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Old 02-02-2008, 10:50 AM   #671
Ibrīnišilpathānezel
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Back on the Helcaraxe
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Being an older geezer who's new to this board, I've skimmed through the discussion here -- and it's nice to know that for once, I'm not the oldest one around! There've been a few boards I've belonged to where I was a good twenty years older than the next oldest person -- certainly makes one feel ancient and decripit. I prefer to think of it as well-seasoned and educated, but...

I first read LotR in 1964 at age 11 and loved it immediately. I had tried reading the Hobbit for several years, but just couldn't (if I tell you that my favorite childhood authors were Ray Bradbury and James Thurber, this might explain why. I didn't read most classic children's books until I was long past being a child). I finally read the Hobbit when I was 26, when one of my older brothers (who was responsible for piquing my interest in LotR) gave me the leather-bound copies of both books as a Christmas present. Since then, I've read all the other books -- UT, HoME, you name it, except for the Children of Hurin. When one is trying to deal with clinical depression, that is definitely NOT the best story to be reading!

Anyway, the discussions of music that I saw through the thread also intrigued me. Along with many other creative pursuits, I've been a musician since I was about 8, and some of my earliest efforts at compositions were settings for songs from LotR. All my life, when I read Tolkien's work, I've heard music in my head, and for a long time, other friends and I tried to find works that we felt fit well with various parts of the story (for instance, "Mysterious Mountain" by Alan Hovhaness has always made me think "Rivendell"). Even after I heard other people's musical interpretations of the stories -- Shore, deMeij, David Arkenstone, etc. -- I kept thinking, no, that's not the music I heard. but I never did more than write tunes for some songs, even though I had studied orchestral composition as part of my musical training in college. Then about 6 years ago, I was given a program that allowed me to use my computer as my orchestra, and oh my, did that open the floodgates! Since then, I've written 7 symphonies and 4 suites that are part of the music that's been bottled up in my head all these years. I have some of the pieces posted on one of websites, here. Some of them are missing because I had orginally needed to record them using rather mediocre MIDI instruments, and now have a much larger and vastly better library of sampled instruments at my disposal. The conversion is a long and tedious process (especially when one is hearing impaired and cannot resist the urge to rewrite parts of things), but in time, I hope to have all of them converted and posted for people to enjoy.

When Tolkien made the remark that he hoped to have created something that others would continue to explore with pen and brush and music... oh, how he has done that for me, since over the years, I've done all three! What a joy he has been for so many!
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