It’s Time to Start the Music

           Lots of mythologies have creation stories detailing how the world was formed, and by whom it was made. Tolkien’s Legendarium is no different, with the very first pages of The Silmarillion illustrating the creation of the Ainur by Eru’s very thought followed by the Music of Creation. The topic we ended class with on Wednesday revolved with what exactly the music of the Ainur might sound like, and how exactly music might function as a method of creation. I think that it’s necessary to mention that the Ainur’s music accomplishes no actual creation. Tolkien himself acknowledges this in his letter to Milton Waldman: “These latter [Valar] are as we should say angelic powers whose function is to exercise delegated authority in their spheres (of rule and government, not creation, making or re-making” (Letters 146). Rather, it’s through their singing to the themes set forth by Eru that they establish their domains. Ulmo sung most of water, Manwë the air, and Aulë the earth, and so these were their spheres. Music functions as a method of imparting knowledge and influence over specific areas, but it in no way creates. The Ainur were granted a vision of the creation their music had wrought, but it is in fact their responsibility to actually produce this vision. Arda is not made through the Music of Creation, but by the will of Eru, and the Ainur who entered Ëa had to shape the world and sub-create in order to achieve the vision granted to them.

            In the Ainulindalë, there are specific references to Time, suggesting that by existing outside of Ëa, Eru and Ainur exist outside of time. The story told to the elves by the Valar specifically note that Eru “chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time” (Silmarillion 7) and that before the creation of the world Eru and the Ainur existed in the “Timeless Halls” (Silmarillion 10). While the word timeless could be construed in a way where it is possible that time still existed in the primordial dwelling of Eru, in an early draft of the Ainulindalë Tolkien writes that “there was Ilúvatar, the All-Father, and he made the first Ainur, the holy ones, the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before Time”(HME 5 171). Taken to mean existing without time, the narrative structure of the Ainulindalë seems to fall apart. Without Time, there could be no chronological series of events, at least as we could understand it. However, I realize that The Silmarillion is told by the elves, who also would not have a concept of events happening without time. It would be like a human being able to imagine exactly what 4D, 5D, …, nD  space would look like: not possible. Therefore, the narrative delivered might be the best attempt at reconciling their inability to comprehend timelessness. However, timelessness has an interesting implication on the Music of Creation, because theoretically , without the chronological structure that time gives to the story of creation, the music of the Ainur might have been one great chord that heralded in the creation of the world. A “big bang” of sorts, with grandeur on par with God saying “Let there be light” or even Eru saying “Ëa! Let these things Be!” (Silmarillion 9).

            Let’s consider the opposite , where time maybe does have some meaning in the Void. Music is definitely an interesting method of creation because of the narrative quality that music has. The themes set forth by Eru give the Ainur a basis of sorts for their music, and from these themes the Ainur develop variations and harmony that represent some concept of creation. The narrative value of the Ainur’s music is distinctly seen when Eru gives them the vision of what they had made, and the vision showed them a series of events, a history. However, when some of the Ainur came into the world, the vision likely diverged from the events depicted in Tolkien’s Legendarium. This is like the difference in what a composer intends when writing music versus what performers interpret when reading the music. Inevitably, a performer will put a personal touch on the music: they could change the volume of parts of the music, manipulate the tempo, or even make alterations to solos a composer might have included.

In some sense, the Music of Creation somewhat mimics the creation story of the Christian religion because in Jubilees, God creates all of the angels on the first day. The angels, notably, have a sort of domain, such as “angels of the spirit of fire,” “angels of the spirit of the winds,” and “the angels of the spirits of cold and heat and winter and springtime and harvest and summer” (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 55). God’s angels and Eru’s Ainur function in two very, very key ways: they both sing and they have domains. Angels’ primary purpose might be to minister to God, but in the beginning the Ainur almost exclusively sang for Eru. Now, when developing his Legendarium–or discovering it, as he has claimed on several occasions–Tolkien writes of a pantheon that “can yet be accepted– well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity” (Letters 146). While he was an ardent opponent to Allegory, and furiously denies any purposeful Allegory within his Legendarium, there is a glimmer of similarity between Tolkien’s creation story and that of the Christian religion.

-NP