The Music of the Valar

I find this to be an incredible bit of writting, and I was wondering how you people picture it. The sequnce is explained in an audible manner, but not a visual one, and I was wondering if you have a way you visualize it.

When i read it i try to focus my mind in the themes and not in the singers. How to visualize it then? Shadows merging with lights creating odd forms which vanish in other forms... when you think you can recognize a form a dark shadow destroys it... That is what i can remember, but i´d had to reread the scene to refresh my memory.

I don't know if I've ever visualized the entire sequence, because in a sense, there is nothing to visualize. Everything takes place in thought until the moment Eru cries "Ea!" Except the part where the Valar see a vision of their song. Then I can imagine the vision, small and remote as if viewed through a Palantir.

I see a blue flame with no source emerge in a great hall, singing into being more lights. I see the "good" side of the theme as a blue flame that burns without consuming, and the "bad" side as a red flame. The grow and diminish with there music, but they are not like flames from a candle, but rather like flame in space, flowing over all like water.

Well, being a musician, who tends to visualize regular music, I think of it as a vast hall filled with the music of the Valar, which appears both audibly and visually, as lights which swell as the music grows, and then turn "sour" as evil enters. Somewhat similar to Tater's visualization, really.

Kind of like "Fantasia"? Abstract visualization of music with shape and color, I mean, not cheesy animated animals running around. I like that idea, but I didn't really imagine anything visual beyond lots of limitless darkness. I also imagined a very intense, full feeling, like a space that is filled with people, but you can only feel, and not see them. The many Ainur are centered around Iluvatar in the middle, and you can feel the power and music emanating from him. You couldn't really do this on film, except perhaps with surround sound, making the audience feel like they are in this space, and then the dissenting Melkor music comes from one side, and you can sort of sense what's happening. It would have to be very powerful music to make you notice all that. Or perhaps they could have lyrics, although I didn't imagine any.

Actually Elanor you hit the topic of this thing right on the nose. I'm working on a screenplay (you'll all get a chance to read it if I ever finish it) and I want it to start with this scene. I had my way of visualizing it, but I didn't know if it made sense for others.

i cannot wait to read it!

Ok, I've started writting it, should I wait to post the whole thing at once or go part by part so I can get critiques on everything I write?

I would like to see what you have so far......

Sounds neat, Tater! I don't have a preference, but it will be great to read whenever you want to post it.

I'll start a thread soon in the Middle Earth Forum (just getting used to my new server, I'm off aol! Wahoo!)

I also love this part of the Sim. Personally, I like the fact that there is nothing tangible to visualize per se. it contributes to the notion that the process of creation is in its earliest stages. At that point, Eru's creations only be conceptualized via musical or auditory representations. Its beautifully written, and I find myself thinking metaphorically as I read it-- in terms of how music can represent so many different things. The themes of musical consonance and dissonance set the stage for the entire unfolding of the Sim and LOTR. Namely, the conflict between good and evil, mortality and immortality. These conflicts become the manifestations of the music. Melkor is born out of dissonance. Too bad the scale didn't stay diatonic, but then again, as others have pointed out, we wouldn't have much of a story.

It seems obvious to me that Tolkien was keenly aware of how important music and musical theory was to ancient peoples, particularly the Greeks. Take for instance Pythagoras, who conceptualized the movents of the planets in terms of musical notes. Medieval monks were forbidden to sing the interval of a tritone (augmented fifth, dissonant interval) because it was evil. The consciousness of the ancients was very aural indeed.

I was very moved by Tolkien's writing on the Music of the Valar. I was even more moved by his writing on the Trees of the Valinor.

Earendil

This is an interesting thread, but the Music was made by ALL the Ainur, not just those few who became the Valar. The section of THE SILMARILLION being discussed is the "Ainulindale", not the "Valalindale".

I envision Iluvatar sitting as a being of pure light surrounded by many smaller lights which sing or somehow produce melody around him, and gradually they begin to move together to become small groups, and then larger groups, and finally and intense of sea of light swirling around him. And the discord of Melkor becames a dimming of the light as the Ainur who follow his disruptions fail to realize their full potential.

That's a good point MM. Very nice description as well.

Note: this might get a little strange.

Now, I first read this thread a few days ago. I had just finished the Sil. and was looking through the forum. The next day, I downloaded the 1812 Overture, and as I was listening to it on my MediaPlayer, I placed two and two together.

I had the MediaPlayer on "Water" ambiance, which is light at the center, and shifting colors around it. To me, those shifting patterns of light and sound make up the Music of the Ainur.

I always thought the sound Melkor added in sounded like that "choir-music" from Space Odyssey 2001.

And has any of you seen Interview with a vampire? I imagined the "third sound" to be like the song we hear in the very beginning. Beautiful.

I couldn't believe it! There's actually a thread on the only part of the Silmarillion I've read!

When I read the Ainulindalë, and especially the creation and all the singing, I felt as though I was experiencing the "Magnificat in D" by Bach all over again. I sang in it, and it was brilliant -- I was soprano, but there were about five parts all moving in different directions, but all completely structured in this marvelous work of music. I thought of each part as like a part in "Magnificat," only greater than the "Magnificat" and everyone together making a magnificent whole. Everyone significant, on their own part, but all following Eru's score. And they didn't need to be in a cathedral: the universe was their cathedral, and they were filling it with sound.

It's hard to explain, but because I have sung in a choir and experienced almost the joy that they must have felt in singing, I identified with the beauty of this piece really well.

I think it would be very difficult to represent the Ainulindale in a way which would evoke these responses in so many people. We each hear our own music.

I think somehow that the music of the Ainur is not "music" as Mortal senses understand it. Did the Valar have mouths and ears at that time? Can you describe "colour" to a person born blind?

It reminds me of an early Isaac Asimov story, where an alien plays an artistic machine which plays on an unknown sense in humans, but the human brain interpreted it as color and music at first.... then all that faded and the sensation experienced couldn't be described in terms of hearing and seeing, simply because it _wasn't_ hearing or seeing or tasting or touching or smelling.... it just was.

The Valar only took on humanoid shape after coming into Ea/Arda, as I recall. As for Iluvatar standing up and raising his hand to halt the Ainur's Music, I interpreted it figuratively.... not literally.

If there are any mystics/saints in Middle-Earth, they might hear some "staves" of the Primeval Music in moments of ecstasy...

Saint Turin? Saint Beren?