Tuesday 9 March 2021

Hobbit music? From the Jaye Consort


This album was the first recording of Medieval Music I ever heard (borrowed from my history teacher and mentor John Reeve). This pioneering band (from 1967) is hilariously rough and ready, improvised and (obviously) done in a single take - in a pretty convincing recreation of how things might actually have sounded IRL. You will hear why I call it Hobbit music - due to the rasping intermittent drone of the longest instrument depicted on the cover. I can just imagine the rustics at The Green Dragon Inn, Bywater falling-about with laughter while dancing to this Estampie. 


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you - that's about when I started buying lps, but I never encountered this one! And this was enjoyable! (I've now found and enjoyed the whole album posted elsewhere on YouTube.) I see what you mean, and it makes me think how much I've enjoyed musical references in the books and various settings of songs and 'incidental' music I've encountered, but also how I ought to reread carefully - e.g., can we tell whether different Hobbits liked different sorts of music (other than Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, at least, liking Elven music}? Would a Sackville-Baggins delight in this as much as any Hobbit (as, say, Men down the centuries would share the enjoyment of all sorts of music, whatever formal differences there were)?

David Llewellyn Dodds

Bruce Charlton said...

Glad you enjoyed it David! I have a feeling that the SBs would be of that 'materialistic' type who does not appreciate music, or poetry, or anything frivolous.