Microphones in Middle-earth...the BBC Lord of the Rings

[Brian Sibley]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I'm sorry I haven't participated much so far - I have the recordings, but the fact that they are cut differently makes it difficult for me to find the right starting and finishing points. As preparation for the Tolkien Seminar has priority at the moment, I'm not taking the time for that complicated selection.

My research for the paper I will be presenting did lead me to a review of the radio production in Brian Rosebury's Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon. Here are a few excerpts for your enjoyment:

"The 13-hour BBC radio production is, of course, fundamentally hampered by its inability to suggest the physical and cultural presence of Middle-earth, other than through inevitably rather generalised sound-effects..."

That statement is less a criticism than a simple analysation of the shortcomings of the audio medium.

If, of course, you accept it as a 'shortcoming' at all. In defence of radio - the closest of all dramatic forms to the oral tradition of storytelling - it might be argued that the absence of visual imagery heightens the listener's ability to create his or her own visuals within the theatre of the mind.

I hope this won't sound too reactionary and oversensitive, but in my experience, the medium of sound is limited only by the imaginative limitations of those who hear it.

Today, we are swamped with Tolkien/Middle-earth imagery: it is interesting that the first readers of Tolkien's story had none other than the Ring/Eye motif on the dust-wrappers, the accompanying maps, the words on the page --- and the pictures in their heads...