Namárië - “Galadriel’s Lament“ - . Tolkien

This is a song that I posted a few years ago, but it was taken down because of a copyright dispute. I didn’t think my performance was particularly good, so I made no attempt to settle the dispute or to put the video back up on YouTube. In the intervening years I have received a couple of hundred inquiries from people wondering what happened to the video, and asking me to put it back. Since the dispute is resolved I have just re-uploaded the video. The instrument I am playing is called “l’orgue de cristal” (French for ‘the crystal organ’). It was originally invented by the German scientist and musician, Ernst Chladni (1756 - 1827) and since the 18th century it has undergone all sorts of modifications and alterations. The principle, however, remains the same. The instrument produces a huge volume of very intense sound, and one of the objections I have to this performance is that a lot of sound leaks into the vocal microphone and IMO things tend to get acoustically “mushy”. There doesn’t seem to be any way around this if you are going to play “l’orgue de cristal” and sing at the same time. Anyway, for all you Tolkien fans, here is my version of “Namárië”, which means “farewell” in the Elvish language known as “Quenya”.