Chris Seeman, Tolkien Music Website

 

Tolkien declared eucatastrophe (the happy ending) to be the hallmark of authentic mythology:

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It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure… it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. (On Fairy-stories, par. 99)

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Considered as a whole, Tolkien's "Great Tales" of the First Age exemplify this dictum: out of sorrow comes unlooked-for hope and, in the end, victory for all that is good, true, and beautiful. But Tolkien understood that the "truth" of the happy ending hinges on its prior recognition of the harsh reality of Evil; to ignore, minimize, or explain away unmerited suffering and humanity's powerlessness to redress it is to empty eucatastrophe of meaning.

The Children of Hurin is Tolkien's attempt to keep faith with the darkness, giving full weight to the combined force of diabolical malice and self-defeating hubris in human experience. As Morgoth announces to Hurin in the story's opening dialogue, "upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair. Wherever they go, evil shall arise. Whenever they speak, their words shall bring ill-counsel. Whatsoever they do shall turn against them. They shall die without hope, cursing both life and death.” (The Children of Hurin, p. 64)

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Capturing this unrelentingly lachrymose plotline in a musical medium would not seem to present insurmountable difficulties. After all, opera is no stranger to tragedy, and The Children of Hurin contains many scenes that readily lend themselves to visual enactment. Yet, more so than its counterparts, this third installment of Paul Corfield Godfrey's Silmarillion cycle exposes the limits of operatic adaptation. Godfrey's creative grappling with those limitations has generated an experience that opens up striking new vistas into the heart of one of Tolkien's most moving tales.

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The basic enemy is time: how to distill the essence of an extremely intricate story driven by complex motives and events into an approximately two-hour performance without sacrificing either mood or narrative coherence? To a degree, this challenge is shared by all four parts of the cycle. But in the case of Feanor, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin, one is dealing with plots that are more amenable to linear condensation: a vendetta, a union of two lovers, the destruction of a city. By contrast, the very nature of Turin's quest “to elude an intangible curse that pursues him through each (very different) phase of his life“ resists abridgement.

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Godfrey conducts the necessary vivisection, omitting all episodes from Turin's life that are not absolutely essential for getting him to Brethil, and reducing the supporting cast to a skeleton crew. (Mablung, for instance, absorbs all of Thingol's essential lines.) What remains is intelligible on its own terms, though there are a few gaps that may mystify someone who is not already familiar with the story. (How did Saeros die? When was Turin captured by Orcs?)

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Lost content is made up for by signature exchanges between the principals and choral forebodings of doom (adapted mainly from the Narn i Chin Hurin and The Grey Annals). Amidst all the compression, Turin's development as a character is sometimes obscured, though by Scene 7 its contours emerge more fully...just in time for him to die! One pleasant surprise is the retention of lines by the key female characters that reveal the inner conflicts that make them such well-rounded characters (Morwen in Scene 1; Finduilas in Scene 4; Nienor in Scene 6).

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Members of the Welsh National Opera have rendered yeoman service with their stellar vocal talents in bringing the libretto to life. Lawrence Cole (bass) delivers yet another chilling portrayal of Morgoth in the opening scene, setting the tone for what follows. Simon Crosby Buttle (tenor) and Angharad Morgan (soprano) shoulder the burdens of the titular children Turin and Nienor. Given their recognisability from Godfrey's previous Silmarillion recordings (Morgan voiced Luthien in Beren and Luthien, Buttle voiced Tuor in The Fall of Gondolin), the present recording owes much of its atmosphere to these singers' versatility, switching from the portrayal of nigh invulnerable heroes to all-too-vulnerable victims.

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Of the many fine performances that inhabit this recording, the one that impacted me the most was Helen Greenaway's portrayal of Morwen, Hurin's stoic wife who sends their son into exile (Scene 1), accompanies their daughter in search of him (Scene 6) and reunites with her husband just before her death (Epilogue). Her depiction is quite essential to the opera's closing words ("She was not conquered…) as they are the only victory Tolkien allows to mitigate the family's otherwise wholesale descent into darkness. Greenaway's interpretation of Morwen's quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) desperation, coupled with her emotional emptiness in the Epilogue, poignantly conveys the true devastation of Morgoth's malice.

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Another particularly effective gem is the synchronous duet sung by Buttle and Morgan (representing the inner thoughts of each character), which concentrates into a few brief lines the awakening and growth of Turin and Nienor's love for each other over a period of time:

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NIENOR: (There lies a shadow on this man, and I am afraid. But he has escaped from it, even as I. And is he not worthy of love?)

TURIN: (From the green mound she came, the wraith of a slain maiden on the grave of Finduilas. Is that a sign, and how shall I read it?)...Time passes. We have waited, and now I will wait no longer. I will go back now to war in the wild, or I will wed you, and go never to war again, save to defend you if some evil assails our home.
UNSEEN VOICES: She takes him with joy; and spring turns toward summer.

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Although this does not strictly pertain to the recording I am reviewing, I draw attention to the full libretto (available on Godfrey’s website) because the staging instructions it includes illustrate another way in which the composer has capitalised on the visual-performative potential of the operatic medium to enhance the viewer's experience. The titular Hurin plays no active role in the story while his children are alive; he is a spectator of their tragedy, confined to an enchanted bleacher seat in Angband. We the readers know this, but the narrator never pauses the story to show us Hurin's reactions to events as they unfold "in real time." Having the drama played out by real actors on a stage enables Godfrey to transcend this limitation of the written word. At each "dyscatastrophic" turn of the story, the actor playing Hurin becomes visible to the audience, elevated on a pillar above the stage

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Scene 1: At once total darkness engulfs the door where Morwen still stands. Turin remains unmoving at the front of the stage; his father watches motionlessly from his raised pillar far above.

Scene 3: Turin stands, with the sword Anglachel in his hands, looking down at the body of Beleg while the storm and lightning crash and flash upon the scene. The face of Turin suddenly lights up with recognition and horror. The storm reaches its climax; Gwindor turns away and crouches down with his hands over his eyes. Hurin on his pillar reaches out his hands towards his stricken son, and again remains motionless. Gwindor slowly picks up the sword Anglachel, placing it in Turin’s hand; and leads him slowly out. Hurin, on his pillar, allows his arms to drop once more loosely to his side. The lights fade and the Curtain falls.

Scene 5: [GLAURUNG] If thou wilt be slain, I will slay thee gladly. But small help will that be to Nienor or Morwen. No heed didst thou give to the cries of the elf-woman. Wilt thou deny also the bond of thy blood? Glad shall thy father be to learn that he hath such a son; as learn he shall.  Until this moment Hurin has been again motionless upon his pillar; now, as before, he raises his hand as if in supplication towards his son. Turin, as if bereft of his own will, turns abruptly away and rushes across the bridge.

Scene 6: For a moment, Nienor remains as though transfixed. Then she turns, her face and mind a blank expression of despair, and stumbles running back across the bridge and towards the river. Hurin on his pillar sinks down in despair as the Curtain falls.

Scene 7: When the curtain rises the scene is largely covered with green-leaved trees: to the right of the stage these completely shroud one of the standing stones but to the left the other stone is still to be seen, standing alone and overlooking a deep river gorge which lies towards the back of the stage. Hurin still remains on his pillar; but now he lies prostrate, clutching at the sides of the stone, and his face is shrouded and invisible. It is dawn, and the day is slowly breaking. Turin is seen lying exhausted beneath the standing stone by the edge of the gorge. Dorlas appears through the woods leading a number of men; they stop in amazement at the sight of Turin, then Dorlas comes across and gently rouses him.
  Scene 9: [TURIN] I am blind, blind, groping since birth in the dark mist of Morgoth! Go back to Doriath, and may winter shrivel it! This only was wanting. Now comes the night! Immediate darkness covers the scene. A cold light illuminates the very front of the stage; in it Turin stands alone, holding up his sword. Hurin on his pillar has risen and stands looking tensely towards his son.

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In a very real sense, then, Hurin's mute presence supplies a unifying thread to the narrative. His embodied reactions serve as a kind of omniscient commentary on events. It is with him that the audience is encouraged to identify, as he and they share a perspective his children lack. A brilliantly constructed irony.

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In his notes, Godfrey explains that The Children of Hurin was historically the first of the four Silmarillion operas he composed, and that it was initially conceived as a free-standing work (before he thought of anthologising it as part of a cycle). Inadvertently, though, elements of The Children of Hurin as originally written link it with its neighbors. In terms of the present recording, there is Laurence Cole's performance of Morgoth. (He also voices Morgoth in Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin and, I presume, Feanor.) As Morgoth is the only character in this opera who also appears in the others, his colloquy with Hurin (Scene 1) establishes both continuity and contrast with the more "eucatastrophic" Beren and Luthien that precedes it.

A more substantial link with Beren and Luthien is Godfrey's use of poetic lines from The Lay of Leithian for tone-setting choral interludes. The first, introducing Scene 8 (Nienor's naked flight through the woods), excerpts lines from Sauron's song-duel with Felagund ("Around the gloom gathers…), emphasising despair. Conversely, to accent the hope ignited by the Blacksword in Brethil, the interlude to Scene 9 reprises lines from Beren's song of parting ("Though all to ruin fell the world…yet were its making good, for this"). This reminds the listener that the tragedy of Turin and Nienor, dark as it is, has become tributary to the larger cycle.

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We eagerly await the recording of the remaining opera (Feanor) so that all four may be enjoyed together in sequence.

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Brian Wilson, Music Web

 

First an acknowledgment: Paul Corfield Godfrey (hereafter PCG) is a fellow MusicWeb reviewer, though we have never met. A further acknowledgment: I am something of a Tolkien ‘nut’, having had the privilege of being lectured by the Great Man when he was brought out of retirement during my second year at Oxford, and by his son Christopher on Old English language and poetry in my first year. This new recording is dedicated, among others, to Christopher, who did so much to edit his father's works.

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Some time ago I reviewed two earlier Tolkien-inspired pieces: Akallabêth and other works and  The Fall of Gondolin. My review of The Fall of Gondolin was meant to represent my interim thoughts but, in the event, I never got down to writing about it in more detail – nor did I ever finish Christopher Tolkien’s edition of the book of that name: it’s still on my ‘to do’ pile, along with all the other things I never completed, such as learning Sanskrit or completing an MPhil. The Recommended status stands for my appreciation of the music and the performance, as it does also for this instalment.  Those wishing to avoid a rambling journey through Old English and Old Norse poetry should take that Recommended award at face value and jump to the end of the review.

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This is one of two recordings which I have recently been invited to review on the basis of an earlier interest in a particular repertoire. A few days before receiving The Children of Húrin, I was sent a very different album, Tudor composer Nicholas Ludford’s Missa Sabato, performed by La Quintina on Paraty (220191). I’m very pleased that I said ‘yes’ in both cases; my very positive review of the Ludford, another Recommended recording, should be online about the time that you read this.

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Like The Fall of Gondolin, the new recording uses real singers, drawn from Welsh National Opera, and a virtual orchestra. As before, the virtual orchestra is completely convincing. If we can have recordings of virtual Hauptwerk organs, as on all but the latest of Divine Art’s series of recordings of the music of Carson Cooman, why not of a full orchestra? I’m not sure how it works in either case, but I don’t need to know. (Presumably the organist sits at a ‘real’ set of keyboards and pedals and selects the registration digitally.)

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If anyone was born to set the works of Tolkien to music, it would have been Wagner, for whom the world of Germanic mythology was as inspiring as it was to Tolkien father and son. So deeply was Norse mythology engrained in Tolkien that he took the names of the dwarves in The Hobbit directly from the Vøluspá.  The difference being that, whereas he could read the Norse sagas and the Poetic Edda in the original, Wagner had to rely on a translation of the Vølsungasaga, which he skilfully interwove with the Middle High German Nibelungenlied.

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Unfortunately, Wagner is not around any longer, so the task falls to PCG, whose translation of The Children of Húrin into a two-hour music drama is also a work of considerable skill. As well as being based on the material which Christopher Tolkien used for the book of the same name, the work ends with the return of Húrin from his pinnacle of suffering, an episode taken from The Wanderings of Húrin. It’s taken half a millennium to appreciate the music of Ludford on that other recording; I hope and trust that PCG doesn’t have to wait that long. One day, maybe, his work will be produced on stage with a real orchestra, which is certainly not meant to play down the value of this recording; until then, these CDs will serve very well.

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Inevitably, there are shades of the Ring cycle in the mix, as in the power of Glaurung the dragon to exercise a paralysing terror similar to that of Fafnir until he encounters the man who knows no fear, Siegfried.  The notes refer to Tolkien’s interest in the Finnish Kalevala for the unwitting incest between brother and sister, and the music briefly quotes Sibelius’ Kullervo, but Wagner also provides an analogue in the liaison of Siegmund and Sieglinde in Die Walküre.

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Without suggesting overt influence from Sibelius, other than the acknowledged quotation, or Wagner, The Children of Húrin at its best deserves comparison with both composers in terms of the power of the music. In fact, in an interview on his website, PCG plays down any parallels with Wagner, as Tolkien himself did in saying that the only comparison between the two Rings was that both were round. I could add that both were objects of beauty which, through human greed and lust for power, brought untold misery.  Such considerations aside, PCG manages to achieve a genuinely epic style without detaining us for anything like the span of a Wagner opera.

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Nor does he believe that the more ethereal moments in his music – of which there are plenty – owe anything to the influence of Hildegard of Bingen, whose music has become so familiar following The Gothic Voices’ rediscovery of it on Hyperion.  Again, though there may be no influence, it’s not amiss to compare the two in terms of emotional content; as in The Fall of Gondolin, the music here is often hauntingly beautiful. And PCG does admit to the influence of Vaughan Williams, which I hear in all his music, though sifted through his own style.  I also hear the influence of Holst.

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It may be less popular than it was to look for archetypes but, as an inveterate Jungian, I can’t help seeing them in much of this work. We begin with the evil Morgoth who wields power unjustly. There are many parallels: both Wotan/Odin and Zeus/Jupiter, though powerful beings, are both capricious and subject to Fate.  If one phrase sums up the Germanic view of things, it occurs in the poem The Wanderer: Wyrd bið ful aræd - fate is wholly inexorable.  If it is your fate to be cursed by an evil power, as Húrin is by Morgoth at the outset, there’s little that you can do about it.  And if a dragon makes you forget who you are and you commit incest with your brother, as Niënor does, that’s wyrd at work, too.

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Having been felled by Morgoth’s curse, Húrin ends the Prologue transfixed on a high place, like Prometheus bound to his rock or the valkyrie Sigrdrifa/Brunhilde surrounded by fire on her peak. I’ve already mentioned the brother/sister incest theme and the best myths often involve dragons; Glaurung was the father of the fire-drakes of Angband. It’s remarkable that a creature that doesn’t exist should feature in unconnected cultures. Germanic mythology was, of course replete with dragons; even heroes like Beowulf were not immune to them, but the simple hobbit Bilbo was able to find the flaw in the armour of Smaug.  Even after the restoration which follows the Downfall of the gods, the dragon Nidhogg flies over the plain, carrying corpses: Þar kemr inn dimmi dreki fljúgandi, / naðr fránn neðan frá Niðafjöllum; / berr sér í fjöðrum — flýgr völl yfir — /Niðhöggr nái. [Vøluspá 66]  Like Beowulf, deserted before the dragon's lair by all but one of his retainers, so Dorlas deserts Túrin before he and Glaurung destroy each other.

The dragon Glaurung is despatched by being stabbed from below. PCG's version, where the dragon is depicted symbolically by a mask, is less specific about this than the book but, like Smaug his vulnerable spot is underneath, and Túrin despatches him like Sigurð in Fafnismál, in the Edda. Unlike Sigurð, however, the hero doesn’t lurk ignominiously in a ditch until the dragon passes over him, but does the deed valorously, like Wagner’s Siegfried.

Tolkien’s work in general and The Children of Húrin in particular is permeated with the sense of loss which underlies Old English and Norse poetry. Elsewhere he illustrates ‘the sadness of Mortal Man’:

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Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? ...

They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.

Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning? [The Two Towers, Chapter 6]

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The lines, an adaptation of part of the Old English poem The Wanderer [Hwær cwom mearg hwær cwom mago?] apply well to the events of The Children of Húrin, where even well-meaning action occasions death and loss. Equally apt are later lines from the same poem:

 

Eall is earfoðlic eorþan rice;

onwendeð wyrda gesceaft weoruld under heofonum.

Her bið feoh læne. Her bið freond læne.

Her bið mon læne. Her bið mæg læne.

Eal þis eorþan gesteal idel weorþeð .

[All is suffering in the earthly realm; / the action of fate governs the world under the heavens. / Here fortune is fleeting. Here friends are fleeting. / Here man is fleeting. Here maiden is fleeting / All this earthly abode becomes worthless.]

 

Where this mood permeates the action, PCG’s music reflects it perfectly. But even the deepest Germanic gloom leads to new hope. After the downfall of the gods (Ragnarøk, Götterdämmerung), in the Edda, the prophetess foresees ‘coming up a second time / Earth from the ocean, eternally green.’ [Sér hon upp koma öðru sinni / jörð ór œgi iðjagrœna; Vøluspá, 59]. So, at the end of The Children of Húrin, PCG interpolates a moving reunion scene in which Húrin returns from his captivity in Angband to the tomb of Túrin, where Morwen is dying. So CD2 opens, with the Prelude to Scene 7, music worthy of mention in the same sentence as that of Sibelius, and closes with music of loss shot through with hope and tenderness. The detailed notes aptly refer to gentle benediction and an unravelling of the web of myth through which the tragic history has been viewed. Húrin’s final words are significant ‘She was not conquered’. It’s a very different ending from that of Götterdämmerung, but it’s worthy of mention in the same sentence – and there’s not much that is, in my book.

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Christopher Tolkien was an excellent lecturer. His Friday lectures on poetry, always delivered wearing a bow tie, were so interesting that some friends and I spent more than usual on lunch that day, discussing the topic of the lecture. One Friday, going home for the weekend, I was so inspired by his account of Njal’s Saga that I risked missing the train to drop off via Blackwells to buy the Penguin translation. I caught the train by a whisker, but, head full of Norse literature, forgot that I was still wearing my gown until people started giving me odd looks as I changed trains in Birmingham.

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His editions of his father’s work, unfortunately, don’t for me quite match the charisma of those lectures. They read a little too much like scholarly editions of medieval texts, often with a confusing wealth of variants, as if he were comparing the slightly varied accounts of Sigurð’s/Siegfried’s slaying of the dragon and his encounter with Sigrdrifa/Brunhilde in different versions. It’s very much to the credit of PCG’s versions that they hang together musically and make narrative sense. The notes point out that the music was composed well before Christopher Tolkien’s final edition of the story in 2007, and is independent of it.

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The advantage of a virtual orchestra is that it plays exactly what it’s programmed to play, with no fluffs. The singers, however, provide an element of potential human fallibility – potential but not actual in the case of this recording. Indeed, almost all of the singers are carried over from the fine team who recorded The Fall of Gondolin. All give good account of themselves, despite the music being seriously demanding at times.

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The recording is good, sound effects included, and the notes helpful, though I strongly recommend also following the link to the website, where you will find more detail, a libretto and musical examples.

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I once had a colleague who thought that her students deserved better grades for trying hard.  I'm sure that composing so much music on Tolkienian and other themes is thoroughly deserving, but my award of Recommended status, as for The Fall of Gondolin, is certainly not for that reason alone, or because this is music by a colleague. I apologise for taking a ramble though Old English and Norse poetry, but I do urge readers to make the project worthwhile by buying the CD or the download. The discs are available at mid-price, around £14; the download is less expensive, around £10 in lossless format and comes with the pdf booklet. There is even a 24-bit download.  If anything, I was even more impressed by this than by Godfrey’s other Tolkien-based works.

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Mike Parr, Music Web

 

Paul Corfield Godfrey continues with his epic compositions of Tolkien’s Silmarillion with this recent CD release of The Children of Húrin. As in my previous review of Beren and Lúthien, I find it difficult to navigate the story of these works as I am not a Tolkien aficionado and I am experiencing them purely from the standpoint of a musical entertainment; and there is plenty of it to experience.

The Children of Húrin should seem to be a culmination of the work that Mr Godfrey has done on this series, although I note from the final page of the booklet that there are at least three more CD sets forthcoming that will look at other works by the celebrated author. It appears that for this composer Tolkien is a source of limitless inspiration for his muse. Immediately on placing the first disc into my player an impressive-sounding prelude launched forth from my speakers. In the booklet Godfrey speaks about Jean Sibelius and in particular his Kullervo Symphony as a model for what he was trying to achieve. I am also able to detect influences from Arnold Schoenberg’s early masterpiece Gurrelieder, Karol Syzmanowski’s King Roger and even some of Bohuslav Martinů. Once or twice I felt the influence of Pietro Mascagni peeking out at me in the score. These are all exalted company in which to find comparison, and I really applaud Mr Godfrey for the breadth of his achievement and the quality of his writing and facility in orchestration.

For the Beren and Lúthien release, my largest frustration was being unable to make out the words that were being sung by the soloists and the choir. I can happily report that that was not the case on this set perhaps because a larger share of the music goes to the soloists rather than the choir in this work. However, being able to understand the text more did not mean that I had any better grasp of the plot. If I have one criticism of the work, it is that I think that Mr Godfrey may be trying to include too much of Tolkien’s literature in his work at the expense of a clear and understandable narrative. Even so, I found much to enjoy in this set and I look forward to the day that this work will be heard with a real orchestra and full chorus when his achievement will make its full effect. On this release the soloists are never less than reliable and often they seem truly engaged in what they are doing.

 

For myself, the digitally sampled orchestra remains a barrier to full enjoyment but it does what it sets out to do, which is to get this music out in the world to be experienced in the hope of one day achieving its first live concert.

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                                             Fëanor (2022)

 

Chris Seeman, Tolkien Music Website

  

With the release of Fëanor, South Wales-based Volante Opera Productions has completed its demo recordings of Paul Corfield Godfrey’s four-part Silmarillion cycle. (A fifth installment, The War of Wrath, has recently been announced and is currently in production.) Beginning in 2018 with The Fall of Gondolin (Part Four), and continuing with Beren and Lúthien (Part Two) in 2019 and The Children of Húrin (Part Three) in 2020, members of the Welsh National Opera have helped bring to fruition the most ambitious musical undertaking ever inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology.

 

The Silmarillion was Tolkien’s life’s work. Evolving out of and alongside his invented languages in the years immediately preceding the Great War, Tolkien’s experience of the horrors of that conflict catalyzed his vision of an imagined past in which tragedy and heroism adorn an epic struggle between light and darkness. At the heart of this struggle are the Silmarils, the three great jewels forged by Fëanor, the renowned Elven craftsman. The Silmarils house the last light of the primordial Trees that lit the world before they were wantonly destroyed by Melkor, the legendarium’s diabolus. After murdering Fëanor’s father, Melkor seizes the Silmarils and absconds with them to Middle-earth, triggering a mass exodus of Elves bent on revenge and the jewels’ recovery.

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That is the backstory in a nutshell. But as anyone who has read Tolkien knows, it barely scratches the surface; therein lies the principal challenge of condensing a vast mythological tapestry into a two-hour operatic prelude. Yet the composer could scarcely have evaded the challenge, as the ultimate coherence of its sequels depends upon it. Even on this score, however, Fëanor presents unique obstacles to dramatisation. Unlike its counterparts, which, though equally intricate, are confined to the life of a single protagonist or pair of protagonists, Fëanor’s own backstory quite literally spans eons, stretching back to the creation of the cosmos itself and to the demiurgic rivalry it ignites between Melkor and his peers. "Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play,” Tolkien once wrote[1], and unfortunately for Godfrey, trees are the epicentre of this drama.

 

Godfrey mitigates this problem by relying on choral exposition to narrate the story’s un-performable moments: “The chorus thus assumes the role of the teller of the tales, filling both a functional and a dramatic role. Against this background the soloists assume the dramatic function.”[2] But in contrast to Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, and The Fall of Gondolin, the choral component of Fëanor is the sole voice heard in its first triptych (encompassing nearly half the total running time of the opera). While this in itself will not hinder the listener’s enjoyment of the recording, Godfrey acknowledges the challenges it would pose for a live audience: "Although the text of Fëanor gives full stage directions as if for a fully staged performance, it is perhaps hard to see how some passages – especially the chorally based First Triptych – could ever be satisfactorily presented in the theatre. As such the work, like the other ‘Epic Scenes’, can perhaps be viewed as a sort of secular cantata which could be given in a semi-staged performance but in other places allowing the music to take centre stage, as in the formal choral descriptions of place and action, or through the use of filmed projections for the acts of cosmic creation. It may indeed best be encountered through the medium of sound recording, where listeners can mentally supply their own visual images to counterpoint the aural effect. Such a recording as the one here, which allows the detailed interweaving of choirs and soloists to be fully appreciated, would inevitably be very difficult to realise in the context of live performance."[3]

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In addition to grappling with these technical constraints, the composer has had to pare away many of the people, places, and things that inhabit his source material in order to avoid inundating the uninitiated with a forest of names – a measure Godfrey also had to apply to Parts Two and Three of the cycle.[4] While these reductions may occasionally irk the Tolkien savant, such as Godfrey’s substitution of Elbereth for Yavanna as creatrix of the Trees, or Manwë (the anonymous “Elder King”) stealing Tulkas’ lines, they serve a necessary strategic purpose: of laser-focusing the audience’s attention on the opera’s titular protagonist.

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The shift from exposition to action is sudden and arresting. Immediately on learning of Melkor’s clandestine efforts to sow discord among the Elves of Valinor, we are catapulted into Fëanor’s verbal clash with his half-brother, Fingolfin, whom he sees as a rival for the love of their father, Finwë. Tenor Simon Crosby Buttle delivers a masterful voicing of Fëanor, perfectly capturing his fiery persona with sharp, combative lines, which he soon thereafter trains on Melkor himself with devastating intensity. For his part, bass Laurence Cole, who voices Melkor throughout all four operas, takes full aural advantage of Part One to depict his character’s transformation from a feigned sympathiser to Morgoth, the Black Enemy of the World.

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Fëanor’s speech in Tirion is the opera’s highlight. Arguably one of the finest specimens of Tolkienian wordcraft, this fateful oration and the oath it precipitates are the hinge of the entire Silmarillion. Here Buttle adds layers of rhetorical agility that not even Christopher Tolkien was able to convey in his famous Caedmon recording of this passage, alternating between soft, mellifluous vulnerability and indomitable, hubristic resolve. It is the magnetism of this speech that renders the Noldor’s dogged, doomed allegiance to Fëanor’s cause credible.

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Equally riveting is the oath sworn by Fëanor and his sons, which transfers the role of the unseen chorus to characters within the story. On his choice of wording – Tolkien left us many iterations of it – Godfrey comments: "the first version of all, written in about 1920 as part of the incomplete alliterative poem The Flight of the Noldoli, seemed to me to be one of the best of all, with a primitive rhythm and verve which many of the later redraftings seem to lose.  It also, because of its peculiar metre and style, has a distinctive quality which clearly marks it out and differentiates it from the surrounding text as a formula, a form of words which is spoken as a quasi-religious rite, and not part of normal speech."[5] This is an excellent example of how Godfrey has used the pluriformity of the received corpus of the legendarium to creative advantage, a compositional tactic he has also put to good effect in Part Four.[6]

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The Fëanorian tour de force at Tirion is matched by veteran Silmarillion bass and Volante founder, Julian Boyce, who declaims Mandos’ Prophecy of the North with godlike immutability. This, in turn, sets up a dialogue in absentia between Fëanor, Manwë and Mandos (conjoined from a later scene in the published Silmarillion) on the coexistence of nobility and evil in the deeds destined to unfold in the rest of the cycle.

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The only missing element that generates notable asymmetry between Fëanor and its sequels is its relative dearth of female soloists – the more conspicuous because of the abundance of female characters within the source material. Although key figures like Miriel are spoken about, they receive no speaking parts themselves. Only Elbereth-qua-Yavanna (soprano Emma Mary Llewellyn) and Ungoliant (voiced simultaneously by a chorus of female sopranos and altos) get a few lines. This imbalance is compensated for somewhat by the prominence of female voices within the ubiquitous chorus. One might also say that gender complementarity is achieved within the cycle as a whole, since all three sequel-operas feature female protagonists: Lúthien, Niënor, Idril.

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From the initial development of The Children of Húrin as a stand-alone work in 1982 to the completed original cycle nearly half a century later, Epic Scenes from The Silmarillion has been a long time coming. It has been well worth the wait. All that is lacking is a live performance of the full cycle supported by a live orchestra. The composer and his associates have given the world a great gift; they deserve nothing less in return.

 

[1]  On Fairy-stories, p. 73: [2] https://www.paulcorfieldgodfrey.co.uk/introduction: [3] Fëanor liner notes: [4] See my reviews of Beren and Lúthien and The Children of Húrin: [5] https://www.paulcorfieldgodfrey.co.uk/feanor: [6] See my review of The Fall of Gondolin.

 

Marc Medwin, Fanfare November/December 2002

 

I should begin by saying that heretofore, I have been entirely ignorant of Paul Corfield Godfrey’s work. More’s the pity. Based on this recording of the opera Fëanor—it’s labelled as a demo recording for reasons presently explained—I am eager to enter again into this lush, sometimes harsh and epic universe of tone and word-painting.

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There is no room here to describe the process by which the Volante Sampled Orchestra or the chorus, each voice recorded in a different location, was assembled, though the results are quite satisfactory. There is also no need, as the processes are detailed on the composer’s extensive website, as are the histories of this opera and of its companions. Suffice it to say here that Fëanor is the first of a four-part cycle composed on J R R Tolkien’s Silmarillion. The composition of this mammoth series occupied the composer throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but his Tolkienian preoccupation goes back to some of his earliest pieces. Much of the material in these operas had its genesis in those early and sometimes abandoned works but also in his third symphony, named Ainulindalë after the story of creation in Tolkien’s mythology. Before proceeding, I’ll only note that unfamiliarity with Tolkien’s Middle Earth and its vast history need not be an impediment to enjoying these operas. My own exposure has been limited to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and a few bits and pieces by way of context. There are many parallels that make comprehension fairly simple, such as the story of Melkor’s fall, an integral component of the Tolkien mythology and of this opera in particular, being very similar to that of Lucifer’s similarly tragic plight.

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Just as an example, no background knowledge is necessary to luxuriate in the deliciously orchestrated prelude to Fëanor’s first triptych. To this ebbing and flowing series of tones and sonorities, Ilúvatar, “the One,” performs the act of creation, its direct aftermath given verbal manifestation in the following choral scene. There, the creation of the first-born, or the Elves, is detailed in majestic beauty. All of this demonstrates, as Godfrey states in various ways throughout his lengthy but impressive explications, that the opera is not so much an opera in the traditional sense but a drama that can also be performed in a concert version, and it does indeed work without the visuals. The storm in the seventh scene is equally vivid, its savagery needing no visuals to support the orchestral depiction.

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If there are sometimes unavoidable issues of balance between the human soloists and orchestral samples, the soloists’ contributions are very good indeed. Of particular note is the beautifully subtle, even sympathetic, performance of bass Lawrence Cole in Melkor’s insinuating lust after the Silmarils. Godfrey treats Melkor, called The Enemy, with a fascinating and multi-layered music that it would be unfair to pigeon-hole as reverent. No less affecting is tenor Simon Crosby Buttle in the title role. His heart-breaking pride is on wonderful display in his final utterances as he comprehends his legacy. He is, after all, the one who shapes the Silmarils, the three great jewels centring this neo-Wagnerian story of family allegiance and the betrayal for which he is largely responsible.

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Like the theatrical music of Sibelius or Delius, this opera unfolds with an unhurried grace and power. The music is motivically driven but usually atmospheric, with frequent dynamic changes. Only listen to the heart-breaking aria of Elbereth in the fifth scene, sung beautifully by Mary Emma Llewellyn, or the shattering epilogue describing the death of Fëanor, to hear the approach in its most glacial and complex guises. This is an operatic recording whose singers and the music they perform are completely in tune with the nature of the story and its themes, making me want to hear the other instalments as soon as possible. Luckily, all are now available, so let the games begin! 

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The War of Wrath (2023)

 

Chris Seeman, Tolkien Music Website

  

Five years ago, South Wales-based Volante Opera Productions began an ambitious collaboration with London-born composer, Paul Corfield Godfrey, to produce complete demo recordings (live voices, sampled instrumentation) of the latter’s Silmarillion operas, which he had written during the 1980s and 1990s. Originally conceived as a four-part cycle covering the “great tales” of Tolkien’s primary legendarium – Fëanor, Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, and The Fall of Gondolin – the experience of realizing this sprawling saga induced tenor Simon Crosby Buttle, who had voiced the lead male protagonist in each of these recordings, to explore the possibility of a fifth and final installment to resolve the central thread of the cycle: the fate of the Silmarils. Although initially skeptical of the feasibility of this proposal due to the dearth and disunity of Tolkien’s source material on the subject, Godfrey was eventually convinced that a concluding segment was both desirable and doable. The result is The War of Wrath, a two-hour wrap-up to what is now the longest musical work inspired by Tolkien’s mythology in existence. (Howard Shore, move over.) It also holds the record for being the largest-scale work of classical music written in Wales in the twentieth – and, presumably, the twenty-first – century.

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Wagnerian comparisons aside, Buttle was right to push for War. Although Godfrey never intended an exhaustive rendition of The Silmarillion – confining its scope, as the title accurately states, to “epic scenes from” – without some concluding account of what happens to Fëanor’s titular jewels, the cycle was a headless torso. The task, then, was to arrange the source material in such a way that narrative coherence was achieved without unbalancing the symmetry of the extant, four-part edifice. In short, War had to be more than mere “filler.” It had to not be an appendix, but a genuine conclusion – as well as a transition to the second half of Tolkien’s legendarium: the Rings of Power. The problem, as already noted, was that Tolkien had never really finished the Silmarillion. The form in which it existed at the time of his death had not been fully aligned with his developed conception of the mythology. There were variants, lacunae, contradictions. Moreover, the later versions of some of the stories were often sparse on detail and even sparser on dialogue, in the absence of which a functional libretto would be difficult if not impossible to achieve.

 

But this is not a new problem. In varying degrees, it spans the whole “Matter of the Elder Days” covered by the cycle. In composing, Godfrey has become adept at making a virtue out of necessity, creatively repurposing and reconfiguring texts from different corners of the canon into new constellations that simultaneously serve the needs of the opera while uncovering anew the potency of Tolkien’s wordcraft. Nonetheless, the peculiar limitations of this stretch of the story lead to inevitable differences from War’s predecessors. For one thing, the third-person narration of much of the source material results in a predominantly chorus-driven libretto at several points. For another, the need to straddle a comparatively narrow event horizon between the great tales that have already been told and an expansive future that can only be adumbrated calls for multiple “flashbacks” to earlier parts of the cycle. This has the salutary effect of reminding the audience (for whom this would be the fifth evening of the performance) of the interconnectedness of the overall plotline.

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The curtain rises in the primordial past (before the coming of the Eldar to Valinor), where Elbereth prophesies the advent of Eärendil to her demiurgic peers. Fittingly, Godfrey selects for his libretto Tolkien’s earliest fragment of what would become his legendarium, the 1915 poem, “The Shores of Faëry,” coupled with his Quenya rendition of Eärendil’s real-world inspiration from the Old English poem, Crist. Incidentally, one of the strengths of the Volante recordings is their consistent use of the same performers to voice characters who appear in more than one of the operas. (Soprano Emma Mary Llewellyn also voiced Elbereth in Fëanor, and so her crystal-clear delivery frames the beginning and end of the cycle.) Meanwhile, on the shores of Middle-earth, Círdan (bass Julian Boyce) prepares to set sail for the Undying Lands but is stayed by the Vala Ulmo (voiced in Part Four by bass Martin Lloyd), who repeats the prophecy of the one who is to come. The inclusion of this otherwise minor scene serves to introduce the site where the main protagonist (Eärendil) will later appear, but also to establish Círdan, who, though peripheral in the first half of the opera, becomes central to its epilogue.

The drama begins as we fast-forward to Menegroth during the First Age of the Sun, where Melian (mezzo Helen Jarmany) wheedles out of Galadriel (soprano Angharad Morgan) part of the dark truth about the Noldor’s departure from Valinor. This is an exquisitely executed dialogue. Jarmany, who reprises her role from Part Two, projects tangible gravitas as she cross-examines her reluctant companion. Although Galadriel has not previously appeared in the cycle, Morgan has, taking on the signature heroine roles of Lúthien (Part Two) and Nienor (Part Three). Even were the audience ignorant of Galadriel’s future significance, their familiarity with Morgan from the previous operas would cause eyes and ears to perk up.

 

This scene serves several purposes. It reminds the audience of the Silmarils as the cause of the conflict with Morgoth (Part One). The overconfidence of Melian’s husband, Thingol (also reprised by Martin Lloyd), regarding the peril posed by the Fëanorians, of which Melian vainly strives to warn him, establishes the backstory for Thingol’s death at their hands. Finally, because it is set before Beren’s coming to Doriath, it allows Melian a premonition of Part Two, which set in motion the chain of events that would eventually bring the Silmaril into Thingol’s possession.

 

In his notes, Godfrey comments at length on the difficulty he and Buttle encountered in adapting the next scene (which culminates in the Ruin of Doriath) due to the instability of its details in the received tradition and the overabundance of supporting characters that would need to be introduced in order to stage it. Through a judicious compression of events and the substitution of the sons of Fëanor for the scene’s original villains (Dwarves), an efficient portrayal of the tragedy is attained, giving center stage to Melian’s lament and to the introduction of Elwing (mezzo-soprano Sophie Yelland, a newcomer to the Silmarillion project), who spirits the Silmaril away to the Havens of Sirion so that the villainous Fëanorians (tenors Michael Clifton-Thompson as Maglor and Huw Llywelyn as Curufin) fail to obtain it.

 

The intervening events of Elwing’s marriage to Eärendil and her bearing of Elrond and Elros occur off-stage. The next scene brings us to Eärendil’s initial voyage, seeking his parents, Tuor and Idril (hero and heroine of Part Four), who have already journeyed West, and hoping to intercede with the Valar to save the two kindreds – Men and Elves – from destruction. Though mentioned and (silently) present in Part Four, it is here that Eärendil (voiced by Buttle) first speaks, bidding his wife and sons not to accompany him on his perilous errand, but to wait for a sign of hope. In spite of the titular war being the dramatic climax of the opera, it is the present scene and the two that follow it that are its heart.

 

Already in 2004, Godfrey had set Tolkien’s Lay of Eärendil to music. This uniquely metered poem, based on idiosyncratic, trisyllabic assonance, underwent many metamorphoses during the course of the legendarium’s development (HoMe VII.81-109). Godfrey puts it to good use as choral narrative in these scenes. But in order to make it truly operatic and not just expository, he intersperses its verses with actual dialogue drawn from the published Silmarillion and its cognates. The result is a lively contrapuntal alternation between indirect and direct discourse, between the poem’s commentary and the events it comments on. To this Godfrey adds a further layers of intertextuality by transferring Legolas’ Song of the Sea from The Lord of the Rings (III.956) to Eärendil’s lips in Scene Four and Tolkien’s early Quenya poem, “Earendel,” published in his 1930 essay, “A Secret Vice” (Monsters and the Critics, pp. 216-217), to Scene Five to lend added vividness to Eärendil and Elwing’s final voyage to Valinor. Thus, at this all-important eucatastrophic moment within the cycle, the fullness of Tolkien’s own modes of story-telling – verse and narrative, Elvish and English – are brought into fruitful conversation.

 

The outcome of Eärendil’s embassy is well-known to anyone familiar with Tolkien’s mythology. With Elwing’s Silmaril affixed to his brow, Eärendil persuades the Valar to have mercy upon the Noldorin exiles and upon all Ilúvatar’s children menaced by Morgoth. Eönwë (baritone Philip Lloyd-Evans) heralds the mariner’s arrival and escorts him to the Ring of Doom, where Mandos (also voiced by Julian Boyce in Part One) questions whether a mortal who sets foot on the Undying Lands should be allowed to live. Empowered by Ilúvatar, the Elder King, Manwë (also voiced by bass George Newton-Fitzgerald in Part One), gives both Eärendil and Elwing the choice of which kindred – Elves or Men – they are to be judged with. Both choosing the former, Elwing remains in Aman while Eärendil’s vessel, Vingelot, is hallowed so that it can perpetually sail the heavens with the Silmaril as its lantern so that all the world – including the Fëanorians – may behold it as a sign of hope.

 

The opera now moves to its crescendo. The Valar lead an army against Morgoth, defeating and expelling him from the world. The war itself is entirely narrated by chorus, its chaos musically conveyed by what Godfrey aptly describes as “a welter of themes placed in violent juxtaposition with each other.” The all-male chorus intones Morgoth’s punishment with judicial inexorability. Yet this dénouement is not the end of the story because “the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die, and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even until the latest days.”

 

This gloomy prognosis is borne out by the opera’s final half-hour. Its truth is first instantiated in the fraught deliberations of the surviving Fëanorian brothers, Maglor (Michael Clifton-Thompson from Scenes Three, Five and Six) and Maedhros (bass Stephen Wells, who also voiced this character in Part One), who debate whether their oath requires them to defy the Valar by wresting the two remaining Silmarils recovered from Morgoth’s crown. This is one of the eeriest dialogues in the whole cycle, made more so by the stage directions concerning the omniscient, eavesdropping Valar:

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 Maglor takes Maedhros aside to confer. Behind them a vision of the Elder King, Mandos, Ulmo and Elbereth appears, which Eönwë sees clearly. They watch the following conversation with great interest.

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MAGLOR The oath says not that we may not abide our time; and it may be that in Valinor all shall be forgiven and forgot, and we shall come into our own in peace.

 

Elbereth smiles at this, and the Elder King nods in assent.

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MAEDHROS If we return with them but the favour of the Valar is withheld, then our oath would still remain, but its fulfilment be beyond hope. Who can tell to what dreadful doom we shall come, if we disobey the Powers in their own land?

 

Mandos bristles clearly at this.

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MAGLOR If Manwë and the Valar themselves deny the fulfilment of an oath to which we named them in witness, is it not made void?

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MAEDHROS But how shall our voices reach to Ilúvatar beyond the Circles of the World? And by Ilúvatar we swore in our madness, and called the Everlasting Darkness upon us if we kept not our word. Who shall release us?

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Mandos is becoming more displeased with what he is hearing. The Elder King is standing emotionless and watching.

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MAGLOR If none can release us, then indeed the Everlasting Darkness shall be our lot, whether we keep our oath or break it; but less evil we shall do in the breaking.

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Maedhros draws his sword and prepares to fight; Maglor reluctantly does the same. The Elder King raises his hand to stop Eönwë from doing the same, and then gestures for them to leave the Silmarils.

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 This is one of those rare opportunities where one medium (visually staged drama) enhances another (spoken word) to add theological depth to Tolkien’s vision of the Valar as angelic world-rulers who are nonetheless loath to coerce Ilúvatar’s children into acting contrary to their own free will. Tolkien reflected extensively on this tension in his late philosophical ruminations. This is a brilliant use of operatic form to demonstrate it in action.

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Unable to endure the burning sanctity of the holy jewels, the brothers realize the folly of their choice, casting them into the bowels of the earth and the depths of the sea respectively. Formally, this fulfills the mission of War: to inform the audience of the ultimate destiny of each Silmaril: earth, sea, and sky. But since we have been informed that “the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die,” we – like them – are compelled to witness its rebirth as the true conclusion of the cycle.

 

Rather like the post-credits scene of an MCU film, the closing image of the Silmarils abruptly switches to an entirely different character and setting: a fair-seeming Sauron (bass Jasey Hall, who also voiced him in Part Two), lamenting “the weakness of the great” and inviting the remaining Elves to join his MMGA movement (“Make Middle-earth Great Again”). In no time flat, his fair visage falls as he intones the Ring-chant in the shadow of a ghostly Morgoth mirroring him in Black Speech (volcanically voiced by Laurence Cole from Parts One, Two, Three and Four). We are not in the First Age any more…

 

War’s epilogue (which, at nearly fifteen minutes, is longer than all but one of its actual scenes) comprises excerpts from Tolkien’s poem, “The Trees of Kortirion” (HoMe I.39-43), recited by the three Elven Ring-bearers (Círdan, Galadriel, and an adult Elrond voiced by Buttle) and a chorus of unseen voices. The poem, which acknowledges the fading of the Elves and their world, is framed at either end by “Aiya Eärendil elenion Ancalima!” (“Hail, Eärendil, brightest of stars!”), the line with which War’s prologue opened.

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The War of Wrath, like the opera cycle as a whole, is a triumph of adaptation. It shares the most important moments of Quenta Silmarillion, broadcasting their beauty and power in a musical (and, when performed live, visual) medium that illuminates the genius of Tolkien’s art rather than presuming to “improve” upon it. For those already immersed in Tolkien’s sub-creation, Godfrey’s accomplishment will enhance appreciation for the intricacies of character, setting, and story that make up the canon as we have it. For those less familiar with the world but who enjoy opera for opera’s sake, Epic Scenes will invite favorable comparison with classical operatic adaptations of other mythological cycles of our own world.

 

Each time I have reviewed one of these Volante Opera recordings, I have made a plea for it to be performed live. In the history of Tolkien-inspired music, never before have the stars aligned as they have for this project: a libretto faithful to its source, a professional opera company with five years’ experience with the material, and a composer with a magnificent score to back it up. Add to this the heightened popularity of the subject matter due to Amazon’s recent “Rings of Power” series. If not now, then when? If not Godfrey and Volante, then who?