I'm now looking for recordings to 'illustrate', for lack of another word, my lecture. Unfortunately, though the Tolkien Ensemble has completed its LotR project, they have not composed music to the Hobbit songs, as far as I know. I do have the BBC dramatization of The Hobbit, so have heard its take on the music of the Dwarves. Do any of you know of other renditions? Does the animated Hobbit movie show their instruments/have a version of their playing and singing?

Preparing this topic is a very interesting project! As I have time, I'll post some of my discoveries by and by.

If you're talking about the Rankin/Bass animated version, oh, yes, they had at least pieces of a surprising number of songs. I'm not sure Tolkien would've approved of them (some of them make me think of an old, old American TV show "Sing Along with Mitch"), but at least they didn't ignore them entirely. And in at least one case, rather than have all the verses literally sung, they had John Huston recite many of them, which, when one considers that "song" did not always mean "words set to music," it wasn't entirely inappropriate. Most of the songs in the R/B Hobbit at least came from the book (with one notable exception, that I can remember; it's been a LONG time since I saw the thing). One can't say the same for R/B's eminently forgettable attempt at RotK. *shudder*

My attention was drawn to a book which analyzes musical affect in Shore's LotR soundtrack: Projecting Tolkien's Musical Worlds. Those of you who have read and posted here may be interested; I certainly am!

This is just my brain interpreting things as I read them, but with the creation of Middle Earth based on music of the Ainur, I just assumed that the various races had an inbred ability to appreciate, and would make music using any number of musical instruments that suits their fancy.

And I think the most orc-ish song has to be AC/DC's Dirty Deeds. :cool: