Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Music: The Greatest Traveller and Huntsman

Before this essay, I did not know much about mountain men besides a handful of names: Aragorn, of course, local legend Grizzly Adams (whose grave I visited a few months ago), Daniel Boone, and Davy Crockett. During my research, I learned the stories of these wanderers and considered how I might take inspiration from tales in the Real World combined with musical motifs to write the brief instrumental of this section.

Mountain Men

In the United States, regional and national folklore is filled with the stories of great travelers and hunters, to use American spellings. These men flourished during the 19^th century in the American West, whether they led pioneers on paths now designated as National Historic Trails with names like Oregon, Santa Fe, and California, or traveled alone and lived off the land. Many are commemorated in the Museum of the Mountain Man run by Sublette County Historical Society in Pinedale, Wyoming. Here are short biographies about three of them.

James “Jim” Bridger was born in Virginia in 1804 and never learned to read, but this did not stop him from becoming a gifted linguist. He allegedly could speak seven languages, including English, Spanish, French, and multiple Native American languages. He went west in 1822 at the age of eighteen, his favorite area being the Oregon Trail, and is believed to be the first person of European ancestry to have seen Great Salt Lake. He founded Fort Bridger, now a state historic site in Wyoming, in 1843 as a fur trading post, and it became a safe stop for many pioneers. Besides his work as a fur trader, he scouted for the United States Army and led engineering expeditions to lay out trail routes. Bridger traveled even after his death, as he has two grave sites: the first where he was originally buried in Kansas City, MO and the second with a fancier marker in Independence, MO.

Christopher “Kit” Houston Carson was five years younger than Bridger, born in 1809 in Kentucky. Much like Bridger, he was illiterate, left home as a teenager at age 15, and worked as a fur trader in the early days of his career. He was also a linguist. Writer S.J. Reidhead, elsewhere known as the blogger The Pink Flamingo, cited fourteen languages in an article for Wild West magazine in April 1999. On top of this, Carson was considered a good-looking guy. His friend Edward “Ned” Wanshaer Wynkoop noted, “His face was fair and smooth as a woman’s with high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth with a firm, somewhat sad expression yet kissable lips, a keen, deep-set but beautiful, mild blue eye.” (Some articles censor out “yet kissable lips”, but this was considered a normal compliment between men in the 19^th century; Wynkoop was apparently happily married and had eight children.)

Carson eventually crossed paths with another famous frontiersman, John Charles Frémont, who took a very different career path to go West. Born in 1813, making him the youngest of the three, Frémont began his career as an explorer on a government grant, rose in the United States Army to become a major-general, briefly declared California to be its own country after the Bear Flag Revolt, served as a U.S. senator (R-CA), and ran for president, somehow losing to James Buchanan, before ending his career as the governor of Arizona Territory. He would have not found such success without the initial help of Carson.

For all three of these men, their relationship with people outside of their own cultures can be described as complicated. Bridger married three consecutive times to Native American women and learned their languages yet led expeditions to build roads through their homeland. Historian Jerry Enzler described Bridger’s falling out with Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West. Brigham Young wrote to Bridger to hire him as a guide after meeting him in Little Sandy, WY, but Bridger did not arrive in time to help, likely because he was illiterate. Young later claimed that Bridger planned to bring “Indians” to attack him and his followers, then tried to kidnap Bridger with help from other “Indians”, and then told his followers to move into Bridger’s fort while he was out. Bridger eventually went to Washington and spoke directly with President Franklin Pierce and Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) about the problems, causing Young to write a foulmouthed letter to the same men. Somehow, Bridger did not seem to be the problem here.

Carson also had controversial relationships with others. As expertly detailed by independent scholar Marc Simmons in Kit Carson & His Three Wives: A Family History, Carson married three consecutive times, twice to Native American women and once to a Mexican teenager. He was allegedly a sympathetic ally to some Native American tribes, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, Hopi, and Zuni. However, he hated Navajo, forcing them on a 300-mile march called the Long Walk, similar to the Cherokee Trail of Tears. He also fought Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache, forcing them onto reservations. He died in 1868 at age 68, either of a broken heart after the death of his much younger third wife or having worked himself to death.

As for Frémont, his actions are even more baffling to modern people. He encouraged westward expansion and genocide against Native Americans at the same time he opposed enslavement of African Americans so greatly that in 1861, he lost his job in the army for issuing an unauthorized emancipation, known as the Frémont Emancipation. Sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln would later issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and the true Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, driven in part by Frémont’s rash actions.

Each man was considered a hero in his day and idolized in subsequent dime novels, western movies, and playground games. The same hero worship can be imagined for members of the Fellowship after the War of the Ring. Whether in the Real World or in Middle-earth, heroes sometimes learned to love those from other cultures while harboring deep hatred for others unlike them. I will continue to explore this topic throughout the essay series.

Music Theory

The instrumental begins in A minor and 4/4 time at 60 BPM with a trio of bassoons playing an A minor chord (I) across three measures to remind the viewer that Gandalf is a main character in this section. Beneath the bassoons, the “Drums of Doom” play quarter notes. As Aragorn’s theme appears, the key signature shifts to C major. Gandalf’s theme likewise shifts to a C major chord (I) and then becomes sixteenth notes, the same rapid rhythm that first appeared in “The Want Song”. This variation of Aragorn’s theme uses two trumpets and a horn, similar to the fanfare representing the Men of Westernesse first heard in “The Story of the Ring”. The rhythm for each of the four measures of the theme is the same: quarter rest, triplet, half note. The deeper meaning behind this melody will be revealed in time.

The chords of Gandalf’s bassoon shift to match the chords in Aragorn’s theme: C major (I), E minor second inversion (iii⁶⁴), A minor first inversion (vi⁶), B minor (vii), B minor first inversion (vii⁶), and G major second inversion (V⁶⁴). While the notes look random when written out, the chord progression creates smooth voice leading. At the end of this chord progression in measure 8, the claves enter in the standard “Stoors Rhythm”, signifying the appearance of Gollum. By measure 9, “Gollum’s Theme” appears in the marimba with accompanying D minor chords in the trio of treble viols. Gandalf’s chords shift from G major second inversion (V⁶⁴) to G major first inversion (V⁶) to B minor (vii in C major or ii in A minor). In measure 13, the marimba, “Drums of Doom”, and “Stoors Claves” crescendo until the end of the short piece in measure 15.

Watch the music video: