apostate variations by clovis_unleashed  

i.

From Myths of the Morben, collected and published by Tuiloth in S.A. 945 in Lindon

In the beginning there was Song and the Song was the beginning of Life and the Song was Life. All things came through Song and nothing that was made was made without it. For in the beginning there was nothing except the deeps and the Song hovered over the face of the eternal waters. It was out of these great deeps that the Song drew the world, which was the Allmother, and entered into her. For as father knows the mother and brings forth children from her, the Song knew the waters and they became as one. From this being came all things in the world as we know it and it was Dawn. This was the first creation.

Then the Allmother was hungry once more and her deeps rose up and covered the face of the world once more. And so the Song rose up and sent forth its power in her and filled her. Many turns of the stars passed in storm until, finally, her waters gave forth the Elves into the Great Twilight. Thus sated, she lay still and the Song set a wall on her deeps. This was the second creation.

This is Life: that the Song filled the Allmother, that it entered into the Elves and became Spirit and from this Spirit proceeded all knowledge, all thought, and all consciousness.

From an exchange on the subject of the Music of The Waters between King Finrod Felagund & Daeron of Doriath in F.A. 340

… an unfortunate misnomer, probably related to the early traditions of the last twenty-four of Enel’s company. They never accepted Imin’s ordering of the awakening and leadership. In their telling, the world was birthed by the “Allmother” who was impregnated by some Ur-divinity or Spirit, which they call “Song”—fascinating, but substantially unprovable. According to them, song precedes speech, thought, and consciousness, which is a reversion of the accepted order of consciousness > speech > song—and music is a means to briefly reunite them with the great spirit that allegedly birthed them.

I suppose one could argue there is some lineage of descent between their practices and some of the more heretical rites of the Glinnelim of Ennor. However, equally one might argue any similarities are incidental given the vast differences. For one, the concept of the time signature is absent, as is any desire for an organising or structuring principle. If you’ve heard music from the tradition, it tends to be minimalistic and highly repetitive—hypnotic, even, in its ebbing and flowing (facetiously: like the ripples of a pond)—to the point of forcing the mind out of itself and into other dimensions. If there is a composer, he or she is merely a vessel for delivering this awakening—perhaps not unlike your Minilim modes. You will agree this is quite contrary to most of our musical practices …

ii.

From Axioms for the Consonance of Virtue by Súlendur, published in Valinor in Y.T. 1380

1. All music proceeds from the One who called Eä into being with Song and the Imperishable Flame
2. Nothing created may be possessed, as a gift may only be received with gratitude
3. The greatest virtue, above all eight virtues, is harmony
4. All harmony is found in balance and all balance proceeds from humility
5. In humility, composer and player may become vessels of the One
6. The unity of all eight virtues produces beauty and perfection
7. Perfection and beauty are blessings inscribed through prayer and meditation
8. Therefore whatever is true, whatever has wisdom and sight, whatever is light and life, whatever is beautiful, merciful, and raised with valour, think only on these things

From the introduction to Eight Mode Technique: An Explication by Ainuvoríë, published in T.A. 748 in Valinor

… Following the principles outlined by Súlendur, the Vanyarin Music of the Spheres had eight major modes representing each of the Aratar, consisting of four classes of three notes each varying in tone from full tones to sixty-fourths of a tone. Beyond these eight major modes there were six lesser modes representing the remaining Valar, and a near infinity of other modes to represent various Maiar, created and refined by various devotees to schools of the Valar. These modes formed the bedrock for the matrix style of composition featuring interlocking, repetitive sequences that could be solved arithmetically to yield a perfect round of numbers in multiples of eight. Each sequence unfolded in greater complexity over the course of a piece, thus mimicking the unfolding of the Great Pattern, proceeding from the great to the small and to the great again.

In this school, music was a tangible representation of intangible ratios denoting the First Singing and therefore, the Allfather’s Great Pattern underpinning Eä. Its aim was to produce music that was a more perfect representation of the metaphysical and spiritual world, with the composer serving as conduit for divine revelation. The cosmology of the Music of the Spheres was grounded in a belief in harmony, unified by symmetrical mathematical precision. Therefore, the composer’s art harnessed the mind, but also the body and thus aligned, could enable the listener to achieve greater enlightenment than otherwise possible. In theory, this encouraged spiritual reflection; in practice it drove a compulsive obsession with perfection and aesthetic beauty. By the Second Age, such idealistic formulations were seen as retrograde, if not naive …

iii.

From A Dictionary of Sound by Theresor, published in Lindon in S.A. 1150

… the composer is an absent figure in their primitive music, which weaves together both performed music and the ambient sounds of the natural world. For the Elves of Southern Middle-earth, music serves a communal and meditative impulse. This is evident in its structure, featuring repeating motifs with simple if dense harmonies and improvisations. These improvisations follow no intuitive pattern, but are said to represent the primitive elements of earth, water, wind, and fire. In the making of this music, the clan will sit in a circle and one will begin to lead, with others adding their voice or instruments as they are so moved. This repetitive, improvisational style binds both community and community to the natural world—the bedrock for their lives …

From an exchange concerning A Dictionary of Sound between Nellinnor and Lindir, in T.A. 2350

One ought not to speak ill of the dead, but you will allow Theresor’s work to be shoddy at the very least. I am not unsympathetic to the desire to document the obscure, or indeed the fashion for reviving Silvan customs that swept Greenwood the Great in the last Age—but at his best, he is an armchair theorist and at his very worst, which is not so infrequent as one should hope, he is a destructive force. You know as well as I do, how complex the aleatoric music of our cousins in Rhûn and the far southern wilds of Ennor runs and how sophisticated their philosophy.

One cannot, of course, concede to their disbelief in the One, or indeed fully believe their claim of descent from the last clan of Glinnel found by Nen Echui. Nevertheless one must admire the reasoning behind it rather than dismiss it out of hand as mere primitive superstition. The One’s existence is unprovable to them—and where he appears, it's merely to supplement what our forefathers desired to do for themselves. There’s a certain admirable rationale in escaping a tyrant and therefore refusing tyranny in all forms—king, composer, what have you. If that sounds too heretical, we must at least admire their ability to harness complex rhythmic forms in weaving their sequential music around the music of the natural world and its elements. How many of us can claim to have heard these musics, let alone harmonise with them?

iv.

Continued from the introduction to Eight Mode Technique: An Explication

… This dissatisfaction with the Music of the Spheres reached its zenith during the early years of the Second Age in Endórë. After the sinking of Valariandë, the high-minded belief in a perfect and harmonious cosmology began to pall on a generation of younger composers. These inadequacies proved a fertile ground for inquiry, interrogation, and ultimately, reconceptualistion.

Evolving from the arithmetic school of music of Eregion, eight mode technique aimed to “correct” the harmonic overdeterminism of the Vanyarin style and replace it with a far more mathematical—and therefore, precise—derivation of equidistance. The Music of the Spheres, these composers insisted, failed to account for both statistical randomness and chaos in the transformations of Eä. In this technique, each compositional grid is divided into arithmetic ideas, but these ideas are derived through certain equations, i.e. maintaining certain interval relations, or equidistance of pitches. These “sets” are prepared numerically beforehand, with a focus on representing each note within the individual modes equally. These sets may be transposed across modes, always avoiding repetition of sound in proximity. A defamiliarised atonality resulted, allegedly bringing it closer to the actual music of the Ainulindalë.

A ninth mode, Marring, or perhaps Discord, named after the Black Foe, was created by Daeron of Doriath at an unknown date. The mode produces an even sharper dissonance, aided by the use of a one hundred and thirty-secondth tone between the eleventh and twelfth notes of the mode—a tonal difference so fine and yet so jarring when heard, that the modal name seems less arrogant and more statement of fact. The mode allegedly represented the fullness of the world-as-is, according to the composer, remedying eight mode technique’s philosophical unwillingness to reckon with the world-as-is, i.e. the Marred world …

From Nine Theses for Awakening, found in the accompanying notes of Daeron of Doriath’s ninth symphony, date of origin unknown

1. All Elves originate in the womb of the earth—i.e. Allmother in ancient cosmology.
2. The Elvish spirit and the Elvish body are tightly bound but oppositional.
3. A better synthesis must be possible.
4. Song as unifying property—its properties are both physical (see: acoustics), and spiritual viz. the Song that underpins the world (the spirit of our ancient cosmology).
5. Therefore: music as means to awaken body, mind, and spirit in unity and thus, perceive the world-as-is and not only the world-as-represented.
6. Eight incomplete: fails to account for the importance of dissonance in transformation from one state to the other—not only entropy, but potential. Therefore: nine for perfect synthesis.
7. Nine modes of awakening = transcendence = return to pure immortality, i.e. eternal renewal, unburdened by “grief”, perfectly immersed in the eternity of Da, i.e. the primordial mother.
8. Musical invocation must incorporate all possible matrices of senses and focuses at once.
9. Composer must be heretic and occultist—pursuit of knowledge and secret awakening vital—otherwise nine modes merely noise for the sake of noise.

v.

From The Music of the Future: A Manifesto by Almárion Calcarillo, published in Valinor in T.A. 1268

Music and arithmetic share the symbolic function of language, which both represents and organises reality. The music of the past has always been inhibitory, shaped by an arithmetic preoccupation with the problem of order and presupposes a divine intelligence preordering the world, mimicked by the composer. It resists reality. What is real? The cataclysmic destruction of a continent and a people, revealing the illusion of divine control and purpose.

The music of the future must resist the hagiographic impulse. It will be governed by probabilities and the stochastic processes creating reality. Its patterns will be repetitive, fragmentary, and dissonant. It upsets, it reveals the evolved world, it refuses the fantasy of divine purpose and presence …

From an exchange of letters between Lord Celebrimbor & the High King Gil-galad in S.A. 1139

By Eru Gil, we’ve finally gone and done it! At last we’ve refined the science of acoustics and we can at last calculate the precise value, not only the relative value, of each note and tone in a scale and do you know what did it? Waves! It all comes back to the sea, I suppose. Or the air! Waves in the air! We’ve all been wrong and right all along, after all, which is the substance of good, sound science. Everything is a little right until it is fully incorrect.

Here is a proposition: if Song underlies creation per Rúmil and music has physical, calculable properties, then “song” has arithmetic properties that operate dimensionally to lend shape to Eä. The greater body of our knowledge, I believe, bears this out. The poorly named “Music of the Spheres” also suggests there might be some truth to this, even if the wretched Vanyar insist on reducing it all to simple questions of symmetry (as though there is no beauty in the asymmetrical! Or the fractal! Or crystalline! Or any number of imperfect structures!).

Another proposition: if Song can change Fate, one must assume it changes both the physical and metaphysical world. Proof—Lúthien. Therefore, an arithmetic derivation that will allow the manipulation of both physical and spiritual matter and thus irrevocably alter Fate itself is possible! The question is how and if control is possible or if we are reaching, now, into truly heretical heights as Morgoth did—the way they talked about Beleriand! Well, it does raise interesting questions, doesn't it?

(Our aunt will almost certainly disapprove of what I’m suggesting. She is almost certainly scowling to herself somewhere in this city, having got a whiff of what we’re doing with all those fantastical powers of Foresight.)

I suppose my uncle, Eru damn him, was correct after all and he wasn’t just trying to bribe my interest in the art of composition. Music is a science! Which makes the Valar scientists, not only spirit (or perhaps consciousness, and therefore the intangible metaphysics of Spirit and Will, have arithmetic derivatives too!)—and where does that leave Eru, I wonder? There must be a mathematical proof to explain an organising intelligence/power—composer versus musicians, though all are indispensable for the execution of complex functions. Anyway, I have begun work on some derivations on these principles which I believe must be dimensional, as music is dimensional (horizontal, vertical, but also infinitely variable—)

[Several pages of barely legible equations & calculations follow, some in nonlinear and geometrical three-dimensional shapes, including rings]

Much love,

P.S. Well I just reread your letter and realised this wasn’t what you asked about, but I’m sure you’ll pardon the excitement—regarding the question of the bank, I’ve asked our councillor for finance & economy to write to you separately. Númenor must invest, Gil, I really do believe it, but if you think it goes against our interests I will, of course, toe the line. (But do consider it coz.)

vi.

From The Apocalyptic Tendency in Banilomë’s The End of History by Alpandil, published in Valinor in T.A. 1345

In the mythos of the Kindi of Southern Endórë, described in A Dictionary of Sound, the world will end with the sounding of a cosmic chord to awaken the Allmother from her eternal slumber, ushering in a final apocalypse, followed by a third “awakening” of the world. The recent revival of interest in Moripendi culture has reinterpreted the Allmother as an apocalyptic figure, with some interpretations reconfiguring her as Ungweliantë—whose hunger consumes the sun and moon and accelerates the Ambar-metta. However, it is the apocalyptic cosmic chord that has been of most interest to Amanyarin composers …

… The End of History is ostensibly about the end of the First Age. However, its philosophical concerns stray—the sinking of a continent becomes a cleansing of evil, evil itself is dislocated and diffuse, its world is stochastic and confounding, and the Valar bound into impotence by the omnipresent but invisible Will, rendered powerless after fulfilling their purpose. These tensions accelerate the apocalyptic ending. In Fuilinquë’s staging, lights and fog create the illusion of the world’s demise. It occurs at the culmination of the estel leitmotif in a resounding singular chord, recasting the leitmotif as a world-destroying cosmic chord. It heretically positions both the One and the perfectionist composer as accelerants: bringing down the purifying and terrifying demise of the world through their compositional genius …

From a statement published by the Kindi Cultural Forum, in response to Banilomë’s The End of History, published in Valinor, in Fo.A. 540

Thus, from water we came and to water we return and in the waters of the world flows all knowledge, past, present, and future, until one day, the Allmother wakes once more and shakes off the chain laid on her by Song. On that day, her waters will break their walls and the world will be broken. All that once was will no longer be and in the breaking many new things will come forth into the Night of the world. This will be the third and last creation.

These are the words of our origin, sung to us by our ancestors and passed down in song from one generation to the next. What appears to be myth or an old wives’ tale to the citizens of this Blessed Land is our history.

As the people of this country serve the Allfather, our people have served the Allmother. It was she who knit our bodies in the dawn of time; whose substance nourishes and nurtures us. As mothers impart life to their children, she imparts life to us. As mothers love their children and children their mothers, so are we tied to each other.

The End of History fails, not because our history is falsified, but because it believes us incapable of science.

Who is the Allmother? Not the void, which holds no life. Nor the dark, which holds no light. Neither is she eternal hunger. She is. Which is to say, she is the world: the green sward in which our bodies were made flesh.

Twice, already, the world has been through two awakenings. A breaking at dawn, which split the world into two planes. A breaking in the noon, which separated these planes. A third awakening, attested in your mythology, unites the three planes of the world and a perfect harmony will be achieved. In this rebirth, we will all be joined in a single consciousness of great light: the Arda Renewed of your mythology.

The cosmic chord is not a mystic idea, the composer is not an occultist and artistic discovery will not accelerate the end of the world. This is our shared history: our world was fashioned out of Song; the notes of this Song correspond to mathematical systems and laws governing the natural world; these systems indicate a discordant state of entropy. Anyone who learns the art of listening may hear the song of the world and the shifting of harmonies as the world decays. When these harmonies reach a certain stage of decay, the physical world achieves a state of destructive entropy and the final unshackling of the world will begin. The wise man listens and divines from sign and song, this moment of awakening. The wise man, the musician does not accelerate the end but is scientist and diviner …

vii.

From the Introduction of Diaries: 1400-1500 by Marillë Arturindiel, published in S.A. 125 in Valinor

Take history. Or rather, take a kitchen. There must be one on Taniquetil, to feed the hundreds of pious Vanyar and Noldor that flock there everyday to worship Manwë . Who gives the command “beef today” or “mutton tomorrow”? Imagine for the sake of imagining, after all we learn only from the holiest, that the wife does the trick. The wife must flit from room to room, steering guests and steering the tides of polite conversation. Light and frothy is the desired consistency. What room remains for any genius but one? Someone has to organise everyone to worship it—and so Varda Tintallë wouldn't be very great at all.

Here, the imagination grinds to a halt. How much do we know about the Star-Kindler? Our histories devote volumes, our saints vast commentaries to the Elder King—his wife has a few stray sentences. Yet, the Fate of the world was shaped by the Unsullied Light of our Trees and Stars, given to the Star-Kindler by the One. Recall another Fate-shaking moment: Ungweliantë weaving Unlight. Disappeared and flattened into the Moringotto’s many evil deeds. Or take the Princess Lúthien: a woman in love and, therefore, incapable of being a musician or a composer in her own right.

A great man’s impending greatness is the worst burden a clever woman will bear. A great man only adores his greatness. The greatest thing a woman might be is a man’s helper. The worst thing a woman might be is a wife. My once husband was a great man. He was also a charming man. In his grand and charming greatness, he once forbade me from ever composing. My dear, he said, your handwriting is pretty, but those harmonies are not. I spent thirty-nine years of our marriage as his secretary. His secretary was paid three hundred gold coins annually; my payment was largely insults.

History is littered with great men whose wives, mothers and sisters listened to them, coached them, massaged their work from mediocrity into greatness. The Noldolantë wouldn’t exist without Three Variations on Starlight or Devotional to a Minor Goddess and neither would exist without a foolish, pretty wife to transcribe, play, or edit them. The fruit of loyalty is insignificance at best, insults at worst, and on average, the insistence that men compose great works that good-natured mothers, wives and sisters perform. …

From confidential letters exchanged between Lady Galadriel and Maglor, T.A. 1380

I don’t know what you expect me to say, coz. Yes, the bare bones of it is substantially true. No smoke without fire and all that. My charming ex-wife is certainly very creative.

I’m far more interested in her archival choices. I wouldn’t have said, personally, that either Variations on Starlight or Devotional to a Minor Goddess are predecessors to the Noldolantë, but I suppose it's rather like being the rich relation in the family. Some poor sod is forever coming to you for money, or employment, as it were. Claiming credit for your ingenuity, in this case. Anyway, yes, she did transcribe scores. But if you’ve ever written anything yourself, you’ll recognise the fiercely protective instinct of making. Besides which, half those manuscripts are fudged and half those letters are thoroughly edited. Very nice! Enterprising work, if you can get it.

I can’t say I blame her, though. You of all people will acknowledge the strength of her broader arguments. There’s something to be said for the centrality of our Valier in Fate, or rather, estel, and yet their absence from any sort of serious record-keeping. She’s certainly right about the invisible work that lies behind any good composition—or for that matter any serious composer’s career. (Perhaps that’s why I languish in obscurity, forced to depend on you for employment (always dangerous and life-threatening, thank you coz). I really ought to find a wife, or an obedient son—I jest.)

Nevertheless, it does raise an interesting question doesn’t it? If creative intent is the primary force in creation, then where do those who do the drudge work of creation stand? If I sketch out the shape and a wife who knows my mind arranges my notes into a structured composition—am I the composer anymore? If Eru Ilúvatar sketches the mere themes, but leaves the rest of creation, of composition to Valar and Valier (including some truly serious bits, like creating light itself)—where does that leave our omnipotent, omnipresent “God”?

viii.

From Some Questions for the Tirion Grand Theatre by Almion, published Y.T. 1481 on the occasion of a flash strike following the ban on Lindasalmë’s Lady Tintalpa of Atyamar & cancellation of Tirion Grand Theatre's winter season.

The Tirion Grand Theatre objects to Lindasalmë’s opera, Lady Tintalpa of Atyamar, and calls it heresy for its deviation from the Divine Principles of composition, for its depiction of sexual relations, and the rejection of life. In return, we pose a few questions to illuminate the contradictions of their current stance and thus reveal the bitter truths of Elvish society in Tirion today:

1. Who appoints the slate of winter performances and how are these performances selected?
2. By what metric is The Cuckoo’s Marriage devotional art?
3. Who appointed the Vanyarin school the most divine of all compositional forms?
4. Who declared it the wisest and most beautiful of forms?
5. Who declared beauty the highest form of art in society riddled with inequality?
6. Who declared divine wisdom the province of kings and princes?
7. Who appointed the composer and placed him over the worker?
8. Who appointed the king and placed him over the composer?
9. Who appointed the Allfather and placed him over our kings?

Our composers are princes and the lives of theatre workers, stagehands, and working musicians are dictated by them, all while their artistic contributions are erased from history. This is the foundation of our society: from the Allfather who appoints authority and exists only in the fiction of kings scrambling to justify their authority, to kings, to lords, to husbands.

If any answer can be provided that does not rely on tradition, which can be changed; lineage, which is an accident; the power of kings, which is not immutable; or the power of the Allfather, who exists only in the mouths of kings and kings of kings, then, and only then, will we rescind our claims. Until then we demand full compensation for every worker at Tirion’s Grand Theatre and a reversal of the ban on Lindasalmë’s opera.

From Who Composes? by Anonymous, published in the year Fo.A. 576 in Valinor

The composer dominates our imagination, fixing time and its patterns into existence with a single pen stroke. For thousands of years, he has spoken and it has existed. Not so anymore. In revisiting the archives, a growing number of scholars have complicated the accepted myths behind some of our most mythologised pieces. There are orchestra leaders, principals, fellow composers, theatre managers, patrons, secretaries, choreographers, artists, wives, siblings, teachers, and any number of creative partners to be reckoned with. Taken in full, it might even be a miracle that we have as unified a body of musical works as we do. At the very least, it suggests creation is not an act of isolation. It is a collective act …

Who else composes? Who creates, truly? The one who makes or the one who dreams? A composition becomes music only once performed. A thousand hands fashion it into readiness: not only the composer, but the musicians, singers, conductors, collaborators, theatre workers, engineers who create acoustic perfection. Who made our world? A singular Allfather, the Valar—or have we all touched Fate and made it? Who knows the purpose and role of the Children, except that we change the Fate of the world? What do we know about our world and the threads of music that holds it together? Only that in the future, one day we all sing together. The composer begins the song, but he does not finish it. Perhaps this holds true for the Ur-Composer. Or perhaps, the Ur-Composer does not exist, and all that exists is the world that is.

ix.

From an exchange concerning the Eglath between Daeron of Doriath & Círdan of the Falas, in the Year 1481 in the Reckoning of Doriath

If we are forsaken, I don't believe it was out of any malice. However, I can’t stand this timid cowardice. If you listen to the world, you hear the strains of half-finished songs, abandoned and now turned to perpetual grief. To me, this is the cowardice of the musician who abandons the work halfway and goes on strike—not because he imagines a better world, but because he is scared. He is terrified suddenly of his own failure, that he might not play the notes correctly, that he might misinterpret, or worse the fear of the unknown: the composition that he does not fully understand. Instead of persevering, he retreats. He retreats from fear of discord, he retreats from fear of his own failure and worst of all, retreats from the fear of his own success.

But there is a greater cowardice! There is a forsaking—when the composer absents himself entirely. That is the contour of the world as we would have it, if we believe the words of the Belain. For my part, I prefer this: God is dead. The Allmother sleeps. If the Allfather ever existed then, as our forefathers believe, at best his spirit persists in us in fragmentary parts, as the father and mother pass some portion of their spirit to their children. Fate, Doom: they are an escape from the world-as-is, as much as our desperate desire for beauty is an escape from the real.

So, let others sing their prayers. I sing to the earth and the Esgalduin, to Region and to the thunder, and I listen to their songs in turn. Beneath that incomplete song, I hear the sound of perfection (to pre-empt you: no, perfection and beauty are not the same). Wouldn’t you chase perfection if you could hear it, right at the edge of your consciousness? What we could do if only we could awaken it—and I intend to. I am nothing if not a perfectionist. If there must be a revolt to free that perfect song from its shackles and awaken the true world, then so be it.

From letters exchanged between Princess Lúthien and the Lady Galadriel in F.A. 485

My mother, of course, listened, but her listening was always narrow, if not utilitarian. Her mind revolves around my father, Doriath, the Belain. I like listening luxuriously. Dangerously, even. You learn so much when you listen purposelessly. …

So, Fate, cousin. Let me be clear: I can’t go backwards; I can only move relentlessly forward in this new Fate of mine. When my father locked me up, I listened to Hírilorn and found she mourned. I listened to the world and found all of it mourned, even the Marred. Everyone’s miserable and everyone’s afraid to do anything about it. I thought, is this truly all there is? Are we all content with the Marred world? But no, I hear a struggle too: the trees, the earth, the rivers all remember the spring of Ardhon, when life thrummed in the veins of the world. Someone quenched the Song. Someone built an ugly, stifling, discordant world that binds and crushes us all and it wasn’t just Morgoth; it was all of us.

This stifling world is dying; a new world struggles to be born. In the intervening period, the monstrous flourishes and, yet, anything is possible. The best musicians smash through our self-imposed prisons and awaken us, calling new worlds into existence with their song. I didn’t sing only for love. I sang because I know that death and destruction precede every liberatory awakening. I saw through the Great Music, through the rules that govern this world. I reject Fate, I reject fatalism, but above all I reject the timid paralysis of Doom. There is no cosmic chord, no Third theme unless we sing it into existence ourselves. I sang, because I know that someone had to tear down the stifling, oppressive world, break all its rules and fates and then sing a new one into existence. My ancestors were right: the Allmother’s song must shatter the world, over and over, until at last, the chains that bind us are destroyed.

Chapter End Notes

Morben: Sindarin term for the Elves who refused to go to Valinor, with insulting & heavily racialised undertones

Glinnel/Glinnelim: Sindarin for Lindar

Minilim: Vanyar/Vanyarin

“The stifling world is dying … monstrous flourishes”: a deliberate misquotation from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks

Many of the sections above are either based on or draw heavy inspiration from music theory & certain famous works in Western classical music. These inspirations in order are: minimalism, Ars Musica or Renaissance music theory, aleatoric music, twelve tone technique (serialism + atonality), Scriabin's Mysterium, mathematical music / stochastic music derived from scientific equations, Wagner's Gotterdammerung, and some of the feminist readings & debates around Gustav & Alma Mahler's marriage. 

Non-canonical Quenya and Sindarin names are taken from Chestnut_pod's Elvish name list or from realelvish.net.

Big thank you to Caracalliope for betaing this.

Leave a Comment