The relationship betwen Music/Singing and Magic

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Hm. Maybe the Istari were more into rap, you know, Grandmaster G and Pimp the White battling it with the mike? Maybe that was what happened during the Wizard duel up in Orthanc?

Oh, the horror...!

Actually, some years before rap began (as modern culture thinks of it), I was in a choir that performed what was then called "rhythmic singing," or spoken chorus. Unlike sprechgesang and sprechstimme (which I was exposed to some years later), there was no sustained or modulated pitch used. The words were all spoken, but in very specific meter, and the entire four-part work was performed in the form of a fugue (the piece was titled "Geographical Fugue" by Ernst Toch, and was first performed in 1930, I believe). It was quite peculiar yet interesting, and though I never again performed such a thing, I've heard a few others (probably imitators of Toch), before rap came along. Very unusual, and fun in an odd way. I suspect it's something on this order that I think of when I imagine music in words alone, apart from the sounds of the words themselves.