Tolkien's Dwarven Music: An Unexpected Enchantment

Exactly how spellbinding must the music of Thorin's folk have been to counteract generations of Baggins' respectability and sweep Bilbo away into a state of total Tookish wanderlust?

I spent more than two years thinking about this episode in the parlour under The Hill before I attempted painting it. It was only when I tried to hear the music described in the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit that I began to feel I was finally experiencing the scene through Bilbo's ears and eyes.

With the resources available to me, I tried to reproduce a semblance of the combined sounds of the listed instruments and the "deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes." With the pairing of the painting and the music, I felt closer to being there in the story than I had in a lifetime of reading this marvelous masterpiece.

The Dwarves: Mysterious, Musical Folk

Given that Tolkien's sub-creation is rooted in music, even the smallest of tunes in the legendarium should be viewed as important. We can especially prize the Misty Mountains song because we know so little about the dwarves who are few in number, keep their names and their language secret, have astonishing beliefs about subjects like re-embodiment, and emanate from a very different origin story than elves or men.

Folklore, literature, art, and modern media have equipped us with a confused notion of dwarves outside of Tolkien's writings. The tone of The Hobbit is comparatively lighthearted amongst the Professor's major works, and the tale is filled with priceless humor, but I think we err if we mistake Bilbo's visitors for the buffoonish figures we sometimes encounter in various stories. Tolkien's dwarves can be wry, provocative, and teasing, but they are not simply "silly". The more we learn about them, the more solemn they seem, and the more shrouded in a unique sense of mystery that is all their own.

Detail, Feast of the Wood-elves in Mirkwood - Miriam Ellis

Here are a people who are ready to lose their lives to rescue their home from a terrifying dragon, and who also bring musical instruments along for the journey. Their music makes the hobbit feel "the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves."

How do you imagine the music sounded? You have to factor in deep viols (mine have the heads of ravens), some ancient form of clarinet, perhaps like the chalumeau, small fiddles, and airy flutes. Did Bombur think of beating Smaug as he beat upon his great drum, while Thorin Oakenshield wove magical airs of brooding on his golden harp? Did the voices cultivated in the deeps of the mountains sound cavernous and full of secrets?

For just a moment, I hope you will sit beside Bilbo in this video short, which incorporates all of the instruments of the dwarves and my idea of the sounds of their voices, if not the words of their enchanting song. Can you hear what moved Bilbo?

Music within The Music

I hope you enjoyed the video and felt as if you were really there, if only for a moment. I wonder if you share my surprise, no matter how many times you've read The Hobbit, that Mr. Baggins is so transported out of his comfortable life and into dreams of distant lands that he ends up actually undertaking the adventure heralded by the song of the dwarves. I'm always surprised by this. I probably have too much Baggins and not enough Took in me to think I'd give up the charms of Bag End for anything.

In fact, Bilbo's choice is so remarkable that it makes me wonder about the hidden hand of Eru Ilúvatar conducting so many of the songs we are treated to throughout the legendarium.

Songs give small hobbits courage for the great Road, and think of how Sam's singing helps him locate Frodo in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, in an echo of the much older tale of Fingon and Maedhros. The music of the elves has the power to change apparent doom, as in the case of Beren and Lúthien, and a dirge like the harpers' song of Gil-galad holds thousands of years of history. Kings like Elessar sing by campfires and at funerals, the Rohirrim sing in battle, and dwarves bear fallen kindred out of war with songs so grave that their foes don't dare to hinder them. How great to hear even a snippet of any dwarf music that offers a rare glimpse of their obscure mines and homes and culture.

Beren and Luthien - Miriam Ellis

"We make still by the law in which we're made," is the unforgettable line in Professor Tolkien's poem to C.S. Lewis, "Mythopoeia." When good folk sing and play instruments in Tolkien's tales, they are, perhaps, picking up a strand of the great Music, and wonderful things sometimes come of it. Beren is beckoned, Boromir is mourned, and Bilbo Baggins is harped and drummed and piped right out of the hole in the ground to undertake the first steps of the rescue of Middle-earth from the enemy.

All things considered, I think we aren't too far from the truth if we see the dwarves' song under the Hill as being so powerful because it is a part of the music within The Music that shaped Arda. Perhaps it is only fitting.