Namárië by J.R.R. Tolkien - cristal baschet

The words to this song were written by Lord Of The Rings author, J.R.R. Tolkien, in a language called “Quenya” which he invented himself. This is the ancient language of elves. The song is called, “Namárië”, which means “Farewell” in English. The song is sometimes called “Galadriel’s Lament”.

Tolkien himself recorded this song (there are audio-only videos of it here on YouTube) but his was a very simple, unaccompanied rendition in the style of Gregorian Chant, and Tolkien sings the entire thing in a little over 90 seconds. Brilliant as he was, Tolkien was not a musician and I thought perhaps more could be done with it (my apologies to purists who will probably hate me for this!).

The melody in this video is sung live, accompanied on the instrument known as the “cristal baschet”. This turned out to be a challenge from the recording standpoint, because the cristal is extremely resonant - the whole studio vibrates when I play it - and the sound of the instrument bled into the vocal mic. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was simultaneously feeding the vocal into a TC Helicon VoiceLive, in an attempt to capture some of the Gregorian “flavor” that Tolkien imagined for this composition. This meant that the sound of the cristal was also being “gregorianized” along with the vocal, which tended to muddy the sound. Anyway, I tweaked and adjusted things as best I could. I was tempted to scrap this video but decided to plow ahead in spite of it all.

I am playing an instrument few people have ever heard of, and singing in a fantasy language that doesn’t exist! What the heck!

Subtitles have been added to the video since the number of people in the world who are genuinely fluent in Quenya could probably be counted on one hand. 😀

Видео Namárië by J.R.R. Tolkien - cristal baschet канала Peter Pringle