The JRRT Audio Collection

A review by Martin Baker

Introduction

Following my review of Caedmon Audio's The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring Performed by JRR Tolkien I am very pleased to be able to review The Tolkien Audio Collection, performed by JRR Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien.

Presentation

The Collection comprises four audio cassettes presented in a card box. The box itself is nicely decked out in black with accents of green: a slightly "retro" feel. The front illustration is Tolkien's own illustration of Hobbiton, looking towards the Hill.

It is frustrating (or interesting, depending upon your personality) that the three Caedmon Tolkien collections are each packaged differently. The JRR Tolkien Audio Collection box opens out to present the four cassettes each in their own card sleeve. As I have previously described, The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring Performed by JRR Tolkien has the single cassette held in a plastic tray that slides out from the card packaging. Perhaps most successfully, The Lord of the Rings Performed by JRR Tolkien has the cassette in its own plastic box with colour insert card. In each case, unfortunately, the card packaging is flimsy and creases easily (I would recommend buying these at a bookstore, not by post).

Turning back to the Audio Collection itself, I will treat the four cassettes in order.

Tape One

1: The Hobbit - read by JRRT
2: The Fellowship of the Ring - read by JRRT

Tape One is also available from Caedmon Audio as The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring Performed by JRR Tolkien (CF 1477, ISBN: 1-55991-631-8). I have reviewed this tape previously and so will not here repeat all my earlier comments: forgive me though if I cut in the following, rather than compose it afresh!

On side One Tolkien reads the chapter Riddles in the Dark from The Hobbit. To my ignorant ears Gollum seems to speaking in a shrill Welsh accent, which is a real revelation! (Okay, it probably isn't really Welsh, but it sounds so to these untutored ears).

Side Two is a selection of poems and songs from The Fellowship of the Ring, starting with Gandalf's powerful rendition of the Ring Inscription from The Shadow of the Past. Do you want to hear Tolkien chortle? His laugh of evident delight at the end of a spirited rendition of Water hot!! makes you wonder at the celebration of bath-time in the Tolkien household!

Most fans are aware of Tolkien's personal identification with the Tale of Beren and Tinuviel. Reading here (as Strider) the abridged version of the greater Tale, Tolkien's voice betrays the personal resonances. Delivered with quiet emotion this is easily the most moving piece in the collection.

But if the poems and songs on the tape are gems, then Tolkien's rendition of Sam's Troll Song is the Arkenstone. Nothing I could write here could do it justice, you simply have to hear it for yourself!

Tape Two

1: The Two Towers - read by JRRT
2: The Return of the King - read by JRRT

Tape Two is also available from Caedmon Audio as The Lord of the Rings Performed by JRR Tolkien (CPN 1478, ISBN: 0-89845-223-6).

On side One we have Sam and Gollum discussing stewed rabbit (and fish and chips!) Tolkien is better by far reading the tales and songs of Treebeard and the Ents. His (Tolkien's no less than Fangorn's) love of trees and sorrow at their destruction.

But for me side Two is the stronger, with a powerful and moving account of the Muster and Ride of the Rohirrim. Close your eyes and you are there with Merry amongst Théoden's host on the long ride to Mundburg. Tolkien is best of all (perhaps understandably) reading the poetry of Rohan: some of which once I taught myself but never rendered like this. This, perhaps, is what it was like to hear the bards of old tell their tales of glory hard won, slaughter upon fields red with blood.

A sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

Such words and sentiments resound uneasily in these days. Responding (as my heart must) to the words evokes questions about the responsibilities of nation and individual and the proper response to alien aggression.

Tape Three

1: The Road Goes Ever On (song cycle) - Donald Swann / William Elvin
2: Poems from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - read by JRRT

I was delighted to find this selection included. Many moons ago - when I was in my teens, in fact, and first discovering Tolkien - I sent off for an LP record (youngsters will have to bear with me: there used to be these things called LPs ...) called The Road Goes Ever On, from a company called Caedmon Records. It became one of my favourites. To this day, despite wonderful recordings by other artists, The Road remains for me the definitive musical rendering of Tolkien's poems and songs. There was a large format hardback book too, which I have in my collection, containing the words and musical score, together with commentary by Tolkien himself.

The song cycle (side One of the tape) is sung by the appositely named William Elvin to music arranged and played at the piano by Donald Swann (he, I believe, of The Hippopotamus Song fame). All tracks are wonderful, together and taken as a whole, but if I had to pick two special treasure they would be Namárië and Errantry. In days past I taught myself these two pieces and can still sing them in full. Sadly not with Elvin's vocal repertoire.

On side Two Tolkien reads most of the poems from the collection published as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. The collection opens, though, with a spirited rendition of A Elbereth Gilthoniel (the insert incorrectly has this down as being on Side One). All the poems are read with great confidence: rather more so than many of the pieces on tapes One and Two.

My favourite track is The Sea-Bell, which the insert says is at the end of Side One. (These errors are minor in themselves but the number of mistakes is disappointing). The Sea-Bell tells the tale of a mortal carried to the Immortal Lands across the sea. There he finds none will acknowledge him. In anger and frustration he decks himself out and declaims in challenge:

Here now I stand / king of this land / with gladden sword and reed mace
Answer my call / come forth all / speak to me words / show me a face!

The pall of darkness and rejection that is his only response recalls to me in miniature the cataclysmic rejection of the challenge of Númenor on the shores of the Uttermost West. The poem is supposedly ( little basis in fact) attributed to Frodo (it is subtitled Frodo's Dreme) in his lonely last days in the Shire before his passage into the West. But surely in this rendition we hear Tolkien's own fears and hopes for himself, as he challenges the borders of the Perilous Realm.

Tape Four

1: & 2: The Silmarillion of Beren and Lúthien - read by Christopher Tolkien

This recording was a total revelation to me, in two senses. I had never before heard the voice of Christopher Tolkien and it was wonderful to discover that he is a fine orator. Going further, I would say the son's telling of this lengthy tale (to his credit it does not seem long and ends all too soon) lends the words a high dignity and presence the father might never have achieved.

The second revelation was fully appreciating the interwoven complexity of this, arguably the central tale in the entire Middle-earth mythos. Tolkien is often (slightly mis-) quoted as saying that Middle-earth arose out of a need to develop a world in which his sub-created languages might have been spoken.

Listening to the Tale of Beren and Lúthien I realised that in some sense the whole of Middle-earth exists only as a stage upon which the Story of their love and Doom might be played out. Such an idea is worthy of debate, perhaps, though this is not the place.

Conclusion

Buy this collection and listen to it lots. And be prepared for Middle-earth to get inside you in new ways.

The JRR Tolkien Audio Collection is available from Caedmon Audio (an imprint of Harper Audio). Catalogue number CPN 101. ISBN: 1-55994-675-X

First published in Reunion issue 16, March 2000