Category: Music

Sounds for any opportunity

Song of Durin

Song of Durin
Arrangement/Composition by Clamavi De Profundis

I’ve shared the stunning Tolkien-inspired work from Clamvi De Profundis before. But this one takes the cake. Unlike their previous version of the Song of Durin, which ran around 2m30s, and only contained the first and last stanzas/verses, this is the full version, containing the entire poem.

Still present are CDPs haunting vocals, appropriate to a dwarvish hall, and their beautiful, many-layered arrangement of the piece.

I appreciate how each stanza has a different “sound”. The third, for example, seems to really rise in tone…almost majestically; certainly, it’s dripping with pride, which is appropriate for the text of that stanza.

At 99p, it’s a steal. This is the a capella version. But there’s also a great version with musical backing (great booming drums).

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadows of his head.

The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin’s Day.

A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone for ever fair and bright.

There hammer on the anvil smote,
There chisel clove, and graver wrote;
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt;
The delver mined, the mason built.
There beryl, pearl, and opal pale,
And metal wrought like fishes’ mail,
Buckler and corslet, axe and sword,
And shining spears were laid in hoard.

Unwearied then were Durin’s folk;
Beneath the mountains music woke:
The harpers harped, the minstrels sang,
And at the gates the trumpets rang.

The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge’s fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:
The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

https://play.google.com/music/m/Tbqzzgeqr4s7onb6nfai7betzii?t=Song_of_Durin_A_Cappella_Complete_Edition_-_Clamavi_De_Profundis