This is a very unique entry compared to the others. As someone who was primarily trained as a vocalist, I think you’ve done many things very well. Your diction is great and you emphasize all the consonants well so that we can understand the text. I especially like that you used certain vowels that are true to the language and accents used at least in the movie, especially with “silver necklaces”. The choice to shorten the length of certain words such as “swift” and “haste” makes so much sense poetically since the meaning of these words are being described by how they are sung. One critique I have is that the letter “s” is the harshest consonant and if they don’t line up together, it distracts from all that comes immediately before and after it. (I have so many memories of my choir director saying to “avoid the snake pit”). For Under the Mountain Dark and Tall, I like that even though the overall form was repeating verses without variation in melody, you still were able to create forward momentum by increasing dynamics, intensity of the vocals, and bringing the drum beat forward. The stark contrast in Farewell We Call in your singing shows versatility in your skills. I am a big fan of the harmonies you used and are very reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkle. For both of these songs, your passion shows through ini how you recorded your singing - the emotion behind every word is intentional and has meaning, which is not an easy thing to do. Overall, I think you did a great job and thank you for sharing!
Viewing post in Tolkien Music Reimagining jam comments
Heh this is a great reply, it brings me much joy and makes me feel like you've seen some of what I'm trying to get at! :)
Thank you for these observations. What's funny about this project is that part of what started it for me was that the "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold" from The Hobbit films doesn't accentuate the "O" in "Over" on the downbeat, and rather "ver" lands on the downbeat, when the iambic tetrameter of the poems is pretty clear when you read them aloud:
Far O ver the MIST y MOUNT ains COLD
to DUNG eons DEEP and CAV erns OLD
we MUST a WAY ere BREAK of DAY
to SEEK the PALE en CHAN ted GOLD
One thing I also notice in the structure of these is that the third to last line in each stanza has an inner rhyme to it (away ere break of day, dragon fire from twisted wire, places deep where dark things sleep). Makes me wonder if I did enough to reflect that! Heh.
The thing that is challenging about writing a melody to this is that if you just go at it in this form, there are no places to pause for breath. Tolkien, reading the Song of Durin (same structure), actually runs into this problem!
So, the true purpose of this project is to try to write music that as closely honors the poetry that Tolkien wrote. One of my prime interests is early music, particularly this historical revival of old instruments and understanding the way the instruments were used and the philosophy of writing music at the time. This effort lead to a wealth of incredibly beautiful, robust, multi-dimensional interpretations of people like Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, etc. The thing that makes this so beautiful is that it creates this living connection to the people who came before us, but it's also this amazing process of both creativity and discovery.
That is why I am setting out on this project - I want to connect with Tolkien's vision in this deeper way. I.e. no one has made a Misty Mountains rendition that actually uses all of the instruments called out in the books, and much less, no one has ever even tried using a viol in a recording that I've found. I've been collecting instruments so that I can actually fully write music to it (and in a way that virtual instruments cannot capture). It's quite an ambitious undertaking, to say the least, but that's part of the joy of it. So, it's like "take the philosophy of historically informed performance and revival and apply it to Tolkien's songs" to get something that is as faithful to what he would have envisioned, but perhaps would go beyond what he would have the capability to write.
Also the Simon and Garfunkel thing is also kind of funny - you're not the first to make that comparison. I also spent a lot of time singing Elliott Smith and Sufjan Stevens, but also Scarborough Fair by S&G longer ago. Funny thing... you could throw "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold" into the same poetic structure of Scarborough Fair (though you have to place the pickup/anacrusis mindfully in a couple places to do this).
Thank you again. This is really awesome feedback.