Tolkien inspires... Chapter One..

Good day sunshines and cloudwalkers! Keepers of the Gate and bookworms, pixies and otherkins! As you probably have guessed by the title of today's article, this is Tolkien based! So many of you have asked me to write anything related to Tolkien and Middle Earth, so this is the day.... "So it begins..."

Our first stop will be on music... music that was inspired one way or another by Tolkien's works, whether it was Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, or others. More articles and insights will follow... on books, movies and art in general. There are so many aspects in our life in which we all mingle in the affairs of Middle Earth and all will be revealed in time... under the Light of Earendil!

So many different music genres have been inspired by Tolkien's works, from classic rock and psychedelic rock from the 60s and the 70s, to metal music of all kinds. Titles, lyrics, sounds, even just a feeling, hidden somewhere in the thoughts of their creators. "One by one" will all fall under our observation and perhaps criticism (some of you are nosey enough-well done-that's the proper way of a researcher). But perhaps I should first explain who Tolkien was and what I'm about to deal with in the following article series. Yes, yes! I know it's weird but truth is... and I'm experiencing it every day, there are so many people who never read a book by Tolkien nor seen any movies. Maybe it's our job to inform them.. of the whispers in Fangorn Forest or the glowing Light of the Silmarills and the forces they apply on everyone who lays eyes on them and why do the leaves of Lorien never idly fall. Remember... fantasy is all around us and on it, all bad things shatter like the shards of Narsil. ;)

Let us check history first....

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of our world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide.

The name “Tolkien” (pron.: Tol-keen; equal stress on both syllables) was believed by the family (including Tolkien himself) to be of German origin; Toll-kühn: foolishly brave, or stupidly clever—hence the pseudonym “Oxymore” which he occasionally used; however, this quite probably was a German rationalisation of an originally Baltic Tolkyn, or Tolkīn. In any case, his great-great grandfather John (Johann) Benjamin Tolkien came to Britain with his brother Daniel from Gdańsk in about 1772 and rapidly became thoroughly Anglicised. Certainly his father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, considered himself nothing if not English. Arthur was a bank clerk, and went to South Africa in the 1890s for better prospects of promotion. There he was joined by his bride, Mabel Suffield, whose family were not only English through and through, but West Midlands since time immemorial. So John Ronald (“Ronald” to family and early friends) was born in Bloemfontein, S.A., on 3 January 1892. His memories of Africa were slight but vivid, including a scary encounter with a large hairy spider, and influenced his later writing to some extent; slight, because on 15 February 1896 his father died, and he, his mother and his younger brother Hilary returned to England—or more particularly, the West Midlands.

Tolkien family life was generally lived on the genteel side of poverty. However, the situation worsened in 1904, when Mabel Tolkien was diagnosed as having diabetes, usually fatal in those pre-insulin days. She died on 14 November of that year leaving the two orphaned boys effectively destitute. At this point Father Francis took over, and made sure of the boys’ material as well as spiritual welfare, although in the short term they were boarded with an unsympathetic aunt-by-marriage, Beatrice Suffield, and then with a Mrs Faulkner.

By this time Ronald was already showing remarkable linguistic gifts. He had mastered the Latin and Greek which was the staple fare of an arts education at that time, and was becoming more than competent in a number of other languages, both modern and ancient, notably Gothic, and later Finnish. He was already busy making up his own languages, purely for fun. He had also made a number of close friends at King Edward’s; in his later years at school they met regularly after hours as the “T. C. B. S.” (Tea Club, Barrovian Society, named after their meeting place at the Barrow Stores) and they continued to correspond closely and exchange and criticise each other’s literary work until 1916.

However, another complication had arisen. Amongst the lodgers at Mrs Faulkner’s boarding house was a young woman called Edith Bratt. When Ronald was 16, and she 19, they struck up a friendship, which gradually deepened. Eventually Father Francis took a hand, and forbade Ronald to see or even correspond with Edith for three years, until he was 21. Ronald stoically obeyed this injunction to the letter. In the summer of 1911, he was invited to join a party on a walking holiday in Switzerland, which may have inspired his descriptions of the Misty Mountains, and of Rivendell. In the autumn of that year he went up to Exeter College, Oxford where he stayed, immersing himself in the Classics, Old English, the Germanic languages (especially Gothic), Welsh and Finnish, until 1913, when he swiftly though not without difficulty picked up the threads of his relationship with Edith. He then obtained a disappointing second class degree in Honour Moderations, the “midway” stage of a 4-year Oxford “Greats” (i.e. Classics) course, although with an “alpha plus” in philology. As a result of this he changed his school from Classics to the more congenial English Language and Literature. One of the poems he discovered in the course of his Old English studies was the Crist of Cynewulf—he was amazed especially by the cryptic couplet:

Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast Ofer middangeard monnum sended

Which translates as:

Hail Earendel brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men.

You should understand that Tolkien is one of the major figures in world literature and his biography details would take more than one article to sum everything up. So I will skip a few things and move forward to the beginning and creation of this world that had occupied our dreams since we first read about it.

Meanwhile Tolkien continued developing his mythology and languages. He told his children stories, some of which he developed into those published posthumously as Mr. Bliss, Roverandom, etc. However, according to his own account, one day when he was engaged in the soul-destroying task of marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, moved by who knows what anarchic daemon, he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit“.

In typical Tolkien fashion, he then decided he needed to find out what a Hobbit was, what sort of a hole it lived in, why it lived in a hole, etc. From this investigation grew a tale that he told to his younger children, and even passed round. In 1936 an incomplete typescript of it came into the hands of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the publishing firm of George Allen and Unwin (merged in 1990 with HarperCollins).

She asked Tolkien to finish it, and presented the complete story to Stanley Unwin, the then Chairman of the firm. He tried it out on his 10-year old son Rayner, who wrote an approving report, and it was published as The Hobbit in 1937. It immediately scored a success, and has not been out of children’s recommended reading lists ever since. It was so successful that Stanley Unwin asked if he had any more similar material available for publication. So... it began!

By this time Tolkien had begun to make his Legendarium into what he believed to be a more presentable state, and as he later noted, hints of it had already made their way into The Hobbit. He was now calling the full account Quenta Silmarillion, or Silmarillion for short. He presented some of his “completed” tales to Unwin, who sent them to his reader. The reader’s reaction was mixed: dislike of the poetry and praise for the prose (the material was the story of Beren and Lúthien) but the overall decision at the time was that these were not commercially publishable. Unwin tactfully relayed this message to Tolkien, but asked him again if he was willing to write a sequel to The Hobbit. Tolkien was disappointed at the apparent failure of The Silmarillion, but agreed to take up the challenge of “The New Hobbit”.

This soon developed into something much more than a children’s story; for the highly complex 16-year history of what became The Lord of the Rings consult the works listed below. Suffice it to say that the now adult Rayner Unwin was deeply involved in the later stages of this opus, dealing magnificently with a dilatory and temperamental author who, at one stage, was offering the whole work to a commercial rival (which rapidly backed off when the scale and nature of the package became apparent). It is thanks to Rayner Unwin’s advocacy that we owe the fact that this book was published at all – Andave laituvalmes! His father’s firm decided to incur the probable loss of £1,000 for the succès d’estime, and publish it under the title of The Lord of the Rings in three parts during 1954 and 1955, with USA rights going to Houghton Mifflin. It soon became apparent that both author and publishers had greatly underestimated the work’s public appeal.

As you already guessed, there's so much more to it... fascinating enough not to continue Tolkien's story and the roads that his fantasy world took over the years, in the next article. But I promised you some music ;)

A world of fiction (is it now?) called Middle Earth, full of magical forests, lakes, rivers, mountains that sometimes come alive. Beautiful creatures, the Elf folk who are made of the Light of the stars. Living stars created by the Gods... the Ainur... who were the first thought of Eru! The always curious race of Men, the peaceful Hobbits, the violent creations of the Dark Lord and his minions... the greedy dwarves who dwell in the dark and deep places of the world, always seeking riches and so much more! A world of epic tales and deeds, mighty battles and ballads of unprecedented and true love! Dragons! Don't forget the dragons!!! All this... and all that came to be from one single thought, whether is was Tolkien's or Eru's, created a huge lore that inspired all kinds (well... almost) of musicians, composers and lyricists!

But of course I will begin with Blind Guardian! This is what you'd expect of me after all! :P

Only those who dwell in rock and metal music would probably know this band. A band I came to know in my teens and love up to this day! Let's see who they are..

Our story begins in Krefeld, Germany (1985) where four young bards – Hansi Kursch, Andre Olbrich, Marcus Dork and Thomen Stauch – have just completed their first work under the name of Lucifer’s Heritage. As though caught under the spell of a premonition, that work was entitled Symphonies of Doom, foreshadowing a grand masterwork to be completed some three decades later by Hansi and Andre – the Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra’s Legacy of the Dark Lands. The opening song ‘Halloween’ would, in time, become ‘Wizard’s Crown’ and feature on the debut album Battalions of Fear. Marcus and Thomen would before long part company with Hansi and Andre – though Thomen would, of course, be soon to return.

A second demo under the name of Lucifer’s Heritage would be put to tape a year later in 1986 – also called Battalions of Fear – in which Hansi and Andre were joined by Christoph Theissen and Hans-Peter Frey. All the songs on the second demo, with the sole exception of Gandalf’s Rebirth (which is now available on the remixed and remastered version), would in due course find their way onto the Bard’s debut album in a rerecorded form. These demos are notable for their musical acuity, in spite of the limited production facilities available to them; listeners today will recognise them as falling within the bounds of a fairly straightforward speed/thrash metal style, quite unlike the elaborate arrangements the Bards are known for today – though there is some indication of things to come amongst several of the high-fantasy themed tracks. Before long, of course, Lucifer’s Heritage would be no more. The Bards, unwilling to succumb to the beckoning evil of Black Metal record sales, cast off their Satanic moniker and – under the inspiration of another wandering troupe of bards, Fate’s Warning, took up the name Blind Guardian instead.

Most of Blind Guardian's albums were well received by fans and critics alike: Somewhere Far Beyond (1992), Imaginations from the Other Side (1995), and Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998), are especially seen as influential works. The music is mostly composed by Kürsch and Olbrich together, and the lyrics, written by Kürsch, are mostly inspired by the fiction of fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan, as well as traditional legends and epics. Over the years a theme has developed which personifies the band members as travelling storytellers, leading fans to refer to the band affectionately as "The Bards".

Blind Guardian's first two albums, Battalions of Fear and Follow the Blind, were more in the style of speed metal than their following works. Beginning with their third album Tales from the Twilight World, Blind Guardian gradually began to write more complicated compositions focusing less on speed. As of their sixth album, Nightfall in Middle Earth, Hansi stopped playing bass to focus on singing. At this point the band began to incorporate large amounts of orchestral arrangements, and utilized the technique of overdubbing, heavily influenced by the English rock band Queen.

Blind Guardian's music features the staccato guitars and double bass drumming characteristic of power metal, as well as the use of overdubs and numerous backing vocals to create a dense sound. This proved significant on all albums after the first two but most particularly on A Night at the Opera.

Another definitive feature of Blind Guardian music is frequent use of folk tunes and instruments, especially in power ballads such as "Lord of the Rings", "The Bard's Song", "A Past and Future Secret", "Skalds and Shadows" and "Curse My Name", among others.

But let us talk more about the albums that have the strongest bonds with Tolkien's works.

Tales from the Twilight world - 1990

While Battalions of Fear and Follow The Blind certainly laid the foundations for what would become Blind Guardian’s signature sound, Tales From The Twilight World builds upon this groundwork substantially. Any pretentions the Bards might have had towards being just another speed/thrash metal band, with some classical and high-fantasy themes, are abandoned. This album is the start of what many would consider to be Blind Guardian’s golden-era, and with it perhaps even the genesis of the power metal style. The album’s cover art marks the beginning of a fruitful working relationship with Andreas Marschall, who would create the iconic cover art for the next three studio albums too. In order to record this seminal album, the Bards constructed their own studio to spend more time working on it, and this time was indeed well spent: we can hear them, for the first time, embracing singalong choruses and rich storytelling verses from track-to-track and incorporating acoustic guitars and synthesized instruments in order to reify their world-building efforts. This album is not yet, however, a full-blown concept album – such as we will see later in the Bard’s tale. Rather, the album’s diverse themes treat of Moorcockian characters, Gandalf’s death at the hands of the Balrog, and subsequent reincarnation, and – supposedly – E.T. (“Goodbye my friend, goodbye!”) The lighter-brandishing melodies of fourth track, Lord of the Rings, stand testament to the maturity of song writing which generally permeates this album. Had the Bards ended their journey at Follow The Blind, one might speculate that Blind Guardian would have been no more than a footnote in the grand heavy metal story: Tales From The Twilight World places them at the genesis of true fist-pumping dragon-riding power metal.

Track list:

1."Traveler in Time" Hansi Kürsch and André Olbrich

2."Welcome to Dying" Kürsch, Olbrich

3."Weird Dreams" (instrumental) Olbrich

4."Lord of the Rings" Kürsch, Marcus Siepen

5."Goodbye My Friend" Kürsch, Olbrich, Thomas "Thomen" Stauch

6."Lost in the Twilight Hall"Kürsch, Olbrich, Siepen,Stauch

7."Tommyknockers" Kürsch, Olbrich

8."Altair 4" Kürsch, Olbrich

9."The Last Candle"

Somewhere far beyond - 1992

Succeeding the success of Tales From The Twilight World is Somewhere Far Beyond, which largely reaffirms the originality and spirit of that breakthrough release. The cover art depicts a circle of time-travelling Bards – which would, in time, earn the band their nickname – assembled around a gyroscopic timepiece, establishing the tone perfectly for the distinctly modern stories which the Bard’s recount on this album: the science-fiction of the Replicant’s story in Blade Runner, a journey through the haunting, surreal world of Frost & Lynch’s Twin Peaks, in addition to the now familiar Tolkein, Moorcock and King inspirations. The album also features several bonus tracks: a cover of Queen’s Spread Your Wings, an escapist’s manifesto, Satan’s Trial By Fire, which tells the story of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bomb attacks as well as an alternative mix of Theatre of Pain from the album itself. This album is particularly notable for its widespread and international critical acclaim, reaching #1 in the Japanese charts. This chart-topping success in the East would beget the Tokyo Tales live album the following year.

Tracking list:

1."Time What Is Time" Hansi Kürsch, André Olbrich

2."Journey Through the Dark" Kürsch, Olbrich

3."Black Chamber" Kürsch

4."Theatre of Pain" Kürsch, Olbrich

5."The Quest for Tanelorn" Kürsch, Olbrich, Marcus Siepen, Kai Hansen

6."Ashes to Ashes" Kürsch, Olbrich

7."The Bard's Song – In the Forest" Kürsch, Olbrich

8."The Bard's Song – The Hobbit" Kürsch, Olbrich

9."The Piper's Calling" (instrumental) Kürsch, Olbrich

10."Somewhere Far Beyond" Kürsch, Olbrich

And here comes the major... the consept album :

Nightfall in Middle- Earth - 1998

Blind Guardian’s conceptual inclinations reach an apex on Nightfall in Middle-Earth; a thoroughbred concept album from start to finish, telling a portion of the tale of Tolkein’s Silmarillion – middle-earth’s descent into the dark-age, preceding the events of The Hobbit. It is worthwhile to mention that the album antedates the Peter Jackson film-series by three whole years – the Bards were not riding in the wake of the Tolkein-wave of the early 2000s, but instead had helped to create it. Indeed, in a 1999 interview, Hansi intimated that – owing largely to the praise which Nightfall in Middle-Earth had received within the wider Tolkein fandom – there was some serious deliberation as to whether Blind Guardian might be involved in soundtracking the films. While this project would not – alas! – come to pass, Nightfall in Middle-Earth perhaps stands alone as a heavy metal concept-album adaption of Tolkein worthy of attention. The instrumentation, and arrangement around a core of scene-setting spoken samples, make this Blind Guardian’s most ambitious venture yet – both musically and thematically. This is the first album to be recorded entirely at Blind Guardian’s own studio, aptly dubbed the Twilight Hall Studios. It would not be remiss to say that Nightfall in Middle-Earth is an essential, if not the essential, Blind Guardian album.

Tracking list:

1."War of Wrath"

2."Into the Storm"

3."Lammoth"

4."Nightfall"

5."The Minstrel"

6."The Curse of Fëanor" (Olbrich, Kürsch, Thomas "Thomen" Stauch and Marcus Siepen

7."Captured"

8."Blood Tears"

9."Mirror Mirror"

10."Face the Truth"

11."Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)"

12."Battle of Sudden Flame"

13."Time Stands Still (at the Iron Hill)"

14."The Dark Elf"

15."Thorn"

16."The Eldar" (Olbrich, Kürsch, Michael Schüren)

17."Nom the Wise"

18."When Sorrow Sang"

19."Out on the Water"

20."The Steadfast"

21."A Dark Passage"

22."Final Chapter (Thus Ends...)"

The ultimate Tolkien-themed album for those who love metal music and not just for those, as it includes tracks purely labelled as soundtracks, or place it more specifically as original score for the book. The voices narrating the story and the characters' voices as well are placed magically into the flow of the album and the story itself. It continues to mesmerizes all audience up to date. One of my personal top 5 albums of all times as well... fyi :P

But you should also check the Tolkien-themed songs in the other albums as well!!!

Keep an eye... as this story hasn't been over yet! I'll come back soon enough with more Tolkien influences on art ;)

J. R. R. Tolkien - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org

J.R.R. Tolkien | Biography, Books, Movies, & Facts

https://www.britannica.com

Biography - The Tolkien Society

https://www.tolkiensociety.org

Blind Guardian - Blind Guardian

https://www.blind-guardian.com