The Road Goes Ever On

The Road Goes Ever On is a song cycle by British writer and philologist JRR Tolkien, who was into music by Donald Swann and first published in 1967.

Content

In the preface tells Donald Swann, how it came about that he thought up for some of the poems from the Lord of the Rings melodies. At a meeting ( 1965-1967 ) with Professor Tolkien at the home of his daughter Priscilla turned out that Tolkien was largely satisfied with the implementation. Had backed for the melody, with the Swann Galadriel's song Namárië, but it floated otherwise. Tolkien buzzed him before a Gregorian chant and Swann was watching this on a piano accompaniment. On YouTube is listening to an interpretation of the song by the bass - baritone William Elvin. Elvin has 1-8 songs on the CD, which was issued to the third English edition of the book sung. The preface ends with the words "Lands there are to west of West, Where night is quiet and sleep is rest ."

At the individual songs notes for the instrumentalization with guitar and piano were printed. The sides are decorated by Tolkien Elvish characters. Some texts are both in the same font ( Tengwarschreibweise ) and language ( Quenya for Namárië and Sindarin for A Elbereth Gilthoniel ) published, as well as in the associated translation with notes and background information.

This book is not only intended for those interested in music, because it carries the additional information to better understand the cultures of different mythological creatures in Middle-earth at. It gives an insight into the linguistic backgrounds in Tolkien's poetry with grammatical explanations. Before the release of The Silmarillion, was this book, in addition to the Annexes in the Lord of the Rings the only publicly accessible source of the First Age of Middle-earth.

The songs

Supplements

In some later editions of the following songs have been added: