Tolkien

Updated: September 5, 2004

The Road Goes Ever On

Why this page?
Thanks for visiting this section of my home portal. It contains a draft page (IExplorer based) for Jeremy's Tolkien-Archives website with digitally remastered tracks of my original "The Road Goes Ever On" vinyl record from 1967. Due to limited server space the mp3 music files and song text are located on a home server. By clicking on the song image below you will be taken to that site. Unfortunately the upload speed of the home server is limited to 128 kbit/s, so you will have to be a bit patient when downloading files. Alternatively, you can go to the Tolkien Archives (see above link) or Kitya Karlson's site for a faster download.

While watching the magnificent first episode of the Lord of the Rings, I remembered I still had an old scratchy vinyl record in the attic with Tolkien reading parts from Tom Bombadil and songs from the Lord of the Rings set to music by pianist Donald Swann and sung by William (what's in a name) Elvin. The music has a Schubert-like "classic" touch that was popular for song compositions up to the second part of the last century. It is easily understandable that the classically educated Tolkien must have enjoyed this project and wholeheartedly supported it with his readings and calligraphy. I think Donald Swann has beautifully captured the melancholic tone in Tolkien's verses and created an musical atmosphere that also fits the LOTR movie very well. The recording was made in 1967. I found it at a sale many years later and the quality was poor.

My first action was to go to the internet to check for a digital copy. It seemed logical that multiple other Tolkien freaks had bought this record, had done a better job in storing it, and transferring it into digital format. Alas, nothing available. Multiple searches ended without success.

The songs and the music score have been published in 1967 as well (first edition). A cassette version of the record is available as audiobook, but that quality is not expected to be much better than the vinyl record. Some of the songs apparently ended up in the Millenium edition of LOTR, which seems to be out of print, according to the Tolkien Collector site, who further is not that enthousiastic about the songs. Martin Baker at the Tolkien Society, however, calls it "The definitive musical rendering of Tolkien's poems and songs". The Tolkien site from Randy Simcox has some midi versions of the songs.

I eventually got to the website built for the late Donald Swann. This site is devoted to Donald and his compositions. It mentioned that a CD version of the music may become available by July 2002. This date was later moved to late October 2002.

Digital remastering effort
Not willing to wait until that time I undertook the unearthly task to digitally remaster my old vinyl record and eliminate as much of the clicks and noise without seriously affecting the original recording. I should better have waited for the new CD: Even with quite sophisticated music editing software it took about me 80 hours to clean up this recording, eliminating over 20.000 clicks and pops in some songs and restoring clipped or otherwise deformed parts. Most of the remastering could be done with automated software tools, but some parts had to be restored manually. With 44.100 samples in each second you can guess what it will take to edit even a few seconds by hand. The good news is that, after this record, I won't have any problems remastering any other old vinyl record that I have.

A first remastered cut is shared with you below to give you an impression of this music. Not all faults could be fixed in this release, and may never get fixed: There are more fun things to do in life. After finalizing this site I did manage to find Kitya Karlson's Russian site that had a sample of the Donald Swann songs of the record. You will find it here. This is a monaural mp3 rendering at 64 kb/s. Kitya was kind enough to post my remastered files on his site as well, so you can download them directly from the above link.

As Tolkien fan I couldn't resist checking all song references with his books, and found one incorrect reference on "In Western lands", which is from Book 6, Chapter 1, rather than from Book 4.

New edition of "The Road"
I just bought the new edition of the book. It contains the score and the lyrics of the songs, surrounded by beautifully printed Elvish poems and an introduction by Leon Berger, who manages the Donald Swann legacy. It is published with Harper Collins under ISBN 0-00-713655-2, and can be bought a bookstores as well as on the web, with amazon.com etc.

As an extra it has a CD with the Donald Swann compositions (time: 22:23). I checked with Leon Berger to find if the old vinyl record would be re-released as well; This is not planned. The extra CD only contains the songs, so half of the original record from 1967.

At least not all my remastering effort was wasted. On listening closely to the CD, I noticed that the original stereo rendering in "Beatles" stereo - voice primarily on right channel and piano on the left - had been replaced by a monaureal rendering. This was obviously done to reduce noise, but it eliminates the room acoustics and thereby some of the uniqueness of the recording. I further noticed that some of the problems that I encountered on my vinyl album, and spent lots of time to fix, actually were in the original recording. They have not been fixed on the CD. Example is the short recording error in the first seconds of "I sit beside the fire". Last but not least: The official remastering, having had the advantage of an original studio tape recording, isn't actually that much better than my own remastered version. That means audio enthousiasts with a fast PC, good software, dedication to the subject and the willingness to spend time can do just as good as a professional studio. Same is true for remastered version of other old recordings, such as from Kathleen Ferrier or Enrico Caruso, which can almost fully be restored if someone would be willing to spend months to remaster and restore them.

A great extra on the CD are two tracks that were privately recorded and were not earlier available to my knowledge. The first is "Bilbo's Last Song" with introduction by Donald Swann (4:16). The second is "Luthien Tinuviel" from the Silmarillion (1:41).

Unlike my remastering, which is done from a record in my own collection, the re-released songs are copyright protected, so I will not make them available on this website. If you're a true Tolkien fan you should buy the beautiful book and the CD at the store, if only for the two extra songs. It sells for around $ 24.

Remastered Songs
Click on a song, and you will be taken to a page with the lyrics and an mp3 link using Pauline Baynes' original Mordor drawing from the cover of the album. If you are interested in more details, like to have a higher quality version, or if you have other Tolkien recordings and need advice on remastering you can contact me here: .