All the music of the spheres

Tolkien and the Music of Creation

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

I REMEMBER the frenzy of pleasure once I first heard of The Silmarillion, after which the joys when it was published, in 1977, 4 years after Tolkien’s death. At last, we had the creation story of Middle-earth itself. The opening chapter, “The Music of the Ainur”, was each moving and mysterious. It had never occurred to me to think about creation itself as a type of music. Eru, God himself, also called Iluvatar, declares to the Ainur, the angels, an important musical theme; but he devolves to them, and to their very own creativity, the making of that music — already Tolkien’s vital theme of sub-creation is in play.

So Eru says to them: “Since I actually have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each along with his own thoughts and devices if he’ll. But I’ll sit and hearken and be glad that through you excellent beauty has been wakened into song.”

THE Ainur make an important and delightful music, but even that music isn’t yet the created cosmos, but only its root, its origin; for Eru takes the music and offers it a recent physical expression. He creates the world after which says to the Ainur, “Behold your music!”

We see here the way in which through which God is the primal Creator, the source of all there may be, including our own creativity, but that he makes an area for us to be creative, too, lovingly to expound and develop the themes he has given us to work with.

BUT Tolkien does greater than explore the theme of creation: he also addresses fall and redemption: the issue of evil, and God’s creative answer to it. For Melkor, the very best of the Ainur, the Lucifer of this myth, seeks “to interweave matters of his own imagining, that weren’t in accordance with the theme of Iluvatar, for he sought therein to extend the ability and glory of the part assigned to himself”.

So discord and dissonance are introduced, and their root, as of all evil, is pride. And that is where Tolkien communicates something true and delightful through his myth; for Iluvatar does circuitously interfere, or curtail the free will of his creatures. Rather, he responds creatively to their evil selections: he introduces recent themes that work with and thru the dissonance and produce out of it an excellent greater harmony.

MELKOR’s attempts at disharmony aren’t silenced, but “taken up” by the brand new themes and “woven into its most solemn pattern”. Since that music with its redemptive motifs then becomes Arda, the created world, with its history, we will see this theme and counter-theme worked out within the story of The Lord of the Rings in such a way that even the fallen characters are woven into the redemption.

Gandalf intuited that Gollum still had an element to play, and, regardless that he sought possession of the Ring, he contributed to its destruction and the achievement of the search, stepping in only at the purpose when Frodo could go no further. It is indeed just as Iluvatar says to Melkor: “And thou Melkor shalt see that no theme could also be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument within the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”

I LOVED this creation myth a lot that I wanted that it were true; so you’ll be able to imagine my joy when later in my life, as I returned to my Christian faith, I discovered that that notion of a primal heavenly music was there within the scriptures — “When the morning stars sang together, and all of the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38.7, KJV) — and in Christian tradition, in the thought of the heavenly “music of the spheres” which only our fall prevents us from hearing.

Reflection Re-read one in all the biblical accounts of Creation, either Genesis 1 or Job 38 or each, and take time to reflect on the sheer splendour and majesty of the creation within the midst of which you end up.

Now take heed to a favorite piece of classical music and take a look at to assume what type of a world that music would suggest, if it could possibly be “bodied forth”.

The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, a author and singer-songwriter; and an authority on the Inklings, Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis.

This is an extract from Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten lands with the Inklings, published by Canterbury Press at £12.99 (Church Times Bookshop £10.39); 978-1-78622-690-7.