I was struck by the extra emphasis Tolkien gave to the meaning of the "Creation" in "Music of the Ainur" as opposed to what made it into Silmarillion's "Ainulindale". It's not that he changed his meaning, only how he expressed it.
In Ainilindale, he refers to "a mightly theme" and "a Great Music" - but in BoLT's "Music of the Ainur" he is more clear and explicit that the intent is to write a story which shall be most worth reading and living and bring the greatest glory on it's author.
Quote:
Upon a time Ilúvatar propounded a mighty design of his heart to the Ainur, unfolding a history whose vastness and majesty has never been equalled by aught that he had related before, and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were speechless.
Then said Ilúvatar: “The story that I have laid before you, and that great region of beauty that I have described unto you as the place where all that history might be unfolded and enacted, is related only as it were in outline. I have not filled in all the empty spaces, neither have I recounted to you all the adornments and things of loveliness and delicacy whereof my mind is full.
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For me, part of the beauty of what Tolkien created is that it pictures (as few, if any, other works of Fiction do) how our real world may actually be better (in the end) for the evil that lives in it. It touches on the age-old question "How can evil exist in a world ruled by a good God" while accepting the Catholic (and historical Christian) belief - which Tolkien held to - that God really is both Good, Omnisicient (all knowing), and soveriegn.
Quote:
Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Iluvatar’s self, nor can any alter the music in Iluvatar’s despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the end but aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder: –
for lo! through Melko have terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from my light as the depths of the uttermost dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope.
Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise,
and even shall those beings, who must now dwell among his evil and endure through Melko misery and sorrow, terror and wickedness, declare in the end that it redoundeth only to my greater glory, and doth but make the theme more worth the hearing, Life more worth the living, and the World so much more the wonderful and marvellous, that of all the deeds of Iluvatar it shall be called his mightiest and his loveliest.
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Not everyone will accept or hold to Tolkien's underlying beliefs, and that's ok. What Tolkien does is write a story which contains
application to serious feelings and aches within our our real, primary world while at the same time being a Story capable of being enjoyed on it's own plane even WITHOUT reference to application.
A story which contains application to serious questions within our real world - without requiring anyone to consider those questions (in a word, without being preachy).
I would dare to suggest that the ability to encapsulate both of these (both a great story plus application to deep feelings readers have within their real world) are two of the key hallmarks of all great Classics of literature - whether from Homer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen ... or even Tolkien.
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p.s. A key phrase in this is
declare in the end. Most great stories wouldn't be called "great" if they stopped in the middle - it's the "Dénouement", the resolution or catastrophe (or eucatastrophe) - which provides the reason why the "story" is "good", in spite of (or because of) all the pain and evil experienced by characters within the story.