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QUOTES

“To me, the whole point of engaging with music that has been buried by time is to eventually create something new.”

“Often, particularly with very old music, there is so little knowledge left that there are vast spaces to be filled by the imagination. It is a play with possibilities, all of them equally valid, rather than an attempt to arrive at one “correct” version of a tune.”

“As a teenager, I spent several years living in Middle-earth. It is what gave me the idea to learn harp in the first place. When I turned up for my first harp lesson I was severely disappointed: that huge, heavy, mechanized monster had very little to do with the mental image I had formed from reading and re-reading Lord of the Rings. Then I discovered the vast variety of harps that existed during the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque periods, and the fascinating palette of sounds they produce. Now this is what I imagined the peoples of Middle-earth would have played! I was hooked.”

“One lead to discovering what the music of Middle-earth might have sounded like, are the music of those peoples on whose languages Tolkien modelled his invented languages of Middle-earth. Gaelic and Welsh were major influences – and so was Finnish. Estonia’s language and culture is closely related to that of Finland. The Estonian folk tunes I chose also have a very personal signify-cance: I found them in a book on Estonian folk dance which has come down to me on my mother’s side of the family. They mix well with some German dance tunes from J.S. Bach’s time: like childhood memories, they represent my own personal Shire.”

“One thing we do know – people played harp an awful lot in Middle-earth”

“Tolkien’s fictional universe is created through music: it comes into being through the song of the Ainur, the Angel-like beings that take the place of Gods in Tolkien’s world. Among the musical instruments that are mentioned in Tolkien’s writings, the harp takes pride of place. But what did the music sound like that Thorin’s dwarves played in Bilbo’s cave, right at the beginning of The Hobbit? Or the lament that Lady Galadriel sang as the Fellowship was leaving Lothlorien? Or the festive music performed by the harpers of Gondor at Arwen’s and King Elessar’s wedding?”

last updated: 15 August, 2008