LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 01 - A Long-Expected Party

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I just realized that there's an additional echo back to the first chapter of the Hobbit - an impromptu orchestra! The Dwarves played together at the Unexpected Party - with quite a result, getting Bilbo to feel with them and join their quest.

At the Long-Expected Party the younger Hobbits played together with the instruments they got in the musical crackers. They got others to dance (and we learn of the Springle-ring), but other than that, nothing really resulted from their music.

But also Bilbo stopped it (at least the part which started impromptu during his Speech) before it had the chance to bloom into anything.

One would say, maybe it is also a parallel to the Unexpected Party like this. Back then, Bilbo's home was hijacked, and strangers just poured into his house and started playing music. Here, half a century later, Bilbo is his own master; the party is not Unexpected but Long-expected, guests arrive but Bilbo invites them first, and when somebody begins to play in the middle of his speech, he is perfectly in control

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Is it the diminished stature of Hobbits vs. Dwarves that makes their music less moving? Is it the smaller size of the instruments? It does seem that music diminishes in Middle-earth, starting off mighty with the Great Music of creation, then dwindling over the ages.

That is nice observation, and sort of sad (but that would fit the overall course of Arda). But yes, Dwarven music would obviously still be more "heroic" and closer to their ancient roots than Hobbit music, even though again the Dwarven music would have roots somewhere in Aulë's domain, while the Hobbit music should ultimately have more in common with the music of Men and therefore also Elves, as other Children of Ilúvatar.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I think they do mind very much. It doesn't matter that they don't really need the book and that they might never read it; it decorates their bookshelf and gives an air of learning and upper-classness and family history and pompousness. How dare that Hugo Bracegirdle not return the familial treasure, the ancient dusty volume passed down from father to son since the times of the Generic Ancestor Number Fifteen? I feel like not returning a book could be considered as stepping on one's honour and thus a great offence.

That's a good remark. True: hobbits may not be interested so much in reading, but they are (at least some of them) quite aware of their possessions.

Although (and again some interesting dynamic here), there is, also in this chapter, a certain counter-evidence present that actually Hobbits were not as greedy or possessive as it sometimes seems (this image of a grumpy Sackville-Baggins who greets visitors by "get off my field!" "hands off my spoons!" "return my books!"); you have the whole hints at underlying non-possessiveness (starting from "natural resilience" to the Ring, I daresay most hobbits would be still slower to succumb than an average Man; the circulation of mathoms not all of which are just old junk, the general spirit of hospitality when you invite your neighbours for a drink even if it's the Old Winyard and so on).