The Rings Of Power Sound Team Layered This Deleted Elvish Incantation Into The Series [Exclusive]

The history of Middle-earth is dense, and all the foreign-sounding fantasy names it employs can be a little confusing at times, but if you ever needed to consult a wiki while watching “The Rings of Power,” you weren’t alone. Del Borrello, for one, said he “read into the depths” of tolkiengateway.net. “I had that tab open on my computer for two and a half years,” he said, “and I was always mining that for a bit more information about what we were saying.” The lore reinforced “the idea that all magic comes from Ilúvatar, the creator in Middle-earth and in the universe of Tolkien.” It sprang from Ilúvatar’s thoughts, and the whisper element in the sound design originated from there. Del Borrello added:

“The natural extension of that would be, ‘What is the sound of Ilúvatar’s thoughts?’ It’s the magical mystical whispers. And so we worked closely with the dialect coach to pick that right phrase to use and then extend out how we used it and the different ways we recorded it and processed it. There are layers of it and it changes and develops depending on what’s happening with the magic, and whether it’s mysterious or whether it’s dangerous. So that was a fun way that we used that language.”

Though the incantation came from a deleted scene, Del Borrello revealed that the phrase used was a hard-to pronounce Elvish version of, “I called to you to work through me, to hear my needs and guide my hands.” “I read into it a little bit as it was The Stranger drawing on the power of Ilúvatar to perform some magic,” he said.

“The Rings of Power” season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.