The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle.

POEMS BY TOLKIEN, J.R.R.; Music By Donald Swann.

$600.00

Item Number: 149444

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967.

First edition of the first appearance in sheet music form of the classic song cycles that appeared throughout The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Quarto, original boards with gilt titles and gilt tooling to the spine and front panel. Poems and by J.R.R. Tolkien. Music by Donald Swann. With decorations by J.R.R. Tolkien and Samuel Hanks Bryant. The songs from the book were sold simultaneously in a record album entitled Poems of the Middle Earth with verse performed by Tolkien and piano accompaniment performed by William Elvin. Fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket photographs by Roger Hill and Brian Shuel.

"Professor Tolkien has embellished its pages with Elvish script and has also provided a glossary of the Elvish terms used in the songs. Donald Swann's foreword explains the origins of the songs. They can be sung individually, but taken together the group becomes a cycle in the mood of an opening song, "The Road Goes Ever On." The cycle lends itself to performance on the concert platform or to informal group singing around a piano. Folk singers can use it with ease, since guitar symbols are given. Less expert musicians may wish to pick out the tunes on the piano. And even nonmusical Tolkien readers will cherish the sight of the Professor's handwriting in Elvish and be able to add another volume to their collection of his books."