Musical instruments in Middle-earth

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Laws of acoustics: since the echoes keep getting louder and louder, something other than Newtonian physics is at work.

Nor would ol' Isaac have an explanation for why Orcs would find the sound painful and terrifying.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I am now working on this topic, preliminary research so far, and trying to structure the information and my thoughts. The lecture has been accepted and, barring obstacles beyond my control, will be held at the Tolkien Seminar in April. Any additional thoughts and references you'd like to contribute are very much welcome!

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I guess I'm the main contributor to my own thread here! My research is turning up interesting tidbits of information that I'll share with you as I find them. As always, your comments and additions are very welcome.

The first fact comes from The History of The Hobbit; in Tolkien's early version of that passage, the Dwarves' instruments were originally somewhat magical in nature. The fiddles and flutes were brought out normally, but

...Bombur produced a drum from nowhere; Bifur and Bofur went into the hall and came back with [their] walking-sticks and turned them into clarinets...

Rateliff also mentions that later in life, when thinking about revising The Hobbit to harmonize with LotR, JRRT noted to himself,

What happened to the musical instruments used by the Dwarves at Bag-end?
Why did they bring them to B-End?

and goes on to say, "Even thirty years later, he was unable to come up with a satisfactory answer."

Actually, I have come up with the answer to the "what happened" - when the ponies were taken by the goblins, it is said:

And that was the last time that they used the ponies, packages, baggages, tools and paraphernalia that they had brought with them.

If nothing else, the instruments would surely be classified under "paraphernalia". Since I have not been able to find any references to the use of musical instruments by goblins/orcs (aside from percussive whip effects - see the animated movie's "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way"! - and similar use of weapons) I assume that the instruments were destroyed, perhaps taken apart for any materials of value that they might have contained.

More to come in the next days - I'm now working my way through pertinent references in Sil, UT, and HoME as well as LotR.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Esty,

I am enjoying your comments and insights immensely. I can't add anything helpful, but please keep posting as you progress!

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

An interesting topic, as I am also a musician and composer.

There are the Ulumuri, the Horns of Ulmo, and the trumpets of Manwe are also mentioned, as well as the bells of Valmar/Valimar. When one considers that, in the authorial presentation, the Silmarillion was presumably written by one or more Elves, then one could presume that in describing things they did not see -- such as the Ainulindale -- they would have attempted to describe it in ways they understood. Since the organ was one of the first instruments I learned to play, I was rather surprised by that particular reference when I first saw it, since it seems rather a modern instrument, compared to harps and flutes and drums and such. But after thinking about it, if Elves could learn to craft things like the silmarilli, an organ would seem rather easy by comparison.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

In the early version of the Ainulindale (given in the Book of Lost Tales, HoME I), Tolkien actually has the Valar playing instruments, including the organ. However, he later changed that into singing that sounded like instruments playing. Though as an instrumentalist I love instrumental music, I can see the logic of his thinking there - after all, if they were singing in the Void, there would be no instruments, as those would have had to be previously created.

Yes, Ibrîniðilpathânezel (definitely a copy-and-paste nick if I ever saw one! Welcome to the Downs!), the organ is anachronistic - it appears that the music, like the whole setting of the story, is intended to be rather medieval in style. I'm not yet sure what to think of that reference. The Dwarves' clarinets are out of historical context too, though one of the essays I read on the internet (linked to by Aiwendil) names their predecessors as the most likely choice of actual instrument.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Call me Ibrin or Ibri, it's a lot easier.

I think I'm going to have to do a bit of research on the historic origins of the organ. It may help shed a bit of light on the reference. My feel about the writing style of the Ainulindale has always been that it was intentionally Biblical in nature. An Elf, having been told or even given a vision of the Great Music, would no doubt have been rather overwhelmed and befuddled -- in existence without Time or physicality, how does one sing? -- and would not have had the proper frame of reference to really comprehend it, so he would have retold the tale using concepts he and others would understand, I think. From what I do recall about the earliest organs, they were little more than reeds sounded by a bellows, and we do know that reed instruments exist in Middle-earth, since two of the thirteen Dwarves played a clarinet. In fact, in that mention alone, we have two different kinds of bowed strings (fiddles and viols, the latter being described as the size of modern cellos), woodwinds (flutes), single reeds (clarinets) and plucked strings (harp). We also know that percussion and brass are attested to elsewhere, though I have to wonder if all the brass is in the simpler, non-valved form (Feanor was a clever fellow, but would he have bothered himself with the invention of valved brass instruments?)