Audio

Tuesday 28 October 2014

Commentary on the Symphony: The Beginning of Days Suite

This is the second part of a series of commentaries (or composer’s notes if you will) on my upcoming release “The Silmarillion Symphony.” You may wish to start with part one before reading this post.

The Beginning of Days Suite is the longest of the compositions from the upcoming album. It has three movements and they all illustrate parts of the book from the chapter ”Of the Beginning of Days” and from “Of the Coming of the Elves.”  

For the purpose of brevity, I will only focus on the first movement - The Beginning of Days.  

The chapter “Of the Beginning of Days” deals with the First War of the Valar, where the Valar loyal to Iluvatar struggled with Melkor as they were forming Arda (the earth). In the piece, there is plenty of variety in terms of themes offered. The Valar create and mold the earth, peacefully and gracefully (spoiler: lots of harp involved). Melkor gets jealous, and goes around destroying things, or “marring” as Tolkien puts it. Eventually this erupts into a full scale battle, orchestrated with fighting double bass and low brass themes. 


As with many themes in Tolkien - those on the side of good often win out - but at great cost. In this case, the Valar do indeed succeed in keeping the earth together, but Arda is marred. They are also unable to overcome Melkor. I illustrate this musically by ending the movement by dropping a set time feel as things fall into grief and loss. 

I hope you enjoyed this short excerpt from my thoughts on The Silmarillion Symphony. There is more news on the symphony's pending release. Due to some production restraints, I've had to move the release back a bit. The project is going to mastering no later than November 11th, and hopefully I'll have the hard copies by the 21st.

Be sure to visit www.silmarillionsymphony.com to PRE-ORDER the upcoming album!

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Commentary on the Symphony: Music of the Ainur

One thing I really enjoy is talking about the pieces of music that comprise my symphony. The first piece I composed was "The Music of the Ainur." This is the first piece in the symphony, and indeed the very first chapter in The Silmarillion. 

There are a couple considerations I took while writing the whole of The Silmarillion Symphony. The first - writing thematically, and figuring out what music I hear when I read the book. This is an obvious consideration for composing music based on another art form, so there is no need to explain further. The second is this - the way The Silmarillion is written, in all its descriptive language, has one aspect that absolutely fascinates me - its age. It is written as a history, and the events that take place in the book take place at the very beginning of the Middle Earth legend. So every piece has been carefully composed to keep a very real yet "long ago" feel to it. In point of fact, the first three pieces are composed in times where the First Age had not even begun.

The Music of the Ainur is the very beginning of Tolkien's account of creation. As I was following the book's narrative closely, the way the first part of the symphony sounds is rather nebulous and mystical. This is virtually verbatim what I started with while I was experimenting with different melodic ideas. I found a theme, and off I went composing away.

There is a great deal of chaos in The Music of the Ainur. I highly recommend watching this video before reading on. It helps to explain a bunch of characters I'm about to mention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXxU01IgoxU

In the book, the supreme being is named Eru. He creates everything and declares his musical theme and idea for creation to the Valar. Most of the Valar sing along with what Eru has told them, except for Melkor. He wants his own theme (you can read my blog on Melkor here). He starts making his own musical theme and it causes a ruckus. Musically speaking, this means that composing this piece will draw on at least two themes. So that is what I did. I wrote to mirror the themes of Eru and Melkor fighting one another. There are times where I have composed music to mimic what the book says. For instance, Melkor's theme is said to be "loud, vain and endlessly repeated." So in that instance, the trumpets have been written to be loud and repetitive.

I have more notes to go through about my compositions. They'll be made available after the album is released!

Also, I can confirm there will be hard copies available. They are for pre-order. First 50 get signed and a special gift!


Wednesday 8 October 2014

2 weeks before mixing and...

Thank goodness the editing is almost complete.

It's been fun. I'm finding myself writing continually even during edits. I've actually written two more pieces in the last couple weeks. I'm also trying to figure out how to gig this album and perform it live. Anyone have any thoughts?

Anyhow, the editing is right on time. I can't wait to show you the finished product in just a few weeks. Speaking of which - you can pre-order it today from this blog or our newly updated webpage www.silmarillionsymphony.com. Both hard copies and digital download are available.

Once edits are complete, I'll post some new clips for your enjoyment.

Share this!

P.S. - Music teachers! I have scores that will be complete by the end of the year. Please don't hesitate to contact me about them, and also about getting a teacher's deal on hard copies of the album!

Tuesday 7 October 2014

A Musical Illustration

Greetings friends,

I thought I'd take a little time to speak about the heart of "The Silmarillion Symphony" and what is motivating me on a daily basis as I edit through takes.

I've read the The Silmarillion a number of times since being exposed to it over ten years ago. I originally encountered some of its subject matter reading "The Lay of Leithian" poem (from The Lays of Beleriand in the History of Middle Earth series). I actually began reading it around the time a very dear friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer. Suffice to say, the book has stayed with me, but especially in the time my friend passed away.

As many of your will know, The Silmarillion  is a book that is full of grief, trial and loss. There are victories, albeit small ones. But there is also death and tragedy, and Tolkien never attempts to dodge the issue. So I found comfort in his writing, particularly in The Silmarillion, as many characters lose friends, brothers, parents, sisters etc. I found the writing applicable to my own grief in losing my friend, and in an odd way, I found the book to be almost pastoral. Indeed, grief is reflected in the music I've written as inspired by the book. As the book says about Iluvatar's Third Theme:

"The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came." (The Silmarillion, pg. 16-17)

Writings so descriptive as this passage inspire me as a musician. It's almost as if the words beg for a composer to interpret them in a score. This has been a huge driving force for me. The composing process for The Silmarillion Symphony started with the book in my left hand and with a keyboard in my right. I've come to call this "musical illustrating," as I aimed to paint a picture with music. If you've read The Silmarillion, or even pieces of it, you'll know the imagery is fascinating. It's as though a world has come to life, if only in our imagination. Even our imaginations can have a sort of reality to them, and that reality indeed has a music. 


For The Silmarillion and its imaginative yet tangible world, I believe I've captured its music.