"A Speculative History of the Music of Arda", Steven Linden

[Nogrod]

Wow. I for one didn't know we have the author here... Well great! (And added reason to get my hands on the text)

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

As a matter of fact, when it comes to canoncity I'm a Text (rathern than Author or Reader) person, so I am myself a bit uncomfortable with that argument.
...
I confess this argument is not a supremely forceful one; and one could construct a history of music in Middle-earth that is not so firmly based on European music. But taken together with such things as Tolkien's Gregorian chant version of 'Namarie',
his English folk song version of Sam's troll song, and the generally European character of Middle-earth in general, I at least am convinced that its music resembled western music more than it did any other modern tradition.

I think the textual evidence is quite clear with hobbits: looking at the lyrics or the instruments, dancing etc. referred to makes it look like more or less English / Irish / Welsh / Scottish folkmusic.

What I've been thinking just by myself is that the edain (and the hobbits) shared the Western tonality - with the major and minor scales, 7/12-note system etc. - but that other "races" might have something of their own.

I know it is a sham to say that the Haradians would have something like music of the sub-Saharan Africa and the Easterlings might have Far-Eastern music. It may be unimaginative or shallow but might fit also Tolkien's world-view?

So the enigma becomes the music of the elves - and the great prize, the music of the Ainur! The latter could be interpreted in the Pythagorean / Platonic / Hellenistic / Boethian fashion as to be "music of the spheres" not audible to human ear but of which the music we can play and hear is a vibration or reverbation of. I think Tolkien must have been aware of these theories from antiquity as the whole of creation in the Ainulindalë seems to echo that metaphysical understanding of music as the organizing-principle of reality.

But what about the music of the elves? To me it has always been more of a mystical thing... I would hate to think it along the lines of the corpus of the Western "classical music", or the Western tonality.