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!