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Thanks MOS!

Your words are emboldening.

When Laurelin first suggested the Lay of Leithian I nearly fell out of my chair. Could a longer and more epic poem be done as a song?!? But then she suggested that we take and use just the portion of Beren and Luthien and I think we found the sweetest portion of the Lay in which Beren finally comes out of his long magic slumber and actually chases down and kisses this Elfin Maid, therefore sealing their doom.

It made or a good starting point, and you are right MOS; Tolkien's work is so voluminous that it is almost an inexhaustible resource for this little music project.  I do hope that some of this music gets some of those Tolkien fans who haven't yet discovered this poetic territory to look a little deeper and explore the wealth that took him a lifetime to create.  

Thanks again MOS for the kind words.....

Now that we can post pictures without putting them on the web first, here is the sheet music of the score for the piece from The Lay of Leithian (LoL as we abbreviate it). I am posting it just in case if people want to try it themselves. While a tremendous amount of efforts went into the recording (mostly JD7's efforts), we didn't have an opportunity to make a live recording (all three of us live in different states), everything was done long distance, therefore certain minor imperfections were unavoidable. The score, sort of, gives an idealistic view, or so I hope.

The idea for the first stanza came from the Aragorn's song about Luthien and Beren from the movie, and for the last stanza from Namarie. The melody for the parts with the slower rhythm is by JD7 - those starting with 'He leaped upon the grassy hill', 'Tinuviel! Tinuviel!', and 'As love there woke in sweet surprise'. It was really admirable how he came up with that melody - he composed it based on chords/harmonies (something I cannot do at all).

Very interestingly, both he and I kept in mind that it was Laurelin's request. I only recently discovered that she was asking about music to the LoL already in her very first post . Both JD7 and I were silently wondering, independently from each other (as we found out much later), whether Laurelin would even like our music. For completeness I might mention as well that one stanza was an exception as the melody for it pre-existed and, curiously, got developed during my intense conversation with Galin about Ecthelion and Glorfindel (which would be almost a year ago). I decided to use it here, thinking that it fitted fine (for these words: 'But as she went he swiftly came...')

JD7 and I obviously had different ideas as to what Rivendell music was like. Thus the style varies within the song. What I didn't want to see in it was repetitiveness. So, almost nothing repeats.