A Elbereth Gilthoniel

Among the musical renderings of the poem, the earliest is Donald Swann's, published in his song cycle The Road Goes Ever On, while The Tolkien Ensemble recorded four different renditions.

[1] In A Elbereth Gilthoniel, scholars such as Marjorie Burns and Stratford Caldecott see an echo of John Lingard's Marian hymn, Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star.

"[3] The hymn is not translated in The Lord of the Rings, though it is described: "the sweet syllables of the elvish song fell like clear jewels of blended word and melody.

[T 1] Readers, then, were not expected to know the song's literal meaning, but they were meant to make something of it: as the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey says, it is clearly something from an unfamiliar language, and it announces that "there is more to Middle-earth than can immediately be communicated".

He includes a comparison with Sam Gamgee's exclamation "in a language which he did not know", A Elbereth Gilthoniel o menel palan-diriel, le nallon / sí di-nguruthos!

[T 5][5] In 1967, Donald Swann published a musical rendition in the score of his song cycle The Road Goes Ever On, where it forms the second part of the setting of "I Sit beside the Fire".

[11] The Norwegian classical composer Martin Romberg has set the lyrics to music in his work Eldarinwë Liri for girls' choir, which also includes the four other poems Tolkien wrote in Elven languages.