Ainulindalë

Welcome to the Tolkien Road.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing passages from my book, Tolkien's Overture, concerning the music of the Ainur.

Previously published in 2018, it was out of print for a little while, but it's back in print with a new look.

Visit tolkiensoverture.com to learn more.

Instead, it is a highly spiritual power.

True, this can seem confusing since our experience of music is manifested in a physical way, as reverberations of physical energy at certain frequencies.

However, recall that in the music of the Ainur, nothing physical exists yet.

The halls of Iluvatar, in which the music of the Ainur takes place, is an entirely spiritual realm.

Thus, these two important elements are shown to give new life where destruction had come, even in the earliest ages of Arda.

From the very beginning of Arda's reality, the Music of the Ainur is recapitulated in the joint creativity of the Valar and the malicious work of Melkor.

Of Elves and Men.

Early in The Silmarillion, we learn that Ilúvatar's intention for Middle-earth is that it be a mansion for the Quendi, the Elves, and the Atani, Men.

These are the two races of the Children of Ilúvatar, his own special creatures which take their origin only from him and not in conjunction with the thought of the Ainur.

While he makes the Quendi the fairest of all earthly creatures that shall conceive and bring forth more beauty than all other creatures, he gives to the Atani a special gift.

They shall have the ability to shape their life amid the powers and chances of the world beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else.

And of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.

Welcome to the Tolkien Road.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing passages from my book, Tolkien's Overture, concerning the music of the Ainur.

Previously published in 2018, it was out of print for a little while, but it's back in print with a new look.

Visit tolkiensoverture.com to learn more.

In fact, if one simply tallies the entries in the songs and verses sections of the book's index, then there are 56, which is slightly less than one per chapter.

However, when one considers that many of these songs take on variation and recur at different times, consider A Elbereth Gothoniel, the number is actually much higher.

Thus, it is clear that music is still hugely important in Arda's third age, even 6,000 plus years after the music of the Ainur.

While Chapter 7 will deal with some of the more interesting aspects of music in The Lord of the Rings, this chapter will focus on one of the book's most enigmatic characters, Tom Bombadil.

Welcome to the Tolkien Road.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing passages from my book, Tolkien's Overture, concerning the music of the Ainur.

Previously published in 2018, it was out of print for a little while, but it's back in print with a new look.

Visit tolkiensoverture.com to learn more.

Chapter 5, Luthien, Mighty in Song.

In no single story of Quanta Silmarillion is the power of music so readily evident as it is in the story of Beren and Luthien.

In a way, this is quite appropriate, considering that Luthien is the daughter of Thingol, by birth a Teleri elf, whose kindred live close to the sea so that they can hear its music, and Melion, a Maia, one of the lesser Ainur, who therefore took part in the music of the Ainur.

If any child of Iluvatar has music in her blood, it is Luthien.

As we already saw in the passage from The Silmarillion that we just read, these were some of Melkor's first followers, and some of them joined him before the world was even created.

In the first section of The Silmarillion, the Ainulindalë, when Melkor is first beginning to add his own themes to the music, we read this: "Some of these thoughts he now wove into his music, and straightway discord arose about him, and many that sang nigh him grew despondent, and their thought was disturbed, and their music faltered.

But some began to attune their music to his rather than to the thought which they had at first.

Then the discord of Melkor spread ever wider, and the melodies which had been heard before foundered in a sea of turbulent sound." But whether they all joined him in the music or were drawn to him later, we can't know for sure.