Abby Epplett, Historian

In this week’s essay, I introduce the next musical selection, which includes an instrumental and the song “The Wood Is Full of Rumour”. While not treated as a song in the original text, I wrote the piece by borrowing information provided by Gandalf to Frodo while he discussed the interaction of the Woodmen and Wood-elves who live in Mirkwood and could not catch a monstrous “ghost who drank blood” . I also drew inspiration from music of the Middle Ages, including the medieval method of creating harmony and the instruments that originally played this music.

After this instrumental, I will take a short break from composing music to research topics in folklore and Real World history related to The Lord of the Rings . Out of the seventeen scenes to appear in this chapter, this instrumental is for the twelfth scene. In this piece, I include a new theme to represent Gandalf interrogating Sméagol/Gollum, a new motif to represent the moon, and the return of multiple recurring themes and instruments.

While describing the history of the Ring to Frodo, Gandalf explained that Sméagol/Gollum and Bilbo had many similarities, as they were both of hobbit-kind. While this bothers Frodo, he would later realize Gandalf wisely spoke the truth, if in a long-winded way. Because of their shared background, hobbit-kind quickly understood each other, more so than “a dwarf, an orc, or even an elf”. Tolkien viewed this connection as being of the same cynn , an Old English word meaning “family”; it’s also the ancestor of the word “kin” . It’s important to note that Tolkien did not see genetics or “blood” as an indicator of personality, although plenty of people in his day did, and used the concept to suppress others. He believed instead that language was what brought people together. Accordingly, I will take a brief look at linguistic factors that make the speech of hobbit-kind unique, along with how Sméagol’s mental decline changed his speech. After that, I will give an overview of the music theo...

This week’s instrumental covers the mental decline of Sméagol from the time he discovered the Ring’s power of invisibility until he made his home in a cave underneath the mountains. While most of the musical motifs in this section have been covered in previous essays, one brand new motif representing the Sun makes a brief appearance. In this essay, I will talk about my inspiration behind how I portray the Sun along with describing how the many motifs blend together to create the piece.

America250 , the non-profit organization created by Congress in a vain attempt to celebrate the Semiquincentennial in a way everyone would like, just released the first volume of a soundtrack for the celebration , albeit twelve days after the event actually took place. The album was produced by multiple Grammy Award-winning musician and producer Emilio Estefan and includes songs from a wide scope of American music. I will look at the history of these songs and give my opinion on its success as an album.

This instrumental introduces the “fathers of the fathers of the Stoors”, the character of Sméagol/Gollum, and the death of Déagol at the hands of Sméagol after discovering the Ring. During this instrumental, I introduce a new percussion motif to represent Stoors and related hobbit-kind, along with referencing previously used themes to create a complex musical landscape.

While creating the instrumental for “The Story of the Ring”, I brought back musical themes and motifs used in previous sections while introducing new themes. In this essay, I will describe the history and inspiration behind the new themes for Sauron, Ringwraiths, Gil-galad, and Men of Westernesse while demonstrating how these themes fit together to create a cohesive score.

This week, I am releasing another section of music for “Book II, Chapter 2 The Shadow of the Past”. In this brief section, Gandalf began explaining the story behind Frodo’s ring and sang the famous theme song of the series, which originally appeared as the Epigraph in the text and was sung in the “Prologue” of the animated musical . While no new musical themes are introduced in this section, I used motifs occurring in previous sections to develop a cohesive score. This essay focuses mostly on music theory, but history-themed essays will be back in two weeks.

This nine-minute instrumental uses musical themes found throughout the work, some of which have already appeared in previous pieces. I will review past themes, explain the history and inspiration behind new or updated themes, connect the technique appearing in the composition to the emotions I intended to convey, and provide careful analysis to the structure of the piece. If you find this essay too technical and would rather simply listen to the music, feel free to jump to the bottom of the page where I have embedded the sheet music video.

In a short scene of artistic license, I turn the Frodo & Sam Theme into an original song called, “The Sun Is Up”. This is the third time viewers will hear the song: first as a melody on the serinette , next as the tune whistled by Sam while returning home from the Green Dragon , and now as Sam opens up the curtains at Bag End in the morning. The scene also shows a bit more of what Sam does for work and what Frodo wears to bed.

The dialogue from the animated musical scene “The Conversation at the Green Dragon” will be taken verbatim from the original text, but the instrumentals come from my own head. In this five-minute piece, I incorporate musical themes or leitmotifs from past scenes, along with themes that will become significant to the plot. The six themes represent taverns, adventure, the White Towers, the Grey Havens, the Road, and the relationship between Frodo and Sam. By creating variations on these themes and weaving them together, I design a cohesive soundscape for the scene while connecting it to past and future scenes throughout the series.

Today, I am using my creative liberties to share a scene not appearing in the book that establishes the musical motif representing Frodo and Sam together. In my introduction to this theme, I combine the sound of the serinette with the whistling loved by hobbits along with exploring one interpretation of their relationship: that of a master and his disciple or acolyte.

I return from my winter holiday break with new music, aptly named “The Adventure Song”. This piece covers the first few pages of “Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past” as Frodo spends seventeen years at Bag End hosting parties with his twenty closest friends, visiting Elves and Dwarves in the woods, and not aging. As much as Frodo seemed to enjoy his life, he was curious about the land beyond its borders that his ‘uncle’ Bilbo had described in his stories. This essay details other adventure songs found in modern Western musicals that I used as a reference while composing this piece, along with a quick note about how I am voicing the Elves, and an explanation of the song’s structure.

I was not sure what to write to go along with this animatic, which is the culmination of many months of work. I had originally begun an essay about the history of computer programs used to create my animatic. While the essay was certainly interesting, especially for technology geeks, it did not seem in line with my other essays in this series. I have decided instead to keep this essay as simple as possible and instead offer a brief summary of what I have learned so far. During my research of global histories and cultures, creating illustrations, and composing music, I have amassed a vast amount of knowledge and a wide-ranging skill set that I would not have thought possible at the beginning of the project. I have uncovered delightful stories and fun facts during this journey. For some highlights, I enjoyed learning about traditional clothing worn by Manchus, which partially inspired my depiction of Dunlending culture and took a MasterClass on voice acting presented by Nanc...

As promised last week, this portion of the animated musical does not appear in the original text, nor in any of its drafts. Thus far, I have used few creative licenses during my adaption. Costumes and architecture rely on historical designs and the original text. “The Introduction Song” and “The Want Song” were summaries of what appeared in the Prologue, Appendixes, and “Book I, Chapter 1, The Long-Expected Party”, while “One Ring” and “The Road Goes Ever On” were taken nearly verbatim from the book. The one difference is the more obvious nature of my framing device , which features Elanor Gardner Fairbairn reading and editing the book as she chooses what will appear in the Red Book of Westmarch . Some scenes from this hypothetical original manuscript will not make her cut.

In this essay accompanying my next instrumental, available at the end of the post, I am discussing the music of the three licensed versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings : the Rankin/Bass version, the Ralph Bakshi version, and the Peter Jackson version. From my understanding, while other versions exist, the Tolkien Estate did not approve them. While my own hypothetical animated musical likewise does not have approval, it also is not intended for commercial purposes, as detailed in my discussion on fair use back in the project introduction . Other musicians and performance groups who have written their own music or song cycles to be performed independently during a concert or on an album, rather than as a part of a musical score, will be discussed in a future essay.

“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.

While musicals are driven by songs with lyrics, as previously described during “The Epigraph” , “The Introduction Song” , and “The Want Song” , instrumentals are equally important for setting the tone during dialogue scenes and moments where characters are silent. Music accompanied film even before the invention of the “talkie”, whether a live organist playing along with the action or a phonograph blasting the tune. In the modern era, film composers are among the best known music writers of their day with the most famous in English-language films including John Williams, Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, and Hans Zimmer. Like many industries, older white men dominate movie music, although recent film adaptations of stage musicals have begun to change this demographic.

After the Long-Expected Party — and in the case of the hypothetical animated musical, not long after “The Want Song” — Gandalf joined Bilbo in his house and demanded that his hobbit friend give up the One Ring. Bilbo initially reacted badly, as the ring had gained some control over him, but he eventually left the ring to his ‘nephew’, Frodo, along with most of his worldly possessions. Rings have appeared in fiction throughout world literature, spawning dozens of folkloric motifs and inspiring adaptations of ancient stories for stage and film.

After many weeks of anticipation, the next song in the animated musical is ready to debut. “The Want Song” is possibly the biggest musical number in the production in terms of length and number of singers. It functions as a foil to “The Introduction Song”, a literary device typically meaning a character who contrasts another character, but in this case, I used it to describe a song that contrasts another song. I have a degree in the field, so I can change words like that. While “The Introduction” juxtaposed a wordy solo by Frodo describing Middle-earth with the ‘rustic’ hobbits talking about their local community, “The Want Song” features solos by all of the major characters appearing in the scene along with a closing section from the wealthy hobbits talking about their desires. These two songs cover the complete range of attitudes about the Shire and its people. Going forward, most songs will be short solos or small groups, although several larger group numbers are slated for ...