Eugene Hargrove: The Music of Middle-earth
Gene Hargrove is a philosophy professor at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. He is the founding editor of the journal Environmental Ethics, the director of the Center for Environmental Philosophy, the chair of the UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies, and the author or editor of several books. He is best known to Tolkien fans for his essay Who is Tom Bombadil?
He first became aware of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in 1965 when he purchased the Ace paperback edition (before the publication of the Ballentine version). He came to understand the significance of the books when about a year later he decided to reread them before attending a lecture on trees in Tolkien and Ovid. He then realized that the books could be read over and over again from many different perspectives.
Returning from Germany in the early 1970s, he discovered that Donald Swann had published a book, The Road Goes Ever On, which provided music for seven of the songs in the trilogy. Although he did not like most of Swann's music, it started him thinking about what music in Middle-Earth sounded like. He learned to play the recorder (block flute) and over many years developed songs for most of the songs and poems in the trilogy, which he kept in his head.
In 1986 he hired a music student to help him write down some of the songs. Curiously, the student had great difficulty, because, as it turned out, the music he had composed was pre-modern or modal. The same year Hargrove sent a tape of his music to Rayner Unwin and eventually received a reply that his music was authorized by the Tolkien Estate. In 1990 he bought a Macintosh computer and after discovering that the computer played music, bought a music notation program and began producing sheet music for the songs and poems. In 1991 Hargrove joined BMI as a music publisher (Old Forest Sounds), bought a sequencer, a synthesizer, and a digital audio tape machine, and produced an instrumental demo of his music. The demo tape became the basis for an analog tape that was sold primarily via the web for many years, and which is now available as a two-CD-set.
Instrumental Music for the Songs and Poems in English in the order they appear in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
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CD I: A Musical Journey from the Shire to Rivendell
The First CD that includes the songs from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from the Shire to Rivendell. The CD covers 19 songs and has a duration of 42 minutes, including A Walking Song, The Bath Song, Tom Bombadil's Song, The Riddle of Strider, The Song of Beren and Luthien and many others. |
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CD II: A Musical Journey from Khazad-dum to Gondor
The Second CD that includes the songs from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from Khazad-dum to Gondor. The CD covers 32 songs and has a duration of 46 minutes, including Galadriel's Song, Lament for Boromir, The Long List of the Ents and many others |
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Songbook I: A Musical Journey from Khazad-dum to Gondor
The 128-page Songbook of The Music of Middle-earth volume I: A Musical Journey from the Shire to Rivendell. The Book includes the Chords and Lyriqs so you can actually play and sing the music yourself. The Book also includes detailed explanations of each of the 19 songs and an very interesting essay about Music in Middle-Earth. ISBN: 0-9711270-0-X
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| Our Review |
Try some samples of the Music |
We have reviewed both the CDs and the music book. The amount of work that Eugene has put into writing all the music shows a great love for the books and Middle-earth. As the foreword in the book tells us, it has been a project that took about 30 years to complete! The music on the CD is instrumental and is all played with a synthesizer. The songs themselves are very diverse in tempo, melody and general feeling. They give a very good interpretation of the songs in The Lord of the Rings. Although the songs are very diverse the sound of the synthesizer stays pretty much the same and gives a electronical sound to the songs. The Music Book gives all the lyrics and the music to play all the songs yourself. If you play an instrument this will give the CDs and the Book a whole new dimension as you can play and sing them yourself.
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Contributed by: Eugene C. Hargrove - Link: http://www.oldforestsounds.com
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