Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

From Eru Ilúvatar singing the universe into being to the vast range of songs found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the fantasy world of Arda is shaped by music. Previous scholars have paid attention to the forms in which these songs appear, while musicians have written tunes for the lyrics. Less attention has been paid to the instruments that might play the songs if the timeline of Middle-earth aligned to that of the Real World, perhaps because I appear to be the only person focused on this concept. In past essays concerning music, I previously featured the Bywater Quintet, a set of five hobbit singers who voice the widely held opinions of the population. In this essay, I am focusing on a set of instruments played in my interpretation of the Shire, especially woodwinds, strings, and drums. In a future essay, I will discuss a slightly different set of instruments played in Buckland, including horns and bones or spoons.

Woodwinds

Despite being in the same instrument family, woodwinds have a variety of names each with a unique linguistic origin. The word “flute” arrived in English from French in the early 14^th century but the modern “transverse flute” was not invented until the 18^th century, although older variations exist from the 7^th century onward. The perfector of the flute was Theobald Boehm from 19^th century Bavaria, now Germany, who enjoyed making flutes out of a range of materials, including precious metals and hardwoods. For legendarium fanart, the flute-playing elf Daeron is often erroneously depicted with a metal transverse flute, but being an immortal from ancient days would have actually played either a flûte-a-bec or “flute with a beak” held in front much like other woodwinds, or a transverse flute made of bone and bronze as found in Ancient Athens. Hobbits are modern compared to the other “races”, and I have depicted my hobbit flautist with a hardwood transverse flute.

A hobbit plays a wooden transverse flute. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has brown skin with red cheeks and brown hair. He is shorter than the other woodwind players.

I often get the oboe and clarinet mixed up, but I have discovered a few ways to tell the difference between them. An oboe uses a double reed, meaning that it has a thin mouthpiece extending away from the instrument, while the opposite end is rounded. The shape causes the oboe to have a “bright” sound, which can also be described as “piercing” when played too loudly. Its etymology is confusing, as it arrived in English from Italian around 1724. The Italian word was borrowed from the French word hautbois, but the French word was originally the English word “hautboy” from the 15^th century. It’s an unusual case of “what goes around comes around”. Oboe expert Geoffrey Burgess believed the first modern oboe arrived around 1610, while Boehm created the current fingering system in 1843 while inventing the modern flute.

A hobbit plays a modern oboe. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has freckled brown skin and dark brown hair with thick eyebrows.

The clarinet is a much younger instrument, its name dating from 1768 from the 18^th century French spelling clarinette meaning “little bell”, as the instrument has a gentler tone than the oboe. Additionally, the clarinet uses a single reed, and the mouthpiece does not extend far from the body. The opposite end of the clarinet flairs out, a similar shape to the end of a trumpet. Johann Christoph Denner of Bavaria likely invented the instrument around 1700 as he updated an older instrument known as a shawm, also ancestor of the oboe and to be discussed in a future essay. Like the flute and oboe, Boehm invented the current clarinet fingering system.

A hobbit plays a modern clarinet. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has light brown skin and light brown hair on his feet with a shaved head.

The largest in this family is the bassoon, another example of a word that came to English from French and came to French from Italian. The -oon at the end indicates a large amount or a part, such as this instrument loudly playing low notes or the bass part. While “balloon” is a cheerful word with this ending, indicating a large ball of air, less fun and antiquated words with this ending include “spittoon” or a bowl holding a large part of spit, and “quadroon” or a person with a fourth part African ancestry, as opposed to their three-fourths parts European ancestry. Interestingly, a bassoon is no longer bassone in Italian but fagotto meaning “bundle of sticks”, since the bassoon is taken apart for transportation. The perfectly good English equivalent has since become a slur against gay men. I do not know why people have to ruin words. As for the invention of the modern bassoon, this is credited to Germans Jacob Gottfried Weber and Carl Almenräder during the early 19^th century. Little English-language material on these men exists, although Weber’s music theory book has been translated into English. As for incorporating the bassoon into the modern orchestra, this likely happened because of the works of Ludwig von Beethoven. He was a fan of the bassoon, perhaps because low frequencies are easier to hear for many people with hearing loss.

A hobbit plays a modern bassoon. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has brown skin with pink cheeks and light brown foot hair with but a shaved head.

Bowed String Instruments

Bowed string instruments are also known as chordophones, and despite the ancient sound to the name, the word dates from the 1930s. Instruments in this family that appear in a modern classical orchestra have names based on the name of their ancestor, the viol or viola de gamba meaning “viola between the legs (gams)”. The instrument was most popular between the 15th and 18th centuries when it evolved into the versions we know today. The viola has retained the name closest to its ancestor but has also been called a “tenor violin”, while the word “violin” is the diminutive of viola.“Cello” appeared around 1857 as a shortening of “violoncello”, an Italian word literally meaning “the smaller big viola”. Finally, the modern name “double-bass” appeared around 1927 as a modern iteration of “bass-viol” from 1702, since the term “bass” had long been used to indicate the lowest tone in a group. In jazz music, the instrument is often called the upright bass to distinguish it from the bass guitar. As for the more casual term “fiddle”, usually used for the violin, although the bass has occationally been called a “bull fiddle” since the 1880s, it may be a distant relative of “viol”. Both words may share the origin of the name of Roman goddess Vitula, the personification of joy and victory.

A hobbit plays a modern violin with a chin rest and shoulder rest. He sits on a brown stool. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has brown skin and greyish-white hair with thick eyebrows. He is the oldest of the hobbit musicians.

The evolution of stringed instruments is fairly well-trod ground. Accordingly, I will not spend much time rehashing it. The oldest European bowed instruments appeared around the 12^th century and were known as viols. The design changed slowly through the medieval and post-medieval periods and was considered vulgar for much of its early history. The instrument came in a range of sizes with the smallest held on the shoulder, mid-sized balanced on the chest or on the lap, and largest between the legs or on the floor. Early strings were made of “cat gut” or an animal’s intestines, although likely not a cat, while modern strings are made of steel. The number of the strings varied between three and five but are now standardized to four. The tuning of the strings changed from seemingly random assortment to fifths for the cello, viola, and violin and fourths for the double bass due to its size. The pitch of the notes became higher and standardized, as what we call an “A” today, or 440 Hz according to the International Standards Organization would be an “A#” for Baroque musicians. The necks of these instruments was strengthened to accommodate these changes, as higher tuning increased the tension of the strings.

While playing an instrument is never a completely comfortable experience, modern advancements in technology allow for increased comfort and ability to play more difficult pieces. This includes a chin rest and shoulder rest for violins and violas along with an end pin for cellos and double basses. A surprisingly high number of researchers seem to have investigated the origin of the chin rest and what was done before its invention. Some have concluded that musicians did not rest their chins on their instruments at all, using a “chin-off position” while playing their music, tightly gripping with their left hand, and jamming the end of the violin against the neck. As a young violinist, I was repeatedly disciplined for gripping, even though this was apparently standard practice before 1820, when Louis Spohr revolutionized music with his chin rest invention. Spohr was also a music director and composer, writing songs for he and his harpist wife Dorette Scheidler to play together, at least until she was obligated to give up her career to raise the Spohr children.

A hobbit plays a modern viola with a chin rest and shoulder rest. He sits on a brown stool. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has pale skin and brown hair. He is bigger than the other hobbits.

Croatian-American Vlado Kolitsch patented the first removable shoulder rest over a hundred years later in 1936, while Czechoslovakian-Canadian Joseph Kun created the basis of the most famous and widely used modern version in 1972. Kun’s original claim to fame was making bows, and he won several medals for his inventions. While Kun passed away in 1996, his company continues to innovate with variations in material and shape. Modern Kun shoulder rests can be found in plastic, hardwood, and carbon fiber.

A hobbit plays a modern cello with a wooden endpin. He sits on a brown stool. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has brown skin with red cheeks and brown.

Endpins were designed after the Baroque period and used to prop up the instrument. Before this innovation, male musicians played the cello da gamba or gripped with their legs, while female musicians tended to set the cello on the ground. Other options were resting the instrument on their feet, a stool, or a barrel. Traveling cellists even drilled holes in the back of their instrument and attached a strap to carry it around. Fortunately that trend quickly passed, although modern cellists can use the Block Strap invented by Mike Block around the 2010s. As for the endpin, the oldest were wooden and appeared by the 1740s, while the modern equivalent is metal.

A hobbit plays a modern bass with a wooden endpin. He sits on a brown stool. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest. His matching green hat is perched on the scroll of his bass. He has very pale skin with light pink cheeks and dirty blond hair. He's using a standard cello bow grip (overhand) instead of a bass bow grip (underhand) for aesthetic purposes.

Percussion

The hobbit percussion line is fairly simple, as it uses the oom-pah-pah rhythm as mentioned briefly when describing “The Introduction Song”. As the oldest of instruments, drums are found in cultures around the world. The hobbits use a snare drum and a bass drum to achieve their desired rhythm. Snare drums originated in the ancient Middle East, and European crusaders brought the instrument back home as part of their plunder. These drums used ropes across the bottom side or “snare head” of the drum to create a pleasing rattle. These ropes have the same origin as “snare” meaning “trap”, since both traditionally used rope. As for the bass drum, it was originally known as the “Turkish drum” based on a real drum from Türkiye, the davul. The bass drum became popular in Europe in the 18th century, several centuries after the snare drum. This was in part due to a craze for all things Ottoman Empire during this time. Trendy composers like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote “Rondo alla Turca” or marches inspired by Turkish music.

A hobbit plays a bass drum set on its side and a field drum propped on a small table. He stands behind the instruments holding a mallet. He wears a green court suit with a floral vest and matching green hat. He has pale skin with red cheeks and an upturned nose along with golden blond hair and thick eyebrows.

Drums rarely appeared alone. The fife and drum combination, beloved by Americans celebrating Independence Day, was first used in Switzerland by the famed Swiss army and dated from at least 1332. A variation of the snare drum known as a field drum was used in battles through the mid-19^th century, around the time of the American Civil War. By 1909, German brothers William F. Ludwig and Theobald Ludwig created a prototype for the modern drum set using foot pedals to control the bass drum and cymbals, then combining them with a snare drum. Around the same time, modern drums developed to have metal hoops to allow percussionists to change the timbre of the instrument. Theobald died young at age twenty-nine in 1918 as part of the Great Influenza Epidemic after World War I, sometimes incorrectly called the Spanish flu, but William survived and moved to the United States. Today, their company Ludwig continues to sell drums and percussion accessories. As for the percussion of the Shire, hobbits did not appear to have modern metal manufacturing mills and would likely use the older rope-based designs. Their large, sturdy feet meant they could give the bass drum a solid kick instead of using a foot pedal.

Conclusion

A commonality across all instruments presented in this essay is the recency of their modern forms. While pieces from the Baroque era are frequently played on modern instruments, only the composers of the Classical period and later had the options in a modern orchestra. The complexity of pieces composed by Classical musicians like Mozart led to changes in string instrument construction, while other composers like Beethoven deliberately incorporated new instruments into their repertoire. Mid-19^th century instruments are an ideal way to subtly suggest the modernity of hobbit society compared to other cultures of Middle-earth while showing that they came from an older time than the modern era. The hobbits in my illustrations performed for the Long-Expected Party and had uniforms similar to livery worn by servants. Unlike Bilbo Baggins, whose talent for songwriting and singing was applauded in foreign courts, these musicians were considered laborers, providing background music for an event just like a playlist for a modern party.