Beren and Luthien

soprano, tenor, piano

This recording is missing the words. Beren and Luthien is a duet for soprano and tenor, accompanied by piano; the text is J. R. R. Tolkien's poem about Beren and Luthien Tinuviel sung by Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. I finished it in June 2006 and started it in the summer of 2005. It was originally meant to be a duet for myself and someone else, but the someone else lost interest and the piece wasn't finished until I picked it up again the following summer. I revived it as a work dedicated to the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association. It will hopefully be recorded one day by HRSFen. If that happens, I will post the live recording here, of course. If you will be in the Cambridge area and want to help me record this, email me.

The poem is nine stanzas long, with each stanza containing eight lines of iambic tetrameter. That's a lot. The melody, then, is sung about eighteen times, but it's different every time: the embellishments vary, the shape varies, the chords vary, the mode varies, etc. The piano part is mostly tonal, though not always, making this one of my first successful uses of atonal material. When listening to this, I recommend also reading along in the poem. There are no repeated lines, though occasionally the singer not singing the text will sing "Tinuviel!" or "Beren!". There is also little melisma, but almost every iamb is a full beat (eighth quarter) in 6/8, so the 16th notes in "ri-i-i-sing la-a-ark and fa-a-a-al-li-ing rain" are somewhat clear. This poem, by the way, can be found at this site.

Listen to Beren and Luthien (right-click to download)