[Fordim Hedgethistle]

My sense of magic in Middle-Earth is that it is a concept that exists in the attribution rather than in the performance. That is, there are certain phenomena in M-E that to many of the peoples in it are inexplicable or wondrous, and so they call it magic. Like a stone-age hunter suddenly confronted with an airplane or antibiotics, these things seem magical while they are explicable to those who know more about them. The same for magical lands: what if that same stone age hunter were a desert nomad and he suddenly found himself in the arctic, or Amazonia??

The way I like to think about the magical items, moments, places and persons in M-E is through analogy with our modern way of controlling and ordering the world: technology. Elves have a technique that they use in making rope which means that it comes untied when you need it to. This is perfectly sensible and normal to them but unknown to Sam, who calls it 'magic'. In the same manner, Sauron knows how to make the One Ring; his precise technique and motivation are different, but the process is similar -- he has a technique that is unknown to others, with the result that it appears magical.

This works for objects that have beem made in such a fashion that appear magical. When we see spells being cast, I think about it the same way. The analogy I would use here is someone completely ignorant of the internal combustion engine watching a competent mechanic at work. The mechanic goes through a series of very strange actions and rituals that we cannot decipher, moving around parts and laying hands upon things that confoud us, and in the end, the engine comes to life. Magic!

When we then come to use that object -- like Frodo with the Phial -- it responds to us and to our direction (I make the car go where I want it to) but it appears as a magical thing: how is it that this large object is moving from point A to point B simply because I move this wheel and press that pedal??

The difference, obviously, is the sense of wonderment. A phial that glows in the presence of evil is something so alien and new to our experience that the wonderment of it is immediatly perceived as magical. We do not have any idea what kind or technique of art could produce such an effect, so we imagine that there is 'something' behind the phenomenon. Galdariel, however, I am sure understands how it works -- she is the mechanic who could explain the technique whereby the light of the Star is captured in the phial. Of course, like the mechanic who tried to explain the carbeurator (sp?) to me, she might find her audience incapable of understanding, and thus the technique is doomed to appear magical to me forever.

What has this to do with music? To the layperson (that is, someone not trained in music) music has this same nature and effect. I listen to a piece by Mozart and I am transported with wonderment by the effect of the whole. I do not consciously 'get' the combination of notes and their composition; the technique whereby the effect has been achieved is beyond me (and I want it to be) and I am immersed only in the phenomemon. To know the technique is not to lose the 'magic' but to understand it, and to become a magician oneself. Were I to spend a lifetime studying music I could begin to compose pieces of my own, but they would never be as wonderful as Mozart's, making me but a lowly mage to his wizardry.

Magic, like music, is something that may remain beyond the understanding of most individuals, but it is still of this world and within the bounds of human (or Elvish) understanding.