{"id":1219,"date":"2010-09-08T23:04:38","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T03:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1219"},"modified":"2015-09-24T22:48:46","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T02:48:46","slug":"polovetsian-dances-and-the-sorcerors-apprentice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1219","title":{"rendered":"Dances for Tolkien"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n

Dances for Tolkien<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Polovetsian Dances by Alexander Borodin (with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov) (1890)<\/h3>\n

The Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice by Paul Dukas (1897)<\/h3>\n

Encountered 1961?<\/h3>\n

I come now to a record, indeed a kind of record, that seems to have disappeared, even from the electronic yard sale racks of E-Bay.\u00a0 Heaven only knows where my own copy disappeared to, probably four decades ago.\u00a0 I\u2019m speaking of my grocery store classical music anthology.<\/p>\n

Many people can remember grocery store encyclopedias, sold a volume a week<\/a>.[1] This was the same idea, but instead of volumes, the grocery store would sell classical records.\u00a0 Along with the first one, you got a leatherette binder about four inches thick, all in burgundy with black accents and gold lettering, with a title something like The Treasury of the World\u2019s Great Music<\/em>.\u00a0 Whatever the title was exactly, I know it suggested that once you bought and learned about all the pieces inside, you\u2019d be a connoisseur.\u00a0 Well, I wanted to be that, so I persuaded my mom to pop for a dollar or so at the A&P on Huron Street each time one more piece of vinyl sophistication was issued.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said before, my parents were out to make an intellectual, so they took little persuading.\u00a0 They had their own quite extensive collection of classical music, but if I wanted a set for myself, they\u2019d see to it that I got one.<\/p>\n

The arrival of each LP was an event.\u00a0 Each record came in a sleeve punched to fit in the binder.\u00a0 Accompanying it was a lavishly-illustrated (in black ink plus one extra color) leaflet, I think of eight pages, that told you all about the pieces on the record, and the life of the composer.\u00a0 I\u2019d crack open the cellophane package, unscrew the binder, insert my leaflet and liner, rescrew it, and get right to work listening and reading.<\/p>\n

And this was what brought Beethoven and Bach and Berlioz and Grieg and Tchaikovsky and a host of others into my life.\u00a0 I learned of Beethoven\u2019s deafness, and what his symphonies sounded like (I think they packaged two of them).\u00a0 I learned that something had been dreadfully wrong with Tchaikovsky\u2019s marriage (though not precisely what) and how he had been rescued by the kindly benefactress Mme. Von Meck, and I came to recognize the sound of the Path\u00e9tique<\/em>.\u00a0 And incidentally, I came across the perfect theme music to accompany one of my most gripping literary experiences.<\/p>\n

I wish I could tell you exactly when my parents introduced me to J.R.R. Tolkien.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty certain it was sort of an afterthought after I\u2019d kind of exhausted C.S. Lewis\u2019 Narnia series.\u00a0 I had literally grown up with the Narnia books; Lewis had started to publish them in 1950, and my mother and I were living in London then, and she bought them for me hot off the press.\u00a0 I still have The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em> and Prince Caspian<\/em> in their British hardback editions, much the worse for wear.\u00a0 By 1956, though, Lewis had finished his seventh and last Narnia book.[2]\u00a0 Somewhere my parents heard about Tolkien, how he was somewhat the same kind of thing.<\/p>\n

And so, kind of as an experiment, I think, they got me the first Houghton Mifflin edition hardback Tolkien.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That took \u2013 boy, did it take!\u00a0 So they bought me the second, and then the third.\u00a0 Again, I still have these, though unfortunately the dust jackets are long gone.\u00a0 I read them over and over.\u00a0 I copied runes, and actually tried to send people messages in runes.\u00a0 And of course I was making a movie in my head, though I had no idea how it could possibly be done.[3]<\/p>\n

I have a memory of reading The Lord of the Rings<\/em> in my bed early in the morning. There was a second-floor window close to the head of my bed, and there was a mulberry tree below it on which birds liked to perch and sing.\u00a0 In summer the windows would be open (no air conditioning).\u00a0 So naturally I\u2019d be up early.\u00a0 It was a wonderful, quiet time.\u00a0 And there I would sit with various books.<\/p>\n

I could riff on some of the other books, but my point is that I very specifically recall the thrill of reading Tolkien sitting there.\u00a0 And while I was reading it, I often had playing softly, so as not to wake my parents (on my grey two-tone Columbia record player) one particular record from The Treasury of the World\u2019s Great Music<\/em>.\u00a0 This LP combined on one side the symphonic version of Borodin\u2019s Polovetsian Dances<\/em> and Dukas\u2019 The Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice<\/em>.\u00a0 Now with all respect to Howard Shore\u2019s estimable soundtrack for the Peter Jackson\u2019s near-definitive movies, once you\u2019ve listened to these pieces, you will never think of Shore as being in the same class in capturing the thrill of those books.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know that these pieces were written to capture something rather different.\u00a0 Borodin (together with his posthumous collaborators Mussorgsky and Glazunov), was seeking to convey the exoticism of the Central Asian Polovtsi people, who are not Russian like the audience, and not the good guys.\u00a0 Paul Dukas was setting an ancient cautionary tale in a dark but humorous scherzo.\u00a0 And probably I would never have associated these things with Tolkien if I\u2019d seen them in their more accustomed settings, the grand opera for Borodin (see a video here<\/a>), and Fantasia<\/em> for Dukas (see the complete video here<\/a>).\u00a0 I was at least on notice with the Dukas, as there was in my booklet a still of Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice from the 1940 movie.\u00a0 But it made little impression.<\/p>\n

If you can listen to these pieces without that baggage, though, you can see what wonderful accompaniments they make to Tolkien\u2019s epic.\u00a0 You think about what\u2019s in those books and, as they say, there\u2019s an app for that.<\/p>\n

Much of the books is about traveling, mostly to unfamiliar, desolate places.\u00a0 Listen to the opening notes of the Introduction to the Dances<\/em>, and see if you don\u2019t agree this is perfect.\u00a0 This is the theme that got made into the song Stranger in Paradise<\/em> in the musical Kismet<\/em>.\u00a0 It combines wonder with just the right subdued quality to mirror the emotions of the Fellowship as they would cross downs and tramp through forests.\u00a0\u00a0 The same theme turns up in the fifth movement, the Moderato alla breve, and there there\u2019s so much filigree and ornamentation jumping mischievously around, you could envision the younger hobbits doing foolish things while on the road.<\/p>\n

And when you get to the second movement, the Allegro Vivo, it will conjure up troops of horsemen, the Rohirrim, let us say.<\/p>\n

Movement three, the Allegro: at least intermittently a battle scene.\u00a0 It would work with the big fight outside Minas Tirith, for instance.<\/p>\n

Movement four, the Presto: a fight or a flight by night, such as might have happened at the Inn at Bree, or Weathertop.\u00a0 This theme returns in the sixth movement, also a Presto.<\/p>\n

The final movement, Allegro con spiritu, known to Kismet<\/em> fans as Not Since Nineveh<\/em>, conjures up a busy town like Minas Tirith.<\/p>\n

Now, although there are certainly dark notes in Polovetsian Dances<\/em>, they don\u2019t begin to compare with the darkness in Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice<\/em>.\u00a0 There\u2019s definitely a wintry kind of joviality there too, obviously, but this is programmatic music, and the story it tells is set in a sorceror\u2019s den.\u00a0 Which is the ideal place to begin a setting of Tolkien; the Ring, after all, starts in exactly such a place.\u00a0 There are other dark places in the story, lots of them, Mirkwood, and Weathertop by night, and the mines of Moria, and the Paths of the Dead, and Shelob\u2019s Lair, and Mordor itself.\u00a0 And Dukas\u2019 brooding tones are perfect for this.<\/p>\n

The apprentice is a Pippin type, getting in trouble through bumptious overconfidence.\u00a0 The capriccioso themes that depict him work perfectly for that.<\/p>\n

And then there is music depicting something magic gone completely out of control \u2013 which is really what Tolkien\u2019s whole story is all about.\u00a0 It gets more and more tumultuous and scary, until it stops.\u00a0 Just like Tolkien.<\/p>\n

Obviously the books are long and the pieces are short, less than 20 minutes total, which is why they fit nicely on a single side of an LP.\u00a0 And obviously I was listening to lots of other things over the several readings I gave those books.\u00a0 But there was never any question what record of mine gave the most scope to my musing how to make \u2013 and score \u2013 a movie based on them.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]. In fact, I\u2019ve recently seen a 2008 blog post<\/a> that suggests these are still available somewhere.<\/p>\n

[2]. I believe, although I cannot substantiate this with Web research, that the American editions came out somewhat later.\u00a0 I think, for instance, I was given the last one, The Last Battle<\/em>, shortly after its American publication.\u00a0 And I certainly was older than seven, which is the age I turned in 1956, the date of its British publication.<\/p>\n

[3].\u00a0 Peter Jackson, who actually directed the epic film trilogy, and who must have been born just about exactly the time I was discovering Tolkien (Halloween 1961 was his birthdate), would have to await digital technology just like everyone else.<\/p>\n

Copyright (C) Jack L. B. Gohn, except for album and book artwork<\/p>\n

Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I very specifically recall the thrill of reading Tolkien sitting there. And while I was reading it, I often had playing softly, so as not to wake my parents, one particular record from The Treasury of the World\u2019s Great Music. This LP combined on one side the symphonic version of Borodin\u2019s Polovetsian Dances and Dukas\u2019 The Sorceror\u2019s Apprentice. Now with all respect to Howard Shore\u2019s estimable soundtrack for the Peter Jackson\u2019s near-definitive movies, once you\u2019ve listened to these pieces, you will never think of Shore as being in the same class in capturing the thrill of those books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[968],"tags":[1190,1192,1222,1227,1221,1225,1209,1211,1199,1210,1202,1203,1215,1196,1195,1207,1201,1216,1198,1200,1214,981,1231,1220,1228,1232,1205,1191,1218,1206,1230,1194,1204,980,1233,1187,1188,1224,1213,1189,1223,1229,1217,1219,1212,1208,1193,1197,1226],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theme-songs","tag-alexander-borodin","tag-alexander-glazunov","tag-allegro","tag-allegro-con-spiritu","tag-allegro-vivo","tag-bree","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-chronicles-of-narnia","tag-classical-music","tag-clive-staples-lewis","tag-edvard-grieg","tag-edward-grieg","tag-fantasia","tag-grocery-store-classical-records","tag-grocery-store-encyclopedias","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-johann-sebastian-bach","tag-kismet","tag-lps","tag-ludwig-van-beethoven","tag-mickey-mouse","tag-minas-tirith","tag-mirkwood","tag-moderato-alla-breve","tag-mordor","tag-moria","tag-nadezhda-von-meck","tag-nikolai-rimsky-korsakov","tag-not-since-nineveh","tag-pathetique-symphony","tag-paths-of-the-dead","tag-paul-dukas","tag-peter-ilyich-tchaikosky","tag-peter-jackson","tag-pippin-took","tag-polovetsian-dances","tag-polovtsian-dances","tag-presto","tag-prince-caspian","tag-prince-igor","tag-rohirrim","tag-shelobs-lair","tag-stranger-in-paradise","tag-the-last-battle","tag-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-the-sorcerors-apprentice","tag-the-treasury-of-the-worlds-great-music","tag-weathertop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5456,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions\/5456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}