Track-by-Track: Soundtrack Discussion and Analysis

[Aiwendil]

Encaitare wrote:

Would you care to explain this for a poor confused soul?

Well, il- was at one point a negative prefix, but later on Tolkien seems to have been using al- instead. Of course, it's very difficult to try to take the massive body of Tolkien's linguistic material and try to formulate a single unified version of either Quenya or Sindarin, so differences of opinion are to be expected.

By the way, Aiwendil, I read your essay over on the Tolkien Forum about music in Middle-earth -- wonderful job on that. I really enjoyed reading it.

Thanks. I think perhaps the number of musical terms that I used scares some away, even if I'm not really saying anything too complicated.

Sapphire_Flame wrote:

Another nice bit is the emphasis of the strings at 0:37; a sort of "Hey, look, the title!" piece, but very delicately arranged.

Yes, this is a very nice little moment, and somehow very evocative (I think) of the sense of ancient history being presented.

Again Encaitare:

first, D major. Second (not completely sure about this one) a minor, and third is C major.

This sounds about right to me. I think it's the D - a change that I was thinking of. Not, in fact, distant at all, but the fact that the A is minor makes all the difference (and is accentuated by the fact that the melody climbs here to a C (the note that makes the chord minor)).