lord-of-the-rings Trivia Quiz # 10

Although Saruman is indeed a bad guy in "Lord of the Rings," Black was actually a good guy in "Harry Potter" and Denethor was just driven mad by Sauron.

"Anhemitonic pentatonic" means a five note scale without semitones. It's usually taken to refer to the scale vaguely thought of these days as "eastern" or "oriental", which you get when you play five consecutive ascending black notes on the piano starting with F#.



"Octotonic" denotes a scale consisting of alternating tones and semitones. As far as I'm aware, Wagner never used the whole tone scale except maybe by accident. He did, however, like the augmented triad, consisting of two conjunct major thirds (e.g. C-E-G# or A flat). One of his most thrilling uses of this is the song Siegfried sings in Act I of "Siegfried" as he forges the sword. It's in D minor, but in the refrain, instead of a tonic chord you get an augmented triad on D. That's one of those moments in Wagner where the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Happens about once every 90 seconds for me!

It is a little hard to hear what Sauron is saying sometimes.

Just after Pippin asks this, Aragorn and the others ride up to the Black Gate and call out the Lord of the Black Land for some justice.

This is one of the creepiest examples I've heard in Wagner of an interrupted cadence. At the end of a passage unambiguously in A flat, the prolonged trill happens on the key's leading note, G. All expectations are that the tonic chord will follow, and Wagner makes us wait for the resolution. But as the potion takes effect, the trill changes to a whole tone (i.e. G-A), destroying any feeling of A flat, but replacing it with...who knows? Uncertainty, is the answer, and that isn't resolved by the highly chromatic love potion motif on the horns entering under the altered trill.

Glorfindel made this prophesy during the Battle of Fornost TA 1975, when the elves waged war against the Witch-king of Angmar.



During the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Eowyn commanded the Lord of the Nazgul, "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!" The term 'dwimmerlaik' means 'work of necromancy' in Rohirric.

Glorfindel of Rivendell, a mighty and herioc Elf-lord of the House of Elrond, comes to their aid. Glorfindel finally takes Frodo and rides to Rivendell, outrunning the Black Riders. In the movie adaption of this book we see Arwen coming to the rescue which is somehow ridiculous since she never had any warrior feats ascribed to her by Tolkien. It remains doubtful whether this Glorfindel was a reincarnation of Glorfindel of Gondolin who was famous for his battle with the Balrog in which both he and the Balrog fell. See one of my others quizzes about Glorfindel of Gondolin: http://www.funtrivia.com/quizdetails.cfm?id=86358

In literature a tower signifies power and wealth. They suggest a limitless view.

Gollum continually called Frodo 'Master' during the movie. Frodo had freed Gollum from the rope which Sam had around his neck. Gollum didn't like Sam and constantly called him names.

In the chapter, ' The Shadow of the Past', Gandalf read the incription on the Ring out to Frodo after it was made visible by the fire.