[Troelsfo]

Originally Posted by Galin

I also think the old idea was in place when Tolkien wrote the chapter Treebeard [Orcs were made in mockery of Elves, but made by Morgoth out of stone and 'hatred' rather, not from Elves].

Thank you, Galin (Hello!). One thing that I omitted in the earlier account is the influence of the McDonaldesque goblins of The Hobbit — when he began The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien would at some point have had to face the incongruities between the orcs/goblins of the earlier mythology and the goblins of The Hobbit — no matter how far we stretch things, I cannot see the the early Orcs as neither singing nor innovating (even innovating machines of war and torture). The later view of the Orcs bring them much better into line with the published goblins in The Hobbit.

Originally Posted by Galin

I can't date [precisely] when Tolkien penned Frodo's comments however [from The Land of Shadow IIRC], which seem to represent the major shift in thinking

That statement (“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.”) is in ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’ about which Christopher Tolkien notes that his “father returned to the story of Frodo and Sam more than three years after he had ‘got the hero into such a fix’ (as he said in a letter of November 1944, VIII.218) ‘that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty.’” (Sauron Defeated (HoMe 9), part 1 ch. II, p.18). In their J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond explain, under the entry for 14 August — 14 September 1948, that Tolkien in period used his son Michael's farm in Woodcote as a retreat while Michael and family were on holiday, and that he there

makes two drafts for ‘The Tower of Kirith [later Cirith] Ungol’ (bk. VI, ch. 1 as published). He soon abandons the first, [...]; he makes significant changes and additions in the second, which as he proceeds becomes rough and in places only an outline. He then writes a fair copy, [...], which reaches to the end of the chapter. [...]. At some point he makes a second fair copy manuscript, and places with it the page from the first draft with the drawing of the Tower [...]

Minor details have been cut by me (‘[...]’)
Frodo's statement enters at the earliest in the first fair copy manuscript, denoted D in Christopher Tolkien's explanations in Sauron Defeated.

So all in all we can say within a week or so when precisely Tolkien made that statement: during his stay at Payables Farm in Woodcote, he would continue through to the abandoned epilogue, so I think it is a fair guess that he would have finished drafting ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’ during the first week of his stay.

Originally Posted by Galin

but when Tolkien returned to The Annals of Aman in the early 1950s, as first written the old concept was still in place. Then, and still in this phase of writing, comes the darker tale told in Eressea noted by Pengolodh [Orcs from Elves], but The Lord of the Rings -- the main story -- had already been written by this time.

I had completely forgotten about this in The Annals of Aman, thank you! Christopher Tolkien's comment to §127 of The Annals of Aman is quite lucid despite the additional complications brought about by Tolkien's shifting about of the timing of Morgoth's creation of the Orcs (in the last pre-LotR version of the Quenta Silmarillion, denoted the ‘QS’ in the History of Middle-earth series, Morgoth “brought into being the race of the Orcs” in mockery of the Elves after the Darkening of Valinor and his return to Middle-earth).

Originally Posted by Galin

Tolkien's latest texts, after going over a number of variations when Orcs from Elves didn't seem to work well enough for him [although he still considered this], are about Orcs created from Men, with an adjusted chronology. This is text X, Morgoth's Ring.

Aye — there are three texts on Orcs, VIII through X, and they are very much worth reading, particularly (at least in my opinion) for the philosophical deliberations. This, along with some other contemporary texts — particularly the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, show what Christopher Tolkien means when, in the foreword to The Silmarillion, he writes that in his father's later writings “mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone.” But that's an aside ... well, perhaps it is still tangentially connected, as the basic interest and intention is now completely different: Tolkien is now no longer preoccupied with the creation of mythology, but rather with theology and philosophy, making his mythology “the vehicle and depository of his profoundest reflections.” We are, in other words, trying to use writings to answer one type of question, while Tolkien wrote these things in an attempt to answer some fundamentally different questions, and his answers may well be incommensurable to the questions we are asking.