The hymn is not translated in The Lord of the Rings, though it is described: "the sweet syllables of the elvish song fell like clear jewels of blended word and melody. 'It is a song to Elbereth', said Bilbo", and at the very end of the chapter there is a hint as to its meaning: "Good night! I'll take a walk, I think, and look at the stars of Elbereth in the garden. Sleep well!"[T 3] A translation appeared much later, in the song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On, and it indeed concerns Elbereth and the stars.[T 1] Readers, then, were not expected to know the song's literal meaning, but they were meant to make something of it: as the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey says, it is clearly something from an unfamiliar language, and it announces that "there is more to Middle-earth than can immediately be communicated".[4] In addition, Tolkien believed, contrary to most of his contemporaries, that the sounds of language gave a specific pleasure that the listener could perceive as beauty; he personally found the sounds of Gothic and Finnish, and to some extent also of Welsh, immediately beautiful. In short, as Shippey writes, Tolkien "believed that untranslated elvish would do a job that English could not".[4] Shippey suggests that readers do take something important from a song in another language, namely the feeling or style that it conveys, even if "it escapes a cerebral focus".[4]
The philologist Helge Fauskanger provides a word-by-word analysis of the hymn. He includes a comparison with Sam Gamgee's exclamation "in a language which he did not know", A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon / sí di-nguruthos! A tiro nin, Fanuilos! He notes that Tolkien translates and briefly comments on it in a letter.[T 5][5]
Musical settings
In 1967, Donald Swann published a musical rendition in the score of his song cycleThe Road Goes Ever On, where it forms the second part of the setting of "I Sit beside the Fire". He and William Elvin recorded it on an LP record, which included a recording of Tolkien reading the prayer. The Road Goes Ever On was republished in 1978, 1993, and 2002,[T 1] and the recording was released as a CD in 1993, but it omitted Tolkien's reading.[6]
The Australian composer Laura Bishop composed her own rendition of the hymn. Beginning with a solo by a soprano it then repeats with an SATB choir.[11]
The Norwegian classical composer Martin Romberg has set the lyrics to music in his work Eldarinwë Liri for girls' choir, which also includes the four other poems Tolkien wrote in Elven languages. The work premiered in 2010 with the Norwegian Girls Choir and Trio Mediæval at the Vestfold International Festival.[12]
References
Primary
^ abcdTolkien & Swann 2002, pp. 29–31 (Swann's sheet music), 72–75 (Tolkien's guide to pronunciation and meaning), CD inside rear cover (recording, sung by William Elvin). The Tengwar is illustrated on the dust jacket.
^Kreeft, Peter, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Rings (2005), p. 75, citing Letters (ed. 1981) no. 213, p. 288, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2005, ISBN9781586170257