Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

“The Road Goes Ever On” and its variations appear throughout the dialogue portion of the text, from the first song sung by Bilbo during Book I, Chapter 1 “The Long-Expected Party” in The Fellowship of the Ring to the last song sung by Frodo during Book VI, Chapter 12 “The Grey Havens” in The Return of the King. This song expresses the spirit of adventure experienced by multiple characters along with the desire to return home in the end. The love of travel and love of home are nearly universal concepts but rarely expressed as creatively as in “The Road Theme”. Ancient and medieval people told the same stories in their oral histories and during pilgrimages, while modern musicians express their love of the road and homesickness through country and rock hits. I considered all these factors while composing this theme, which I will present at the end of this essay.

Ancient and Medieval Travel Songs in the West

Before widespread literacy, stories were shared through oral histories and songs. The movie stars of the day were itinerant poets, last discussed in “Introduction to the History of Musical Theater”, who traveled from place to place singing the stories they had compiled. While Homer was the most famous poet of ancient Greece, called aoidoi in his language, as the compiler of The Iliad and The Odyssey, thousands of musicians performed this crucial job. In Scandinavia, skalds shared the tales of Norse gods that later inspired the operas of Richard Wagner. In the British Isles, Celtic bards shared their own tales of heroes and deities.

By the time of the European Medieval Period, song lyrics were written down. Some included the precursor to modern sheet music. Among the oldest of these songs was “Congaudeant catholici” [“Congregate Together, Catholics”], which appeared in Codex Calixinus, the official book for the pilgrimage of Camino de Santiago [Road of Saint James] in northern Spain. Composer Albertus Pariensis wrote the music found in the book, although he worked at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. His song is most recognized for its three-part harmony, a new concept at the time and before modern music theory. Accordingly, some of the harmonies sound dissonant to modern ears.

This song and others were likely enjoyed by medieval pilgrims as they traveled from their home villages to holy sites including Jerusalem or Camino de Santiago. Rhythmic walking songs and Latin hymns were favorites of pilgrims, and the content of these songs varied widely. In Codex Calixtinus, the authors complained that pilgrims “sang trashy songs” [“cantilenas mendosas decantaverint”] and played a range of loud instruments, including bagpipes, drums, flutes, and strings. This love of lowbrow music should not have surprised them, as Latin hymns were strictly policed by upper class members of society, practiced by professional musicians, and sung in fancy cathedrals, likely seeming out of reach to the average person. Additionally, musicians needed money to afford their pilgrimage, and they likely received more tips from playing the latest hits than whatever was sung in church.

Modern Road Songs

In the present day, road songs are staples of popular music genres. I have chosen three of the most recognizable songs to analyze in comparison to “The Road Goes Ever On”: “Take Me Home, Country Road” (1971) sung by John Denver, “On the Road Again” (1980) by Willie Nelson (https://willienelson.com/) and “The Long and Winding Road” (1970) by The Beatles featuring Paul McCartney (https://www.paulmccartney.com/) as lead vocalist. All three of these songs were written after 1955, meaning these musicians could be influenced by The Lord of the Rings. In fact, The Beatles were LOTR fans despite Tolkien’s hatred of them and their music.

While Bilbo was a singer/songwriter who created music on his own, and often extemporaneously, most modern singer/songwriters work in teams. John Denver worked with William Thomas “Bill” Danoff and Mary Catherine “Taffy” Nivert to write “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. During an interview with the Library of Congress, Danoff described the song as folk, although it is now covered by country musicians. While the song speaks highly of the typically maligned state of West Virginia, Danoff was from Massachusetts and living in Maryland when he came up with the lyrics, having never actually visited West Virginia. He worked with Nivert to add melody and harmony but had difficulty completing the song until Denver convinced them to pull an all-nighter and finish it. The song soon reached the top of the Billboard charts, while Danoff and Nivert got married. Denver would be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame for cowriting this song among many others.

I had listened to this song for years but not considered the cultural implications of the music until listening to the podcast episode “John Denver: Death of the Sunshine Boy” of Mobituaries, which I reviewed back in January. The song is written in cut time or 2/4 time with a tempo described as “Bright Country” on some sheet music. Other instruments included background vocals, guitar, banjo, bass, and drums to create a folksy atmosphere. The song contains three verses with a chorus after each verse, a bonus chorus at the end, and two tags or repeats of the final line of the chorus at the end. This simple structure made the song easy to learn and sing along.

Willie Nelson wrote “On the Road Again” as a theme song for the movie Honeysuckle Rose, which told the story of an aging musician who had an affair with his best friend’s daughter and was described by film critic Roger Ebert as a “superficial cliché”. While most have forgotten the movie, the song was nominated for an Academy Award and was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 2011. One interesting fact about the song is a claim made by gonzo journalist Gary Cartwright of Texas Monthly, which appeared in his memoir Turn Out the Lights: Chronicles of Texas in the 80s and 90s, where he stated that Nelson wrote the lyrics to his famous song “on the back of an airline barf bag” during a flight.

In the song, the percussion creates a steady “train beat” found throughout country music, making a clickity-clack reminiscent of a train speeding down the railroad track. Other instruments include background vocals, guitar, bass, piano, and clapping. The structure of the song is similar to “Country Roads”, as “On the Road Again” contains two verses, a chorus, another verse, an instrumental break, chorus, verse, tag, instrumental tag.

The following paragraph has multiple digressions, which demonstrates the complexity of my creative process but makes for a confusing read, so please bear with me. “The Long and Winding Road” (1970) originally appeared on the album Let It Be, the final album produced by the British rock band The Beatles as recorded in Peter Jackson’s entirely too long documentary Get Back, last referenced in “Introduction to the History of Documentaries”. McCartney had a massive battle with composer/criminal Phil Spector, whose life was summarized in my essay on “The Epigraph”. Spector was supposed to add a little pizzazz to the song and instead created a massive orchestration. In Inside the Hits: The Seduction of the Rock and Roll Generation by Wayne Wadhams, a textbook I purchased as an undergraduate at Wheaton College (MA) for a “Introduction to Music Technology” class taught by visiting professor James M. Bohn from Stonehill College, the author described Spector’s additions as “some MGM Biblical epic”, “overblown and melodramatic” (164), “distracting attention from the vocal” and “completely overwhelming” (165). McCartney did not release the original version without Spector’s additions until 1996 with the album Anthology 3, and again in 2003 with the album Let It Be… Naked.

As for a description of the song, it has a key signature of E-flat major or three flats, and a tempo of 66 beats per minute. McCartney intended the song to be “poignant” and “quite sad”, likely because his band was about to break up for good. The original version demonstrated this sadness with minimal instrumentation, including Ringo Starr on drums, George Harrison on electric guitar, John Lennon on a horrifically off-key bass guitar, and guest musician plus voice of reason Billy Preston on electric piano. Similar to the other two songs in this essay, the structure is simple: two verses, a bridge, the third verse, an instrumental, and a fourth verse plus a few little “yeahs” to end the song.

Creating “The Road Goes Ever On”

My version of the song incorporates the original two verses that appeared in the final chapter of The Hobbit, which established that Bilbo had changed during his journey and discovered his ability to spontaneously compose songs. A flashback to this earlier time would emphasize how Bilbo has remained nearly “unchanged” since his last journey. The instruments of this song are similar to standard hobbit instruments but with bass clarinets replacing the oboe and bassoon. This foreshadows the instruments used in dwarf music to be described with the release of “Farewell We Call to Hearth and Hall!”, a song written by Merry and Pippin but inspired by the dwarf hit “Far Over the Misty Mountain Cold”.

Upper body portrait of an early middle-aged hobbit wearing a green hood and cloak.

I will analyze the structure of the tune I wrote for “The Road Theme” to explain why the song is satisfying to listeners accustomed to Western music. Here is a quick review on describing music for those who did not minor in Music Theory and Composition or play an instrument for almost twenty-five years. When describing the notes in a song, the most important notes are the first note in the octave scale or the tonic (I), the fifth note or the dominant (V), and the fourth note or the subdominant (IV). Other notes described less frequently include the second note or the supertonic (II), the third note or the mediant (III), the sixth note or the submediant (VI), and the seventh note or the leading tone (VII). I will be using the Roman numerals when describing the movements of notes.

A tall wizard wearing grey robes and a blue hat smokes a pipe. A short hobbit wears a green traveling outfit with a cloak and hood. They stand in front of a round, green front door in the middle of the night.

Like other hobbit-songs, “The Road Theme” has a simple melody. The first line or A with the lyrics “The Road goes ever on and on”, begins on V as a pickup note and moves immediately to I, playing down the scale back to V, briefly rising to VI and then continuing down the scale until the note lands on III, making the melody sound unstable. The musical phrase repeats once and then changes the ending on the second repeat or A'. After landing on V, the melody jumps up: I – III – II, setting up the notes to return to I. Instead, A' repeats and then returns to a third repeat of A. At last, the final phrase gives the pay off, as the melody plays II – III – II – I to land on the tonic, then repeats the subphrase to emphasize the landing. The melody is basic but satisfying with the full pattern being AAA'A'AB.

A hobbit carrying a bag and walking stick springs over a hedge. Three dwarves stand in line behind him.

Other components of this song add to the feeling of traveling at a brisk pace. The rhythm of a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note makes the song bouncy, similar to skipping. The 4/4 time signature with the moderate tempo of seventy beats per minute suggests a steady walking pace. The speed increases to ninety beats per minute for the second and third verses, suggesting that Bilbo was quicker in his youth. After a ritardando or slowing down, the tempo returns to seventy beats per minute as the scene on screen returns to the time period of the first verse.

A small hill with fields and trees where the hobbits live. It is night and stars fill the sky. Two fields with tents are lit for the party.

While future iterations of this song will include a chorus, this version only has verses. However, the melody does change. The song modulates from G major to A major as a flashback and shows much younger Bilbo returning from his journey and singing “The Road Theme” for the first time. The melody is now a step higher, subtly suggesting that while Bilbo was nearly “unchanged” after his journey, age or overuse of his voice had made reaching higher notes more difficult. Inversely, the entire song is about a third too low for his singing voice, or at least for the author who portrays him in the demo reel. In my interpretation, Bilbo uses this vocal technique to seem bigger like a dwarf. No melodic differences exist between Verse 2 and Verse 3. The song then enters the instrumental, repeating the melody of the full verse in the flute, clarinet, and bass clarinet along with harmony in the bass clarinet. Much like the wistfulness of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and “The Long and Winding Road”, the music reflects the feelings of Gandalf as he watches Bilbo depart Bag End for the final time while leaving behind a dangerous object.

Watch the demo reel here: