Tolkien Gateway

Letter 260

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Letter 260
RecipientCarey Blyton
Date16 August 1964
Subject(s)Permission to compose music based on The Hobbit, Tolkien's lack of musical training

Letter 260 is a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

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Tolkien was honoured to hear that Blyton had been inspired by The Hobbit and gladly gave his permission to compose any work based on it. He had long hoped that this would happen and that the results would be intelligible to him, or akin to his own inspiration - as much as some of Pauline Baynes' illustrations.

Though he had come from a musical family, Tolkien said he had little musical knowledge, due to defects of education and opportunity. Such music as was in him had been transformed into linguistic terms. Music afforded him great pleasure, but he was the reverse of a person who enjoyed poetry with little knowledge of its technique, tradition, or linguistic structure.

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