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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
Feb 19 2025, 7:40am
Post #1 of 4
(4133 views)
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The Music of the Ainur: Melody and Beat
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I was listening to some music and it got me thinking about the Music of the Ainur:
And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.
In the midst of this strife, whereat the halls of Ilúvatar shook and a tremor ran out into the silences yet unmoved, Ilúvatar arose a third time, and his face was terrible to behold. Then he raised up both his hands, and in one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar, the Music ceased.
Melody sections and rhythm sections are considered standard elements of popular music, and I can see both in how the Music of the Ainur turned out. It makes me wonder how a modern listener would have felt about it all. Could Melkor's innovations finally have found appreciation?
The Music of the Ainur in its late stage would have been a song with a slow, sad melody and a loud, hard, combative beat that calls attention to itself and transforms the nature of the music.
Something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jroiVYj7qEU
Or, knowing how sensitive to beat people used to be in the generations even after Tolkien, even a ballad like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EJ_1gPoJR8
Questions:
1. Do you think Tolkien's intention could have been that the interplay of the melody and the rhythm made the music more beautiful than either alone, even if the Valar didn't see it that way?
2. Or did Tolkien just hate music with a beat and think it a vulgar corruption of art?
3. Could there have been a rhythm section that didn't involve evil? Would it all have been fine if Melkor had been content to play the bass line? Or if Melkor rather than overdoing it had kept his forceful trumpets an occasional spice like the hard high notes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5N3JoIh9Jk?
4. Do you think the final melody in opposition to Melkor's could/should have been performed differently to avoid the "immeasurable sorrow" and its consequences for the world?
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 19 2025, 12:37pm
Post #2 of 4
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I think the "standard explanation" of The Music is to imagine that it's creating the world, and because that process was an improvised team effort, we end up with a world that is wonderfully beautiful but sad because it contains the repetition of anger, cruelty, greed, selfishness etc.
If that isn't an interpretation you have happend to have come across, S-G, we could one part of this discussion into those realms. (Or if anyone else wants to.)
But I didn't want to reply that way immediately because quite likely you're proposing a different kind of discussion - The Music as music - what would it sound like? In which case it would be frustrating to be told stuff you already know, by someone who wrongly thinks they are being helpful. 
If you're after:
a song [can it be a melody thus admitting pieces that don't have words?] with a slow, sad melody and a loud, hard, combative beat that calls attention to itself and transforms the nature of the music
...I think there ought to be examples from many eras. How about Beethoven's Symphony 3 ("Eroica") - the second movement is a funeral march that then freaks out.
For example - YouTube of Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, BBC Proms Concert
I'm sure there are other better examples, but that's what sprug to mind.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
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Silvered-glass
Nargothrond
Feb 19 2025, 5:14pm
Post #3 of 4
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I think the "standard explanation" of The Music is to imagine that it's creating the world, and because that process was an improvised team effort, we end up with a world that is wonderfully beautiful but sad because it contains the repetition of anger, cruelty, greed, selfishness etc.
I got the impression that the Ainur weren't thinking about all that when they played. They were just producing music like in their earlier smaller performances and had no idea what Eru had planned for this music.
If you're after: a song [can it be a melody thus admitting pieces that don't have words?] with a slow, sad melody and a loud, hard, combative beat that calls attention to itself and transforms the nature of the music ...I think there ought to be examples from many eras. How about Beethoven's Symphony 3 ("Eroica") - the second movement is a funeral march that then freaks out. For example - YouTube of Daniel Barenboim conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, BBC Proms Concert I'm sure there are other better examples, but that's what sprug to mind.
I listened to the symphony just now and didn't really get the feeling of competing musics fighting against each other, more like a flowing river with different sections. But then, music is a very individual thing. Different people and especially different generations can experience things very differently, which is the main reason I started this thread. One song can sound soft to someone and unbearably harsh to someone else.
I notice however that "Eroica" means "Heroic" while my examples were Kamen Rider theme tunes and so also related to heroism. (Kamen Rider Black with its lone hero in particular is very high on heroism.) I was thinking if Tolkien too had made the connection that a melancholic theme combined with a harsh combative theme could symbolize determinedly fighting on despite adversity and danger - heroism. The total combined theme of Arda would therefore be one of heroism, and Melkor would have been responsible for half of that.
Back when Tolkien first wrote about the Music of the Ainur I'm not sure if he was describing a type of music he could conceivably have heard or if he made it all up, loosely inspired by the new modernist experiments in atonal music. (My expertise in this area is severely lacking.) He may have imagined that music such as he imagined would never appear in real life, at least nor outside of unpopular experiments by unorthodox composers or failed school orchestra practices.
But then, we came to have the modern popular music and its emphasis on the beat...
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noWizardme
Gondolin
Feb 19 2025, 5:47pm
Post #4 of 4
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I was thinking if Tolkien too had made the connection that a melancholic theme combined with a harsh combative theme could symbolize determinedly fighting on despite adversity and danger - heroism. The total combined theme of Arda would therefore be one of heroism, and Melkor would have been responsible for half of that.
What an interesting idea!
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Feb 19 2025, 5:48pm)
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