For many years the Tolkien Estate has refused to allow any musical treatment of the works of the author which employed his own words. They had however already agreed to make a concession in respect of the music of Paul Corfield Godfrey, whose cycle of “epic scenes from The Silmarillion” was finally completed in 2023 with the issue of a ten-CD series of recordings from Volante Opera and Prima Facie Records.
In this first of two talks the composer will be playing extracts from all five parts of the epic scenes and giving a brief introduction to the music. We will begin with the prologue to The War of Wrath, the final section of the score which was only written in 2019, and then proceed through the other works beginning with The Children of Húrin from 1982 - excerpts from which were performed at Oxonmoot the following year. Copies of the CDs and scores will be available for purchase, and we will also be looking forward to the recordings of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit which have been granted copyright permission by the Estate.
