The Road Goes Ever On
First edition (Houghton Mifflin)
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| Author |
J. R. R. Tolkien (lyrics & main text) Donald Swann (music) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | sheet music & commentary |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin (USA) George Allen & Unwin (UK) |
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Publication date
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31 October 1967 (USA) 14 March 1968 (UK) |
| Media type | print; in audio as Poems and Songs of Middle-earth |
| Preceded by | The Tolkien Reader |
| Followed by | Smith of Wootton Major |
The Road Goes Ever On is a song cycle that has been published as sheet music and as an audio recording. The music was written by Donald Swann, and the words are taken from poems in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings.
The title of this opus is taken from "The Road Goes Ever On", the first song in the collection. The songs form a song cycle, designed to fit together when played in sequence.
With Tolkien's approval, Donald Swann wrote the music for this song cycle, and much of the music resembles English traditional music or folk music. The sole exception is the Quenya song "Namárië," which was based on a tune by Tolkien himself and which has some affinities to Gregorian chant.
This book has been valued even by those uninterested in the music, since it helps Tolkien's readers to better understand the cultures of the various mythological beings presented in Middle-earth, and helps linguists analyse Tolkien's poetry. For example, it contains one of the longest samples of the language Quenya (in the song "Namárië"), as well as the Sindarin prayer "A Elbereth Gilthoniel" with grammatical explanations.
Also, in addition to the sheet music, the book includes an introduction that contains additional information about Middle-earth. Prior to the publication of The Silmarillion, this introduction was the only publicly available source for certain information about the First Age of Middle-earth.
The first edition of The Road Goes Ever On: a Song Cycle was published on 31 October 1967, in the United States.
An LP record of this song cycle was recorded on 12 June 1967, with Donald Swann on piano and William Elvin singing. Side one of this record consisted of Tolkien himself reading five poems from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. The first track on side two was Tolkien reading the Elvish prayer "A Elbereth Gilthoniel". The remainder of side two contained the song cycle performed by Swann and Elvin. This LP record, entitled Poems and Songs of Middle Earth and released by Caedmon Records (TC 1231), is long out of print and very difficult to find.
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