"Tonality, Atonality and the Ainulindalë", Reuven Naveh

[Formendacil]

I only just got my hands on a copy of Music in Middle-earth--spurred on, perhaps, by a post-Christmas trip to a bookstore that, while it did not include this particular book, reminded me of it, and made me brave my first trip into the Amazon to fetch it. Thanks to a seven or so hours of power outage (since restored) in a snowstorm, I finished the book I was working on before--an august tome about adult fans of LEGO --and made it two chapters into Music.

In reading through this thread, it strikes me as interesting that most of the comments made thus far have addressed the sonata analogy, which I found interesting, but do not have the musical expertise to address with words any deeper than "what he said made sense. to me."

However, no one seems to have made much comment about the topic (to me, more interesting) of Melkor's dissonance and the moral implications that are made by it being subordinated by consonance. Naveh seemed to touch just to the edge of this topic, when he suggested that the reason Melkor was so evil in Middle-earth and yet reconcilable to Eru in the Ainulindalë is that his dissonance was still resolved in the music, but through Free Will and the opportunity to "adorn the blank spaces" in the actual history of Arda. It seems to me that he didn't give quite enough weight in this respect to Eru's unilateral "no" in "no thing may be done in my despite."

However, as I said, that particular moment was a very briefly touched upon part of the essay, within the context of both the musical comparison to the sonata form, and the smaller context of Melkor's dissonance therein.

[Morthoron]

Simply stated, if we view the Ainulindale in sonata form, it does make sense there is no recapitulation -- because this recapitulation will not take place until the end of time, when all the themes are bound together by Eru, and thus the grand movements will all make sense in their finalized form.

[Nogrod]

I don't think I have realised this thread was going on back when it did as it looked totally new to me (I must have missied it back then). But it's a nice coincidence seeing this thread coming back now when I have just been modding a werewolf-game under more or less the same subject as the starting point.

I'm not going into details here about that game as you can check it from here if you wish. But I came there to think of the music of the Ainulindalë and wished to enter a piece of music Melkor would have webbed himself in the deeps of Utumno.

And of course the answer was dissonance.

The funny thing is that I find myself unsatisfied with the solution even if I think that looking at the prof's world it probably was the right idea.

The music I ended up using there is actually Krzysztof Penderecki's "St. Luke Passion" (1966), I used the parts O Crux Ave and In Pulverem Mortis*. But why I am myself dissatisfied with the choice is not because it is sacral music, but because it is really beautiful!

The dilemma of beauty and evil (especially in music) so familiar to the western tradition lurks it's head once more...



On another note.

Originally Posted by Reuven Naveh

The music of the Ainur is clearly supposed to be abstract, celestial music played in the Void and intended for Ilúvatar's ears; thus it certainly does not resemble any music known to humanity today or in any previous era.

Even if Ibrin disagrees, I could at least see how the idea might be backed (as one who has not read the essay yet). Tolkien probably was well educated with the classics and one of them for sure is the idea of celestial music or the "music of the spheres"; this pythagorean-platonic-boethian notion of music as the mathematical foundation of the cosmos (greek word "kosmos" = harmonic order), as the essence of all being. And that music, said the classics, was not to be heard. It was intellectually approachable, but not sensorily.

The musica humana or musica instrumentalis of Boethius, the music we could make or hear, were just pale shadows of the Real Music of the Spheres.

Looking at the Ainulindalë it's easy to see the connection to that classical idea - and it feels quite far-fetched to think someone could have actually heard the first Music of the World of Tolkien - but maybe Eru himself.

Which actually makes my attempt at representing Melkor's music in the game as futile (even if that was more of a idea to have fun than a serious undertaking)... or maybe it's just that: because Melkor's music was not perfect (Music as it is the "truth-beauty-goodness") so therefore it is audible...



* if you wish to listen to them, go to the game thread from the link above and pick posts #3 and #4 - there are links to the pieces.