Tolkieniana

The lavish (and divisive) TV series "The Rings of Power" has, in recent weeks, reignited mainstream interest in the legendarium conceived by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; an interest that, in truth, has never really faded, at least since 2001, when the first instalment of Peter Jackson's trilogy began bringing the world of Arda and Middle-earth from the pages of the books to the big screen. Yet the Tolkienian universe has exerted a recognisable influence on music for far longer than that. Beyond the countless indirect fascinations tied to fantasy imagery, which are almost impossible to enumerate, various corners of pop music have, since as early as the late Sixties, produced artists who explicitly drew on characters, places and events described in the British author's works. This article, and the playlist accompanying it, will attempt to map out that geography.

"The Lord of the Rings" was published in English-speaking countries between 1954 and 1955, split across three volumes. Before that, the philologist J.R.R. Tolkien had already released another narrative work set in the same world: "The Hobbit", published in 1937. "The Silmarillion", on the other hand, only reached bookshops after the author's death, completed with the help of his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1977. In the meantime, the writer's works had been translated and released in a great many countries: as early as 1957, "The Lord of the Rings" was available in Dutch, and in the years that followed, Swedish and Polish editions were prepared. The first Italian edition came out between 1967 and 1970, the German one between 1969 and 1970, the French between 1972 and 1973, and the Japanese between 1972 and 1975. This wide time span runs parallel to the spread of Tolkien's influence in music, which follows chronological milestones clearly tied to the publication dates of the national editions of his best-known work: first Britain and the United States, then Bo Hansson's Sweden, followed by the rest of Europe.

The web connecting pop music and Middle-earth spreads across genres, but it involves some strands more substantially than others. To avoid scattering an already sprawling story into a thousand tributaries, we'll focus here on four areas: folk, new age, progressive rock and metal. These are territories with considerable overlap, united not only by musical traits such as a taste for expansiveness and elaborate instrumental interplay, but also by two fundamental premises: a search for evocation, and escapism. The latter is understood as a flight from everyday life towards distant horizons — sometimes vague and mystical, but often endowed with a complex structure of their own (see: worldbuilding) — wrapped in an epic, legendary dimension that blends well with historical, science-fiction or fantasy storytelling, such as that found in "The Lord of the Rings" and Tolkien's other works.

The journey mapped out by the playlist begins with familiar themes and names well known to fans of the Tolkienian cinematic universe. It kicks off with the splendid "This Wandering Day", which graces the fifth episode of the series airing on Amazon Prime: an effective exercise in Celtic style, built around the famous line "Not All Who Wander Are Lost", taken from "Strider's Riddle" in "The Fellowship of the Ring".

Still on acoustic ground, two extracts follow from a pair of superb tribute albums: the first is in fact a quadrilogy ("An Evening in Rivendell"/"A Night In Rivendell"/"At Dawn In Rivendell"/"Leaving Rivendell") recorded between 1997 and 2003 by the Danish chamber ensemble Tolkien Ensemble; the project The Fellowship, also born in the Nineties, instead operates within a kind of fantastical musicology. Bringing together ancient instruments and performers of the calibre of Jon Anderson, and drawing on the collaboration of linguists and Tolkien scholars, the collective led by Carvin Knowles attempts something akin to Orff's "Carmina Burana": reconstructing the sound of the cultures Tolkien imagined, based on his descriptions, the many song lyrics scattered throughout his works, and the plausible historical development of the music and languages of Arda. A purpose the author would surely have appreciated, given that he famously built his narratives to provide a credible "setting" for the artificial languages he had long been devising for elves, orcs and dwarves.

Even before contributing to the soundtrack of "The Fellowship of the Ring", the Irish singer Enya, a guiding light of Celtic new age, had already explored Middle-earth on a track from "Shepherd Moons", her fourth solo album. Howard Shore's theme for the first film of the Noughties trilogy is itself echoed in the selected track by the Italian act Gian Castello, active since the Eighties at the crossroads of neo-prog, new age and Celtic music.

The transition into new age is marked by another intermediate piece, Sally Oldfield's "Songs Of Quendi", taken from the splendid "Water Bearer" (1978) and dedicated to the elves ("quendi" is in fact the word for "elves" in Quenya, the "elvish Latin" devised by Tolkien). Tracks credited to Palantír (stage name of the German musician Christian Schimmöller), Gandalf (a.k.a. the Austrian Heinz Strobl), Joel Vandroogenbroeck, Arturo Stalteri, Shadowfax (the English name of Shadowfax, the horse ridden by the wizard Gandalf) and Marco Lo Muscio gradually lead us through progressive electronic, modern classical and fusion territory: both the style and the artists involved make it clear that the Tolkienian trail, even within new age, runs largely alongside the progressive world. A side note: although the concept album "Rings" by former Pierrot Lunaire member Arturo Stalteri came out in 2003, the project had actually been in the works since the mid-Seventies, and several period recordings were later collected on "Early Rings: Compositions 1974-1975", released in 2005.

Sliding further towards prog-rock, we reach the chamber-style sound of the Swedish band Isildur's Bane, a name emblematic of the progressive revival, who debuted in 1981 with an album explicitly themed around "The Lord of the Rings", "Sagan Om Ringen". Next comes a track from the definitive Tolkienian concept record in the progressive field, which shares the very same title: the 1970 debut by fellow Swede Bo Hansson, entirely instrumental and touched by graceful easy-listening flourishes. Camel, Argent and Barclay James Harvest are well-known names on the early-Seventies British scene, while the most prominent face of Eighties neo-prog, Marillion, took their name from a contraction of "Silmarillion" (Barclay James Harvest, incidentally, released a single under a decidedly Tolkienian pseudonym in 1972: Bombadil).

Gandalf and Smoke, on the other hand, belong to the late-Sixties American scene, their disciplined psychedelic style imaginable as a bridge between sunshine pop and that "stars-and-stripes prog" which perhaps could have been, but truth be told, never quite was.

The lack of any real dividing line between electric folk, progressive rock and the nascent hard-rock scene — not just musically, but also in terms of literary inspiration — is plain to see in the tracks by Rush, Led Zeppelin and the by-then-former Cream member Jack Bruce, and ultimately even in the psychedelic reinterpretation of the Ring Verse offered by the American band Pearls Before Swine, darker in tone and closer to territory associated with the Nurse With Wound List.

Venturing fully into metal territory, the dominant tone shifts. Where the earlier tracks favoured luminous atmospheres and references to forests, elves and benevolent characters, as the sound thickens the references grow darker too: orcs and wizards corrupted by evil crop up far more often in song titles, alongside words tied to destruction, downfall, the end, loss, twilight. Band names, too, frequently draw on locations associated with tragic episodes in Tolkien's narrative.

The range of subgenres touched on is broad: Sabbath-style stoner (Orange Goblin), melodic death (Amon Amarth), hard/AOR (Bob Catley, singer with the late-progressive band Magnum), avant- (the Italian band Ephel Duath)... Some strands, however, recur more consistently than others. In power, epic and above all black metal, references to Middle-earth run into the dozens, if not the hundreds. It's therefore worth selecting tracks based both on the distinctiveness and quality of the sound and on the "Tolkienian devotion" shown by the artists. Alongside the inevitable Nightwish and Blind Guardian — the latter unquestionably among the most devoted, with their 1998 concept album "Nightfall In Middle-Earth" — here then are Italy's own Ainur, with an emphatic prog-rock sound that has a metallic edge without ever being particularly heavy, followed by Fates Warning's very first album, still closer to power/heavy tropes than prog-metal.

Through the Celtic echoes of the Irish band Cruachan, we move into black metal territory, and with the following track, by the Norwegian band Gorgoroth, the compilation reaches its heaviest peak. Rasping shrieks, blast beats and lo-fi distortion give tangible form to the band's corrosive name, evoking the desolate plain to the north-east of the Dark Lord's lands. Also Norwegian is Varg Vikernes, famous for his ambient sound as much as for his unsavoury legal troubles: his stage name, Burzum, is the word that, in the Black Speech inscribed on the One Ring, means "darkness".

The style of the Austrian band Summoning is so steeped in Middle-earth lore that it's sometimes described as "Tolkien metal": as is customary for their albums, their second LP, "Minas Morgul", draws directly on The Lord of the Rings and marks a striking fusion of black metal and dungeon synth electronics, one that would spawn dozens of followers in the decades to come. Among them, the equally Tolkien-obsessed Italian band Emyn Muil, from Puglia, explore its more symphonic developments in a strikingly evocative way.

The closing section of the playlist marks a partial return to the folk, atmospheric tones of the opening tracks, though in a more restless than luminous vein. The grim tribal ambient of Sweden's Za Frûmi is enriched by orcish incantations in an obscure tongue, while Spain's Narsilion and France's Ainulindalë operate in more varied territory, closer to darkwave and dark-folk.

Forty tracks are a lot, but not enough to map the hundreds, if not thousands, of bands that have drawn inspiration - whether as their core identity or just occasionally - from the creations of J.R.R. Tolkien. Among the phenomena left out of this piece, one worth noting is the ambiguous relationship that developed from the 1970s onward between Tolkienian culture and the youth scene of the Italian far right: a topic that would, however, take us far afield. Bands like Compagnia dell'Anello, Terre di mezzo, Contea or Settimo sigillo, moreover, are barely covered on Spotify at all.

A more structured overview of the entire musical landscape inspired by Tolkien can be found in the "Music" section of the Tolkien Gateway portal, while an extremely up-to-date and thorough list forms the backbone of the commendable The Tolkien Music List.

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07/01/2026