid off.

Staying faithful to the original text was of high importance. I had already noticed Tolkien wrote in a prose style that could be easily changed into rhyming couplets with a few relatively minor alterations, and that served as my basis for the lyrics, as I noted earlier with the Gaffer’s turning point. My major change to the opening scene, besides interspersing Frodo’s high energy world building with the original tavern scene, was showing how Sam was present in the tavern, even pointing out the Gaffer’s errors, which have been analyzed by sharp-eyed literary scholars. I wanted to include references to the Prologue and Appendixes, as most adaptions cut this crucial information. Facts about hobbit appearance came from “1 Concerning Hobbits”, while approximate lifespans were estimated from Appendix A “Annals of the Kings and Rulers”. During a break in the song lasting for over a minute about a third of the way through, Sam references family trees in Appendix C while correcting his father about which Master of Buckland was alive when Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck drowned. Interestingly, the Gaffer refers to Primula Brandybuck by her maiden name, rather than a married name, possibly referring to the tenuous legitimacy of the relationship.

Finally, Tolkien enjoyed referring to literature of the Real World in his work, from expanding upon the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” to improving Shakespeare’s MacBeth. I snuck in a subtle reference to “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, a poem by Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Carroll’s poem states:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—

This grafted nicely onto Tolkien’s text, which read,

“Elves and Dragons!... Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you. Don’t go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you’ll land in trouble too big for you, I says to him. And I might say it to others.”

My combined verse for the Gaffer reads:

“I know you hear your betters,
talk of many things,

Potatoes and cabbages are better for us
Not elves and dragons and kings.

Don’t go getting mixed up in their business,
or you’ll land in trouble too big for you,

That is what I says to him
And I might say it to others, too.

I used a looser meter than Carroll, but the Gaffer’s tendency to rapidly cram syllables into a line fit with his patter song style used in the rest of the piece. I can even justify the slight changes in wording as a translation choice, since the original text was in Westron.

A Note on the Format

I acknowledge that the song follows a highly unusual format more akin to an orchestra piece than a standard musical number, likely due to the heavy influence of opera on my composing style. Kendrick noted that the most common structure of a tune is AABA, meaning a melody, repeating that melody, adding a second melody, and returning to the first melody. Songs following this format include “Memory” from Cats (1981), “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, and the titular “Beauty and the Beast”. Occasionally, a third melody is introduced, creating AABC. The national anthem of the United States, known as “The Star-Spangled Banner”, uses an AABC form in its verse, to give a truncated example of the showtune structure.

Given my difficulty with brevity, “The Introduction Song” takes a different approach. The song switches between two scenes: ‘rustic’ hobbits in the Ivy Bush in Bywater gossiping about their ‘betters’ who live under the Hill at Bag End in Hobbiton, and nearly grown-up Frodo Baggins skipping his way down the Hill to visit Bywater. The scene switches from the tavern to Frodo back to the tavern, creating six cycles in the music, or a theme and five variations. About halfway through the piece, a bridge acts as a pivot point and ushers in a modulation. This indicates a change in atmosphere at the Ivy Bush as the crowd grows more openly hostile towards the Bagginses, along with resetting the listener’s brain so the piece does not seem so long.

Within the ‘rustic’ hobbits, the Gaffer leads a patter song describing rumors about the Baggins. Meanwhile, his closest friends and rivals — Daddy Twofoot of 2 Bag Shot Row, Old Noakes of Bywater, and Sandyman the Miller — pipe in with their own opinions. Occasionally, sons Sam Gamgee and Ted Sandyman add their own commentary. When analyze the structure, the verse of the patter song is lettered “A” with a variation lettered “A'” and a tag lettered “a”.

Also in the tavern are the Bywater Quintet who sing a chorus describing the general sentiment of the townsfolk. I label their chorus “B”, a variation on the chorus as “B'”, and the tags on the chorus as “b” and “b'”. Sam, Ted, and the Bywater Quintet sing a bridge between a verse from Frodo and a verse from the patter song that uses a similar melody to the regular chorus, so that is labeled “B'”. Since Frodo’s verses generally come after the chorus, his part is “C”. The Gaffer has a song just for Sam, although he will “say it to others, too”, bringing melody “D” to the song. Finally, Sam has a brief solo in which his “Sam’s Love” theme appears, making this part “E”. Adding a horizontal bar (|) to indicate breaks in the music for dialogue and action, the entire format using this method of notation is:

Cycle 1: ABC
Cycle 2: A'AA|aABC
Cycle 3: ABCC
Pivot Bridge: B'
Cycle 4: ADC
Cycle 5: AB|b
Cycle 6: AEBb'

While acknowledging the risk of belaboring the point, I want to emphasize that the reason I believe this lengthy format works is because the audience remembers the basic theme (ABC) and is treated to a different version on the theme in each cycle with an emphasis on a different component of the theme each time. Variation 1 (Cycle 2) focuses on the ‘rustic’ hobbits, while Variation 2 (Cycle 3) focuses on Frodo. After the bridge pivots the attitude of the ‘rustic’ hobbits, in Variation 3 (Cycle 4) the Gaffer replaces their chorus focused on the perceived wrongdoings of the Bagginses with his own philosophy to stay out of their business. This approach fails, as the Bywater Quintet doubles their chorus in Variation 4 (Cycle 5), so affecting Frodo as he skips by the Ivy Bush that his part (C) does not appear again in this song. The Gaffer’s final effort appears in the last variation (Cycle 6) as he admonishes the ‘rustic’ hobbits, while Sam innocently speaks of an upcoming party that the Bagginses will host for the community. While the attitude of the ‘rustic’ hobbits softens enough that they will attend the party, they ultimately do not changed their opinion that the Bagginses should disappear.

Watch the demo reel here: