Halfling Hymns

My role on the Council is that of “Bombadillion.” The name is taken from the character Tom Bombadil from Book I of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. He’s famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for singing without a care in the world with his wife, Goldberry, and for being one of the few characters capable of completely resisting Sauron’s Ring of Power. I just thought it sounded cool, but it also works regarding my theming for Halfling Hymns as a whole!

These are just a few of the chords that I managed to pick out of the first verse of "Misty Mountains." Each of these blocks of circles represents a triad of notes, which, when played together, make a chord. Chords can be major, minor, and a butt-ton of other things, too, but we're just focusing on major and minor chords here. Note that I crudely wrote some Roman and Arabic numerals underneath each triad. You don't have to worry about what they mean in their entirety, but for my point, just know that a capital Roman numeral means the chord is major, and a lower-case Roman numeral means the chord is minor. Already, you can tell that Shore decides to switch between major and minor chords rather liberally. For example, in the first line ("Far over the misty mountains cold..."), Shore switches from a minor "i" chord (a G minor chord) to a major "VII" chord (an F major chord). Composers tend to do this kind of thing a lot, especially in a tonal setting. It gives music variety that allows it to keep moving and flowing. After all, music tends to tell stories, and a story would be boring if it only used one chord all the time.

Now, I wanted to draw your attention to the fourth chord I analyzed here. That bottom note is an E-natural, a note that doesn't normally show up in G minor at all. E-flat does, but not E-natural. This is what's called "modal mixture," where composers will "borrow" a note that would show up in the parallel major key of a chord. For example, E-natural is NOT in G minor...but it IS in G major, the parallel key of G minor, so Shore decides to throw one in to create a chord that sounds like it would be in G major even though the whole piece is in G minor. It really helps to give the sense of one slowly starting to step outside their door, especially when pared with the lyrics "...ere break of day...," where the chord change happens (I've underlined the word where the "ii" chord begins).

But Howard Shore isn't done yet! He goes from that slightly outside-of-the-key "ii" chord to a major "VI" chord (...to find our long...), which sounds even more foreign in that context. It helps invoke a sense of displacement that the Dwarves are trying to wrestle with throughout the song. Notice that, in order for a "VI" chord to be created, it has to use E-flat, so the E-natural is replaced by that E-flat at the last possible second to give that change extra oomph. By the end of the phrase, we're back at the "i" chord we started in, and the process repeats for the second verse.