The Howard Shore Middle Earth Score Showdown Poll! (An Unexpected Journey vs Fellowship of the Ring, musically)

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Well at the very least we have "Dreaming of Bag End," 1 minute and 50 seconds of some of the loveliest music on any of the Middle Earth soundtrack releases. Yes, my glass is half full, haha.

[Jay 37,338]

I really like the performance of Bilbo's theme in the last minute of "Axe or Sword?"

[Barnald 365]

Indeed. I could maybe have lived with it had that rendition alone been in the film.

[Jay 37,338]

It was such an important place to play that theme and PJ ruined it.

 

I wish we lived in a world where Shore threatened to leave the project and not score the sequels if PJ removed all his themes, and PJ, realizing the important of Shore's contributions to his films, relented and Shore got to keep using his original intended themes throughout the sequel scores.  That'd have been awesome...

[Kühni 485]

.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

8 minutes ago, Jay said:

I really like the performance of Bilbo's theme in the last minute of "Axe or Sword?"

 

Ahhh, I just went back and listened to this (it's been forever since I've really listened to this release).  I'm absolutely in love with the solo horn at 5:00 especially.

[Jay 37,338]

50 minutes ago, Kühni said:

And to my ears, the soundtrack for AUJ (pre-PJ-meddling) reaches LotR levels in terms of evident enthusiasm, bite to the performance and recording and thematic interplay. In my ears, neither DoS nor TABA (sorry, I'm sticking to it!) do the same. For the very first time, it felt to me as if Shore was going through the motions in the latter two scores. They're still marvelous overall, but not the same level of the preceding four scores.

 

Agreed - though I REALLY enjoy DOS, regardless.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[Incanus 5,714]

1 hour ago, Kühni said:

And to my ears, the soundtrack for AUJ (pre-PJ-meddling) reaches LotR levels in terms of evident enthusiasm, bite to the performance and recording and thematic interplay. In my ears, neither DoS nor TABA (sorry, I'm sticking to it!) do the same. For the very first time, it felt to me as if Shore was going through the motions in the latter two scores. They're still marvelous overall, but not the same level of the preceding four scores.

Pretty much my sentiments as well although I have fondness especially for the latter half of DoS.

[Kühni 485]

It's a pity that I should enjoy DoS more than half as much as the other five scores, but thankfully, less than half of all film music these days can hold a candle to LotR/Hobbit.

 

Or something like that.

 

(Inky, am I doing these quotes right? )

[Incanus 5,714]

2 minutes ago, SafeUnderHill said:

 

Man it syncs beautifully to picture.

It really does.

 

I think it would have had such tremendous potential if they had decided to go with Bilbo's own main theme instead of the Shire theme route. There was a perfect thematic development there that naturally went alongside the Shire theme and even had some of the lyrical longing Shore infused Bilbo's Song at the end of RotK.

[Jay 37,338]

1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

 

Ahhh, I just went back and listened to this (it's been forever since I've really listened to this release).  I'm absolutely in love with the solo horn at 5:00 especially.

 

Yea!

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[Jay 37,338]

10 minutes ago, SafeUnderHill said:

 

Mane it syncs beautifully to picture.

 

It really does.  PJ was a fool to replace it.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Incanus said:

and even had some of the lyrical longing Shore infused Bilbo's Song at the end of RotK.

 

Yes!

[Incanus 5,714]

Just now, Jay said:

 

It really does.  PJ was a fool to replace it.

At least he was consistent with his foolishness.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[Jay 37,338]

15 minutes ago, SafeUnderHill said:

 

It's all relative though isn't it, we had just been praising the request to replace his FOTR overture with the ring theme. The decisions were clearly worse in AUJ, but at least Shore was able to introduce many themes in DOS.

 

If that were to happen we may well have ended up with James Newton Howard scoring DOS and BOTFA.

 

Sure, of course sometimes directors have good notes for composers and the results of the changes they request make everything better.  Using the History of the Ring theme more in FOTR was a great idea; Replacing Bilbo's Theme and the Journey Theme were not.

 

There's another difference too: In FOTR, Shore DID write the HOTR theme at some point and use it in some cues (some of which were replacements, some not), and though those performances he recorded were tracked into other spots in the film, we have the original versions as well.  Also, he continued to use that theme to great effect in the following 5 scores.

 

The Hobbit situation is the opposite; Shore wrote a brilliant theme early on (who knows how long it even took for him to come up with it), and it was all replaced by forced rescores and tracked music, and then the theme was basically abandoned in the sequel scores.

 

In LOTR's case, PJ saw brilliance in a late-written theme and encouraged him to use it more;  In TH, he didn't see the brilliance of a core theme and had it outright removed from his film.  Bad instinct, there.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[KK 3,307]

1 hour ago, Kühni said:

And to my ears, the soundtrack for AUJ (pre-PJ-meddling) reaches LotR levels in terms of evident enthusiasm, bite to the performance and recording and thematic interplay. In my ears, neither DoS nor TABA (sorry, I'm sticking to it!) do the same. For the very first time, it felt to me as if Shore was going through the motions in the latter two scores. They're still marvelous overall, but not the same level of the preceding four scores.

 

At least, that is my - subjective - take on this issue (if it really is an issue, mind).

 

Agreed, to an extent. Definitely on board with you on TABA/BOTFA. I'd argue that even AUJ has some passages (namely the action material) that sound like Shore on auto-pilot. But DoS, as you know well, is what I'd argue to be his strongest entry in the trilogy. It features some of Shore's most original writing in years, and I think that's because a number of the major sequences were being sketched during AUJ pre-production, back when it was supposed to be two films (ex. Forest River, Smaug's Death/escape?, Flies and Spiders). Having said that, I agree there is some daft material in there as well, just as there is in all 3 scores, but this one pushes the boundaries of its musical vocabulary the most, and that's why it takes the cake for me.

[Jay 37,338]

6 minutes ago, SafeUnderHill said:

I imagine there was a panicked, lack of sleep driven decision to recall LOTR nostalgia late in the game. Perhaps even due to a studio screening, when the cut was not deemed strong enough.

 

YES, that sounds likely!

[Bilbo 3,709]

Watching BotFA. Fire and Water is easily one of the best cues in all six films. Definitely not Shore on autopilot! 

[Incanus 5,714]

2 minutes ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

Watching BotFA. Fire and Water is easily one of the best cues in all six films. Definitely not Shore on autopilot! 

Oh it's awesome! As I said in my review back when the score came out not every composer gets to compose such a piece even for the finale of a film let alone the opening.

[Jay 37,338]

Great track!

[Bilbo 3,709]

Just off the top of my head I would say all the major book highlights were incredibly well scored throughout all three films. 

Flies and Spiders ❤️

[KK 3,307]

Also another piece that he was sketching pretty early on, I believe. Great stuff!

[Incanus 5,714]

4 minutes ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

Just off the top of my head I would say all the major book highlights were incredibly well scored throughout all three films. 

Flies and Spiders ❤️

I would have loved a bit sunnier take on e.g. Beorn but alas they went with the urgent dark tone for the whole first half of the film. The first disc of the score can get a bit too brooding for my tastes at times. Most of my favourite stuff is on disc 2 of DoS.

[Bilbo 3,709]

I think the first half of DoS needed to be urgent and dark though. 

 

The Etended Edition has some levity in the Beorn scenes though.

[KK 3,307]

3 minutes ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

Just off the top of my head I would say all the major book highlights were incredibly well scored throughout all three films. 

Flies and Spiders ❤️

 

And I don't think that's a coincidence! As someone who likes to work very close to literature, he probably had the sounds for the major set pieces of the novel playing in his head pretty early on. As Inky mentions, Beorn was the only disappointment.

[Bilbo 3,709]

I would easily and happily pay €150 for three CDs of Silmarillion music.

Doug, make it happen! 

5 minutes ago, KK. said:

 

And I don't think that's a coincidence! As someone who likes to work very close to literature, he probably had the sounds for the major set pieces of the novel playing in his head pretty early on. As Inky mentions, Beorn was the only disappointment.

 

I agree with the sentiment that he was thinking about the book scenes earlier and planning them. We have no idea when he started composing themes or sketches for these films to be fair. 

[Jay 37,338]

He had definitely sketched the company's time in the Woodland Realm and Gandalf's exploration of Dol Guldur in 2012.

[Kühni 485]

.

[Jay 37,338]

Yes, great track!

[Incanus 5,714]

My Dear Frodo is a brilliant overture for the Hobbit scores and in fact most of the thematic material found in it remains in the scores to very end of the trilogy. All the central dwarven themes are there, Bilbo's Adventure, the most prominent of Bilbo's own musical ideas throughout the films is there and Smaug's music is introduced as well as the Woodland Realm. Shore also right off the bat begins to establish the dwarven musical culture both with the themes and the orchestrations as it is to be one of the central elements of these scores.

 

So I feel that AUJ opening is a bit more akin to the Prologue of LotR than the Prophecy which seems to operate almost independently as a sort of introduction to the style and tone and colours of the scores to come rather than planting so many themes into it. Prologue really drives home the History of the Ring theme alongside some of the later prominent ideas. On the other hand I was surprised to hear the "Second Age" Gondor theme pop up in the Prophecy/Prologue alternate to represent the forces of the Kingdoms in Exile and that lovely trumpet intoning the Shire theme at the end.

 

I sort of wish the Woodland Realm's music would have retained some of this more pure elven choral character in the sequels as well but they went for the darker route as the culture is less lofty than the kindred cultures of Lothlorien or Rivendell although it seems to contain the same Middle Eastern quality as Lorien, just translated more often into orchestral rather than choral settings. I was surprised how grim Thranduil's realm actually is or perhaps not grim but cold and foreboding by elvish standards. He seems the most alien of all the elven rulers, truly aloof (Lee Pace did a great job with the character). The Nature of Evil is a good example of how Shore really plunged the elven music into most dangerous and ominous low tones of the orchestra to give it almost unsettling darkness. With Woodland Realms there are glimpses of wonder but it is nearly always laced with steel.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[Jay 37,338]

8 hours ago, Incanus said:

I was surprised how grim Thranduil's realm actually is or perhaps not grim but cold and foreboding by elvish standards. He seems the most alien of all the elven rulers, truly aloof (Lee Pace did a great job with the character). 

 

The Woodland realm - both the location and its inhabitants - in the films are basically completely opposite of how Tolkien wrote them in the The Hobbit book. They are more in line with the direction the LOTR films took the universe.

[Bilbo 3,709]

Which is completely understandable.

 

The Elves in the book are very different to even the way they appear in the Lord of the Rings books (Gildor's troop aside perhaps). 

[Incanus 5,714]

As the film makers decided to make the whole culture about military isolationism, which is actually what Thranduil's realm was revealed to be in the Lord of the Rings (not so much in the Hobbit), they ended up creating something very obsessive and oppressive to a degree it becomes almost unattractive. I guess they really wanted to steer the films towards LotR styled grand scale threat of darkness, which certainly wasn't part of the original novel. Even with Lothlorien the otherworldness wasn't as alien as with Thranduil and at the same time there is selfishness and base quality to the motivations of the elven king that is unlike anything we have seen in the LotR films from the self-sacrificing noble Rivendell elves or the Lothlorien elves. This makes these wood elves somehow closer to humans even with their apparently detached view on outside world and elven refinement. But on the other hand they give the character of Thranduil a good reason for his bitter, haughty and cold demeanour and flesh out the character from mere passing reference to a fuller personality. This also means they could also play Tauriel off of him as the idealistic younger elf desiring for a change, not only in her life but also in the life of her culture.

 

I would say both the dwarves and elves are fleshed out with greater detail with LotR (novel) but the elves do play a secondary role in the Hobbit compared to the dwarves and thus they remain a bit whimsical and indeed more down to earth than the people portrayed in the LotR, which is fitting for a children's story. And Tolkien does reference the differences between the elven races in the novel and portrays the wood elves as dangerous and less wise than their western cousins but still as a good race, which they in the end are also in the film but are given more tangible individual motivations for their actions. I thought Shore gave the culture a unique feel, slightly apart yet clearly connected to the other two elven cultures and even found moments where he could individually comment on all the three elven characters with interconnected themes. Frankly it is a much more complex set of musical ideas (be it that some of them are quite simple and passing) than the wood elves of the novel might have warranted on their own.

 

Musically Shore also depicted this dichotomy in the central elven characters very well: cynical isolationism VS idealistic openness, the mysterious, partly aloof and dangerous, partly mesmerizing Thranduil and the warmer more lyrical Tauriel music intertwining and alternating in the scenes involving the elves. One thing I actually missed in the Battle of the Five Armies was some elven battle music as Beyond the Forest in DoS had some deliciously promising aggressive martial developments for Tauriel's theme and the Woodland Realm material which sadly didn't materialize in the final film nor did the actual theme ever enter the battle apart from the one brief tacked on quote. But I guess the musical battle strategy was intricate enough without involving all the themes into the mix and they did give the dwarves the most audible voice throughout the battle musically.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[gkgyver 1,645]

On Montag, 4. April 2016 at 9:14 PM, Bilbo Skywalker said:

Watching BotFA. Fire and Water is easily one of the best cues in all six films. Definitely not Shore on autopilot!

 

 

I don't really dare putting thoughts in Shore's head, but as much as he involved himself in the Tolkien mythology, I'm fairly sure Shore had music in his head for the central Tolkien setpieces way before he and Pope scored 2 and 3 to picture. So those pieces were going to deliver no matter what. And I also dare say that you notice a different inspiration in the music for those set pieces compared to the shit conjured in PJ's cauldron.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[gkgyver 1,645]

I don't understand, you don't think Pope conformed the music on the podium? He did.

 

For Tauriel, Shore channeled Tolkien's lyricism, not really the crap on screen. He didn't really take that material anywhere following DoS because it's utterly uninspiring.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

There wasn't really anywhere left to go I guess, which is why the last score is mainly a patchwork.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[gkgyver 1,645]

Conforming a score on the podium IS scoring. It's part of the scoring process and nailing the scenes. Pope and team did Shore's thinking for him there.

 

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[Bofur01 245]

13 hours ago, SafeUnderHill said:

The entire scores are a great patchwork of different themes, cultures and ideas. BOTFA does not deserve this flack. It's full new ideas, the psychological demise of  Thorin through textural plays on Smaug's material, the brilliant new music for the evil forces - the descending third developments for the Dol Guldur orcs, the new Gundabad breed and the wars beast. The new turns the Durin theme takes as the line's future becomes uncertain, with the introduction of a new dwarven culture. The themes introduced in DOS become more battered and reflective, we get more depth with Bard's family and his new position as leader.

 

We get wonderful new pieces like 'The Darkest Hour' which perfectly captures the tragedy of war and inevitable downfall, and is as cohesive as any set pieces from DOS. 'Sons of Durin' brilliantly pays off the dwarves material in heroic style. The final three pieces before the end credits show Shore's ability to squeeze the emotion out the story, in beautifully flowing and sorrowful pieces.

 

The BotFA score is strange to me - I love loads of it, but can't love it as a whole. Some of the decisions made are baffling, and that's not just because of the decisions made in the film - the number of themes Bard has by that point is ridiculous... Gundabad's theme I love, and also Dain's, but now the decision to use the Dwarf Lords theme in AUJ for Dain now goes nowhere at all, instead of it becoming Dain's theme.

 

I also think the new "Preparing for War" motif, badass though it be, is a bit pointless - would not one of the Dwarf themes have done, seeing as there's already Erebor's, Thorin's, and the House of Durin's themes hanging around?

 

and then there's the mix. Eurgh. Does no favours for Ravenhill/To the Death...

 

But I always really enjoy listening to it, despite the fact I'm a bit disappointed in some of the directions taken. Odd, really.

 

[Barnald 365]

Among other things (I feel like I've said far too much about the BotFA score as it is), I can't understand why they left out the full rendition of Azog's theme from 'Battle for the Mountain'. We're talking what, a few seconds? That's one of my most wanted unreleased bits!

 

I just want to say again - 'On the Doorstep'. An absolute triumph. If the DoS score gave us nothing else (and of course it did), it was worth it alone for that and the (proper) House of Durin theme.

[SafeUnderHill 205]

[Bofur01 245]

Don't get me wrong, I do like it a lot, but where do you draw the line at the number of Dwarven themes, that's the question... I'd have loved to hear that martial Erebor theme from The Ruins of Dale used again ?