Favourite soundtrack song?

[The Might]

Of course this isn't really how M-e music would sound, except some parts, but still I think it goes well with the books, because it manages to transport the spirit the books also have, that mystical component.
As Tom Bombadil, the music doesn't come from M-e, but it is of M-e.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by The Might

Of course this isn't really how M-e music would sound, except some parts, but still I think it goes well with the books, because it manages to transport the spirit the books also have, that mystical component.
As Tom Bombadil, the music doesn't come from M-e, but it is of M-e.

Just to make it clear, I personally don't think that the music from the films would be the music that they'd play in Middle-Earth (and it's even worse with the songs that actually are in the books and made it to the movies - I just did not imagine them like that at all! I have my own melody and even rythm and mainly the tempo of them; simply put, they made it all wrong! But I believe most of the people who read the books prior to hearing the songs in any interpretation have imagined the songs to sound some way, no?); but also the music does not go together with the world for me. Not at all, not even as "background" music. When I'm imagining Isengard, Lórien or Mordor, there is not the movie music playing in the background. It would have to be totally different music (if there were to be any).

[Sauron the White]

Having a copy of Poems and Songs from Middle-earth, I can say with utmost confidence that I am overjoyed the film soundtrack did not attempt to sound anything like that so-called authoritative music from the world of JRRT. Tolkien was a wonderful story teller with a tremendous imagination. He could create amazing characters, the most glorious settings, and give you everything you wanted in an epic tale. But music was not his speciality.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I don't know if the Donald Swann settings can be termed "authoritative." They're, well, Donald Swann. Poppy Lieder-lite, just the sort of thing which might entertain an elderly man born in 1892 who even in his youth found ragtime distasteful!

However, the one really good piece in there, the haunting Namarie, is actually Tolkien. Or at least, he rejected Swann's original tune and hummed out the chant-like theme which Swann adopted- so the old Professor was not without his musical side.

Most of the songs Tolkien put in the book (and, it's often forgotten, they're *songs*) are hobbit-songs, and so it seems to me that the ideal settings should be in the style of genuine English folksong- genuine, and English, not the rather bogus 'Celtic' stuff one so often hears. In fact Tolkien himself intended The Stone Troll to be sung to, and himself sang to, the tune of "The Fox Went Out."

[Meriadoc1961]

I wish I knew "The Fox Went Out."

Merry

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Ah, then hearken to the good Professor himself singing Sam's troll-song to that tune...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...arch&plindex=3

Notice BTW that JRRT slips easily into broad Brum instead of his normal Queen's English

[Folwren]

Shucks! I couldn't open it!

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Ah, then hearken to the good Professor himself singing Sam's troll-song to that tune...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...arch&plindex=3

Notice BTW that JRRT slips easily into broad Brum instead of his normal Queen's English

I've just seen this. Nice link, cheers!

The tune is all English and I quite agree, Irish folk music is a very different thing and this is most definitely NOT Celtic! It's reminiscent of Martin Carthy's Rackabello too, which derives from a Hertfordshire tune.

I'm amused because this is that rare thing to me, something Tolkien says (yes, I know, he's singing, before you point that out, pedants...) which I can understand! I've never been able to understand a word he says normally - I don't speak RP/Queens English and I can't usually understand it very well if it's too 'far back', which is what Tolkien is.

Now there was a bit too much 'Celtic' stuff going on in the film soundtrack for my liking, although luckily Howard Shore mostly avoided it - it's in the songs that it happens sadly. My favourite song by a country mile was Gollum's Song (followed by the Billy Boyd one which was also decent), as I found the others a bit cheesy alas, a bit too much like that New Age stuff you hear in hippy shops The non-vocal tracks were splendid though and the soundtrack was one of my favourite things about the films. My personal favourite being Concerning Hobbits which seemed to pick up some of the English folk music phrasing you can hear in Vaughan-Willams's The Lark Ascending.