The Mewlips-Tone Poem for String Orchestra

This is a song, Tolkien setting, I wrote in 1993 at the age of 24, and recently arranged as a tone poem for string orchestra.  It is so dissonant that the music scares the composer!  Eb Minor might be considered a weird key to begin with, but even I have trouble telling what key it is in!  Not atonal, post-mahlerian perhaps, but it is about swamp monsters that eat you, so...

The Mewlips-Tone Poem for String Orchestra Free Sheet Music by Robert C. Fox for Various Instruments | Noteflight

The poem is posted in the Noteflight comments, so you can follow the music with the words, if you can stand to listen to it; again, it scares me!

The Shadows where the Mewlips dwell
Are dark and wet as ink,
And slow and softly rings their bell,
As in the slime you sink.

You sink into the slime, who dare
To knock upon their door,
While down the grinning gargoyles stare
And noisome waters pour.

Beside the rotting river-strand
The drooping willows weep,
And gloomily the gorcrows stand
Croaking in their sleep.

Over the Merlock Mountains a long and weary way,
In a mouldy valley where the trees are grey,
By a dark pool's borders without wind or tide,
Moonless and sunless, the Mewlips hide.

The cellars where the Mewlips sit
Are deep and dank and cold
With single sickly candle lit;
And there they count their gold.

Their walls are wet, their ceilings drip;
Their feet upon the floor
Go softly with a squish-flap-flip,
As they sidle to the door.

They peep out slyly; through a crack
Their feeling fingers creep,
And when they've finished, in a sack
Your bones they take to keep.

Beyond the Merlock Mountains, a long and lonely road,
Through the spider-shadows and the marsh of Tode,
And through the wood of hanging trees and gallows-weed,
You go to find the Mewlips - and the Mewlips feed.

Anyway, I think this piece I wrote more than half my life ago has some legs.  Too much dissonance for my old age...😉

I stood it. It's not bad at all, but a bit directionless to my taste. I suppose that it happens a lot more than I realise with incidental music? I don't know. There were bits that I liked more, others not so much. Again, if I had to point something out, it would be the lack of dynamics throghout the whole piece. A new dimension of nuances awaits there. Hope noteflight would improve the playback system, but it's not that bad anyway if you've enjoyed OSTs from 90s-00s videogames. In fact it kind of rings a bell in that regard.

Despite of the seemingly random pauses, the music itself has some continuity. I liked specially the M84-M92. But a question arises: why keeping the key of this piece if it diverts that far away from it?  I myself do that as well, but I'm just curious about your thoughts. 

Finally, I did like the add9 in that Eb at the end. It's a bit contrasting, sounds like the bad trip is over. 

Regards!

There are dynamics and bowings and expression marks in the manuscript of the original song, but I don't mess with all that in Noteflight.  It is sheer hell entering just the bare notes!😉

On 10/12/2025 at 1:56 PM, Omicronrg9 said:

I stood it. It's not bad at all, but a bit directionless to my taste. I suppose that it happens a lot more than I realise with incidental music? I don't know. There were bits that I liked more, others not so much. Again, if I had to point something out, it would be the lack of dynamics throghout the whole piece. A new dimension of nuances awaits there. Hope noteflight would improve the playback system, but it's not that bad anyway if you've enjoyed OSTs from 90s-00s videogames. In fact it kind of rings a bell in that regard.

Despite of the seemingly random pauses, the music itself has some continuity. I liked specially the M84-M92. But a question arises: why keeping the key of this piece if it diverts that far away from it?  I myself do that as well, but I'm just curious about your thoughts. 

Finally, I did like the add9 in that Eb at the end. It's a bit contrasting, sounds like the bad trip is over. 

Regards!

 

Ah, yes; that add9 in the final cadence:  when you read the poem that I set in 1993, it is about swamp monsters that eat you!  An add9 chord at the end is an unresolving yet peaceful chord.  There is peace in death, get it?😉