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The Music Of The Hobbit Films - Doug Adams' Book confirmed by Howard Shore


Bilbo

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1 hour ago, gkgyver said:

More like The Forces Of The Temp Track.

The most powerful forces in the film making universe.

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5 hours ago, Jay said:

It's the theme I referred to as Tauriels b theme. It comes later in the suite, after all the love theme stuff 

Isn't that 5-note theme Tauriel's principal theme, derived from the end of the Woodland Realm theme?

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33 minutes ago, BloodBoal said:

Tauriel has a theme?

Who is this Tauriel everyone keeps talking about? There is no such character in the Hobbit.

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Who the fuck knows who she is, I don't remember her, but apparently Shore wrote a theme for her! 

 

He had themes coming out of nowhere and thought: "I'm just gonna call this 'Tauriel's Theme', Peter probably couldn't come up with a better name anyway!" 

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1 hour ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

One of the members of my smial just refers to her as "the female elf" 😂

It's like Sherlock Holmes referring to Irene Adler as "the woman". Although for entirely opposite reasons. :P 

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I don't have time to look up timestamps right now

I really hope Doug's book comes out soon!

And that silent movie one too

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20 hours ago, SafeUnderHill said:

3:52 of Beyond the Forest? I quite like that being named the 'Elvish Host' theme, given it is used for Legolas and Tauriel. Would be neat if it somehow connected to the Rivendell music, given the name.

That's Elvish Warriors, although there is a connection to  The Elvish Host.

18 hours ago, Jay said:

I really hope Doug's book comes out soon!

And that silent movie one too

So do I!

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5 hours ago, SafeUnderHill said:

Tauriel's main theme is kind of five notes if you only consider the motif that it's built from (that is also heard at the start of Silence of the lambs).

Quite. So is Doug refering to that opening 5 notes or something else?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Elvish Host aside though, Doug also mentioned Bree, which is that skip-beat-ish quote of "Strider" at the start of the Desolation of Smaug.

 

I love those quotes. In a way, that's so much more sophisticated than quoting an established theme, even in a devolved form.

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On 9/18/2017 at 12:09 AM, BloodBoal said:

Not for the new generation, Stiff.

 

FOTR is the fourth movie, now, and it won't take long for it to be renamed The Hobbit: Part 4 - A New Hope.

 Hehe. Maybe by the time they make the Silmarillion they will call the whole franchise by that name.

 

Though in all seriousness, I think the cohesion of this sextet is to be commended. You can actually watch (and/or listen) to them in the thematic order and it all works, except for two easy-fix moments: Ian Holm in Gollum's cave and Gandalf's "You haven't aged a day" comment.

 

On 9/17/2017 at 11:20 PM, SafeUnderHill said:

Welcome!

 

Yeah they're really nice moments. I like how Mithril connects BOTFA to the first film of the next trilogy.

 

Interestingly, most of those moments are drawn from Fellowship. Few are from Return of the King. I think there's nothing drawn from the Two Towers.

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It doesn't gel perfectly, but I still think it's quite possibly the best we've seen of any cinematic sextet, especially of one with a decade in between two trilogies.

 

In fact, one the complaints I always see is that the tone was made more serious and dire, like the Lord of the Rings, and the music follows that, too - which is an artistic choice that I like. Even in terms of grading, more softness was added to each film so the Battle of the Five Armies moves into Fellowship of the Ring quite nicely.

 

If you think of them as separate entities (and I can see why), than you'd naturally be more inclined to find continuity problems ex silentio like that Saruman bit, or perhaps the fact that Balin seemingly retook Moria in between trilogies. I think we can also agree they are all minor issues, though.

 

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3 hours ago, BloodBoal said:

Saruman pretending he'll take care of Sauron in BOFA, and suddenly Gandalf not mentioning that in FOTR),

 

God I don't even remember this.  What happened again?

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10 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Elvish Host aside though, Doug also mentioned Bree, which is that skip-beat-ish quote of "Strider" at the start of the Desolation of Smaug.

It is an interesting expansion of meaning if the Hobbit skip-beat material underscoring the hobbits' arrival to the town that now morphs into a location leitmotif for Bree. It is almost as if this explanation comes as an afterthought, the new iteration completely reinforming the old appearance and meaning of the motif. ;)

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Well, Bree is partially a Hobbit town (we even see it in the film) so it makes sense. I would say the Bree motif is to the Skip-beat what Hobbit Antics is to the End-cap in that the variation is small.

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Ah, I getcha

 

I wish the films handled the palantirs better; It's great we saw that Saruman had one, but it would have been nice if they didn't cut the one out of DOS, and ROTK should have revealed that Denethor was corrupted by one too.

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I dunno. Maybe setting up the Palantir in Desolation of Smaug would have been one callback too many, and it may have interfered with the flow of the film. Considering just how non-linear it is, its actually a preety well streamlined film.

 

Denethor's Palantir is another matter, though.

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9 hours ago, Incanus said:

It is an interesting expansion of meaning if the Hobbit skip-beat material underscoring the hobbits' arrival to the town that now morphs into a location leitmotif for Bree. It is almost as if this explanation comes as an afterthought, the new iteration completely reinforming the old appearance and meaning of the motif. ;)

 

8 hours ago, Chen G. said:

Well, Bree is partially a Hobbit town (we even see it in the film) so it makes sense. I would say the Bree motif is to the Skip-beat what Hobbit Antics is to the End-cap in that the variation is small.

 

I think this is case of over-interpretation, where the Bree ostinato was just meant to be a literal musical reference to the same location/scene in the previous trilogy. And it happened to be similar to the Hobbit skip-beat. Coincidence, I say.

 

And it seems like "Elvish Host" is just a broader label that Doug assigned to Tauriel's theme, so that it has more versatile applications for Doug to dig into for his book. 

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Not so according to the Annotated score: "Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin reach Bree, accompanied by caliginous variations on their Skip Beat figure."

 

And according to Doug's tweets, the forces of the enemy is "one of a handful of motifs, like Mithril, Bree[...]that were retconned into themes in The Hobbit."

 

As for "Elvish Host", I'd imagine its the martial Woodland Realm idea. The Hobbit is already full of character themes, so I don't imagine its like Lord of the Rings where themes would take broader meanings.

 

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44 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Not so according to the Annotated score: "Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin reach Bree, accompanied by caliginous variations on their Skip Beat figure."

 

And according to Doug's tweets, the forces of the enemy is "one of a handful of motifs, like Mithril, Bree[...]that were retconned into themes in The Hobbit."

 

As for "Elvish Host", I'd imagine its the martial Woodland Realm idea. The Hobbit is already full of character themes, so I don't imagine its like Lord of the Rings where themes would take broader meanings.

 

It is interesting that the Hobbit Skip-Beat has been retconned into a theme when it already was a theme (ok an accompaniment figure) with a specific meaning connected to the hobbits.

 

I would see the Bree appearance rather as a reference to a specific variation of that leitmotific idea to add a musical connection between two scenes but to expand the Skip-Beat's meaning to include Bree seems like very odd thematic retconning. Especially when this theme is never again used for this specific purpose again during the story, either LotR or the Hobbit.

 

I somehow better understand that a single instance musical idea like the Forces of the Enemy (the Minas Morgul material) or Mithril transforming into a theme by its later application to something clearly related and forging a new leitmotif in the process. You could of course call a single rendition of a musical idea a theme if you like but leitmotifically I usually expect it to appear more than once to reinforce the connection between the music and the idea it is underscoring.

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With these of kind of analyses, I think we have to keep in mind that they're Doug's way of interpreting, translating and presenting a very complex compositional work and process to a broader audience. So while it's tempting to think that every little 3 note cell was written with the complete cultural background and heritage of the specified instance in mind, that's likely not the case.

 

The Bree instance, much like the Fireworks "motif" in AUJ, are very deliberate musical callbacks to specific instances of the original trilogy. Musical cameos, if you will. I think it's a little redundant to see them as "retconned themes" or whatnot.

 

And I still think "Forces of the Enemy" is a case of temp-tracking, but for obvious reasons, is being presented in another fashion.

 

In the end, like with most art, one man's interpretation doesn't have to be the only valid one, right?

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The reason I pointed out the Bree instance from the start was because its a more nebulous case, because of how deeply it's rooted in the Shire music. I'd argue that it is much the same case as with the Hobbit Antics, where its really just the End Cap accompaniment looped into an ostinato.  

 

There are only two other instances which are, to me, as questionable as the Bree instance: First is that little coda for Bilbo's Birthday (y'know, when the "Happy Birthday" sign is erected); the other is that little rising chanting from "A coronal of Silver and Gold" at the beginning of "The High Fells", because of their brevity.

 

As for the other cases, I have little doubt as to their leitmotivic status. Hell, the fireworks motif recurrs several times just in the Hobbit and undergoes a fair bit of variation (e.g. the opening credits of the Desolation of Smaug) and its part of the Shire subset of themes, which is appropriate because it's sort of "Gandalf through the eyes of Hobbits" musical idea. Even some established themes like "Gandalf the White" (in Nature) are just as much of an afterthought as any of those motifs.

 

To me, if its (1) listed by Doug Adams, (2) distinct, (3) recurring, especially if its in several spots across the narrative (4) can be associated with something in the narrative (5) undergoes variation and (6) is part of the thematic architecture of the score, than it has every right to be called a leitmotif. Not just "musical callbacks" or what have you.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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