A New Arrival (LotR Soundtrack)

So, Monday the mail from amazon.co.uk brought my copy of the soundtrack to the new LORD OF THE RINGS musical currently being staged in London. I wasn't able to see this when I was in England back in October/November, since I was based in Oxford and time in London meant time away from the manuscripts I'd gone over to see. I did pick up the artbook based on the play, which convinced me that (a) it was based more on the Jackson films than Tolkien's books and (b) the most impressive thing about it was probably the elaborate mechanical stage made up of multi-tiered platforms that morph into different configurations from scene to scene (and apparently within scenes as well). Not having a copy of the script, it was hard to tell how faithful or otherwise it was to JRRT's story, but there were signs that it leaned towards "or otherwise" -- for example, when including both Rohan and Gondor made the performance run long, they mashed them together into a generic "Kingdom of Men".

Still, I was curious about the music -- after all, the wretchedly bad Bakshi film had a decent, if unsubtle, score by Leonard Rosenman (channeling Richard Strauss for all he was worth) considerably better than the movie it accompanied (not that this wd be hard). Also, they'd had the odd idea of combining a group of Finnish musicians with an Indian composer, apparently in the hopes that this wd add an 'elvish' (Finnish > Quenya) gracenote coupled with Bollywood's ability to synthesize elements of western culture.

Surprisingly enough, the results aren't that bad. It's certainly listenable, if nothing Tolkien wd recognize as his own. For one thing, they haven't used his actual lyrics, taking care even when singing a song based on one of the songs in LotR to change the words at least slightly in almost every line. Thus "The Road Goes Ever On" becomes "The Road goes on/Ever ever on/Hill by hill/Mile by mile/Field by field/Stile by stile . . ."; "The Cat & the Fiddle" becomes "The Cat & the Moon" ("There's an inn of old renown/Where they brew a beer so brown/Moon came rolling down the hill/One Hevnsday night to drink his fill"). And at least half the songs have no direct LotR analogue at all. All in all, it sounds very, very Andrew-Lloyd-Webberish, so if you like Lloyd Webber's work you'll probably find this pleasant enough. The best songs, I think, are the three hobbit tunes: "The Road Goes On", "The Cat & the Moon", and "Now and Forever" (Sam & Frodo in Mordor evoke hobbit-heroes of the past), although the Bree dancing song does sound rather as if Boiled in Lead had been held hostage somewhere until they came up with a routine for a scene from 'Riverdance'.

One surprising feature of the songs is their linguistic variety. Thus we get songs in ordinary modern English as well as in Sindarin, Black Speech, Old English (what would Tolkien think of their Orcs chanting battle-cries in OE?), Quenya (I think), and '12th century Middle Welsh' (huh?); one song consists almost entirely of elves chanting the names of the Valar, another of lines from the Ring-poem ('ash nazg thrakatuluk'). The booklet accompanying the cd credits four people for helping with the lyrics in other languages, including Julian Bradfield (former editor of QUETTAR, famous in Tolkien circles for having first published elven numerals back in the early '80s) for 'Elvish Translations' and Tom Shippey for reviewing 'Hobbit Nonsense Lyrics', presumably meaning lines like the following, from the hobbit dancing song:

Hoo-rye-and-hott-a-cott-a ho
Hoo-rye-and-hott-a-cott-a ho ho
Hott-a-cott-a-hotta-ko
Hott-a-cott-a-ko-cott-a-ko-ho

All in all, an odd production: it's not Tolkien, but it's not a horror to be shunned at all costs. The orc battle song is rather fun in an unsubtle way, starting as if a dozen taiko drummers were showing off before being one-upped by a tuba section, and "Now and For Always" does a good job of capturing hobbit-courage and the friendship between Sam and Frodo. As a whole it's certainly no stranger than, say, Bo Hansson's instrumental LotR concept album from the early 70s. And as a bonus it comes with an informative cd-sized booklet listing all the lyrics and summarizing the stage-story; the version I got also included a dvd that alas does not provide a film of the stage-show but instead still pictures from the production in a slideshow set to the soundtrack.

--JDR

New HOBBIT movie

So, it's official. Jackson, New Line, MGM, and Del Toro have come to an agreement and signed contracts to do two new Middle-earth movies: one based on THE HOBBIT and the other to fill the gap between THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS (assembled from bits and pieces in the various Appendices, I assume). Must say I'm disappointed it isn't a two-part film of just THE HOBBIT itself -- but then as the author of a two-part book on THE HOBBIT I'm probably prejudiced in thinking there's plenty of story there for two movies.
Here's the initial link; thanks to Yvette for forwarding it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24302180/

And for more news, here's the ever-informative Kristen Thompson's post on the subject:

http://www.kristinthompson.net/blog/?p=248

The next thing to watch will be which of the folks who made Jackson's trilogy of films based on THE LORD OF THE RINGS will be returning to work both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras in the next film. And, of course, what new talent signs on to take the major roles of Bilbo (assuming Ian Holm, alas, gives it a pass) and Thorin & Company.

--JDR

Did I Mention that Tancredo is EVIL?

So, late last week my eye was caught by a piece with the headline "Tancredo slams pope". Following the link (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8960784?source=rss), I found that specifically the outgoing congressman from Colorado used the occasion of Benedict's visit and goodwill tour to denounce the pope's stance on immigration --nativist anti-immigration policies being a keystone of Tancredo's credo.

Now, I don't think Benedict is immune to criticism, for his actions either before and since he became pope.

But (and this is a pretty big BUT) all he was doing in this case was urging American Catholics to welcome immigrants who share their faith into their churches and communities as brethren. It's pretty hard to find fault with a church leader who encourages all fellow denomenationalists to treat each other well; it's like slamming the Dalai Lama for advocating peace, tolerance, and enlightenment. Surely telling Catholics to love and respect one another is a fundamental part of what being pope is all about.

So, dismissing a call to Xian charity as mere "faith based marketing" is confirmation that Tancredo deserves his spot in the waxworks of horrors alongside Strom Thurman, George Wallace, Senator Bilbo, and the rest. Pity, but there it is.

--John R.

current reading: THE BRILLIANT CAREER OF WINNIE-THE-POOH by Ann Thwaite.

The Oldest Tree in the World

"There was a man named Lessingham
dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale,
set in a gray old garden
where yew-trees flourished
that had seen Vikings in Copeland
in their seedling time."
--opening sentence of E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros [1922]

So, today they announced the discovery of a tree almost as old as Treebeard himself:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080417/od_afp/swedennatureoffbeat_080417131817

This is roughly twice as old as the previous record holder, one of the bristlecomb pines in the US -- which incidently was CUT DOWN by the researcher who discovered it in order to find out how old it was.

Just for comparison, supposedly only one apple tree planted by "Johnny Appleseed" (John Chapman) in the early 1800s still survives, while oak trees can live about a thousand years. The yews Eddison describes are some eleven or twelve hundred years old, which is entirely possible, since the oldest known yew (in central Scotland) is about two thousand years old. The Swedish spruce, by contrast, is now believed to have "taken root" around 7,542 BC, some 9550 years ago -- before Egypt, before Mesopotamia, before writing, not just all the way back in the Neolithic but near the beginning of the Neolithic Age.

Wow.

--JDR

I Am Interviewed . . .

. . . by Stephen Sullivan and Linda Godfrey for UNCANNY RADIO, a program broadcast on WBSD 89.1 FM in Burlington Wisconsin, not far from Lake Geneva where I used to work during the old TSR days (1991-1996).
You can listen to it on the radio if you're in the SE Wisconsin area, or I'm told it'll be streaming live between eight and nine p.m. (Central Daylight Savings time) tonight on www.wbsdfm.com; within a day or two the podcast version shd be posted on www.uncannyworld.com; see also http://uncannyradio.blogspot.com/
Many thanks to Stephen for the invitation; he's someone whose work I've known for many years but ironically we've never met, since our eras at TSR didn't overlap. Still, it's nice to finally make contact with someone with whom I share so many friends (most of them among his fellow Alliterates); his cousin was even best man at my wedding.
So, enjoy.
--John R.

current reading: Whittingham's THE EVOLUTION OF MIDDLE-EARTH (still).

"Brownies, Fays, Pixies, Leprawns"

So, this evening I was sitting in the closet reading Elizabeth Whittingham's THE EVOLUTION OF TOLKIEN'S MYTHOLOGY: A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, when her third repetition of a phrase made a mental shoe drop. It just goes to show the value of encountering something you already know well out of context (Chesterton's Mooreeffoc).

The passage in question concerned the lesser spirits that accompanied the Valar when they descended into what was later called Arda, the created world. Among others, their numbers are said in THE BOOK OF LOST TALES to include "brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns" (BLT.I.66). These lesser spirits are de-emphasized in the later forms of the mythology, but they never entirely faded away; as late as 1965 JRRT published a stray Bombadil poem (the third featuring that character, by far the best, and the only one omitted from THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL), "Once Upon A Time", which includes the lintips, elusive little creatures even Bombadil doesn't know much about (cf. the far more menacing mewlips of another, much earlier poem). In the end, all these minor Maiar-like folk seem to have been subsumed into the general category 'fay' (which in the early stages of the legendarium is distinct from fairy, the latter then being a synonym for elf).

But I shd have noticed, and drawn attention to, the appearance of brownie here, for the brownies or brown-men of traditional folk-lore are a kind of hob. And, since we have every reason to believe Tolkien drew on hob-lore when creating his hobbits more than a decade later, it's of interest to find a hint of some kind of similar creature within his mythology, albeit in a much different role, at a much earlier stage. I don't think we can make too much of this, but it does at least open the possibility that when Tolkien sat down in the summer of 1930 and spontaneously invented his hobbits he had already potentially made a place for them within his legendarium long before. And we can't rule out that he thought of hobbits along those earlier lines when he first set out to tell Bilbo's story, however greatly they diverged in the telling.

So, if there's ever a second edition of THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT, I'll need to add a paragraph or so to that effect drawing attention to this passage to what's now JDR Note 1 on page 850 of RETURN TO BAG-END.

--John R.

In Memorium

Melinda's birthday.
April 13th, 1982.
rest in peace.