Just purchased the complete score for LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

[TitanicFan2018 30]

Aside from James Horner and John Williams, another film score composer I've admired is Howard Shore, in particular the scores for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I saw all three films shortly after they were released in theaters as well as on DVD.  I saw The Fellowship of the Ring right after it came out in late 2001, then The Two Towers around late 2002/early 2003, and then The Return of the King in December of 2003.  Not only that, I also got the OSTs for Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers, but I mostly listened to the OST for the first film (I believe I got in early 2003).  In fact, I even arranged parts of the Fellowship score for the middle school band I was playing in (I played trombone at the time), and got it performed in the May 2003 concert.

 

Anyways, I just got the entire score for Fellowship on iTunes, and I'm about to listen to it.  Then I'll watch the film later.  However, I'm noticing at least some of the cues sound like Braveheart somewhat (I guess Shore was influenced by Horner, but correct me if I'm wrong), but I also notice some John Williams influence in the cue "Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe".

[Chen G. 3,949]

8 hours ago, TitanicFan2018 said:

However, I'm noticing at least some of the cues sound like Braveheart somewhat (I guess Shore was influenced by Horner, but correct me if I'm wrong), but I also notice some John Williams influence in the cue "Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe".

 

Well, the director did reference Braveheart as a strong influence on the films. You can really see it, too: some of the imagery, the staging of the large-scale action sequences; even some thematic elements - Boromir (and Thorin after him) weren't as overtly patriotic in the book. At one point Patrick McGoohan (who played Edward Longshanks) was considered for the role of Gandalf, as well.

 

So, naturally, Jackson also gravitated towards James Horner when he was looking for a composer - having in fact contacted him in 1997 - a full three years before Shore was - thank all things holy - chosen for the project.

 

Jackson also admitted to have temp-tracked parts of the film with Braveheart. Its even evident in the diegetic music (which mostly wasn't Shore's). Plan 9 who composed these pieces very early on, didn't originally concieve the diegetic Shire music as particularly celtic, and from the finished piece of "Flaming Red Hair" its clear to me that Jackson had Braveheart's "Scottish  Wedding Music" on his mind as he guided them down that path. Some have even pointed a similarity between the Dwarves' song in Bag End and the love theme from Braveheart (the opening's the same). I'd actually be quite interesting to know what parts of the film were temp-ed with what music.

 

On the other hand, being that the Hobbits naturally suggest celtic music, I don't know that some melodic, harmonic and certainly instrumental similarities were ever truly avoidable, and some of what I pointed out may well be coincidental. At any rate, the popularity of Shore's Shire music really owes to scores like Braveheart and Titanic for having popularized the celtic sound.

 

At the same time, however, its clear to me that Shore was very intentionally avoiding a lot of Horner-isms, especially with regards to instrumental colors: he planned on using a pan-flute for Gondor very early on (as we know from an early mock-up) but ended up waiting until the third film (when the scores stood on their own) to introduce the instrument. He avoided bagpipes (although one of the instrumentalists on the score is credited for playing "drones") until The Hobbit, instead opting to use whistles and - for Rohan - a hardanger fiddle to a similar effect; Thematically, too, Horner always made a point out of using a very small number of leitmotives (Bravheart has about four or five) whereas Shore went completely the other way.

 

On the whole the similarity is slim enough that it doesn't feel at all deriviative, but at the same time appearant enough that's its kind of nice to have two excellent scores and films have this shared connection. All the more reason to love Braveheart: its influence gave me my favorite film and favorite film score.

[TitanicFan2018 30]

51 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

At any rate, the popularity of Shore's Shire music really owes to scores like Braveheart and Titanic for having popularized the celtic sound.

 

The Shire leitmotif does kind of sound like the love theme from Braveheart.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Which I believe comes from Holst.

[Chen G. 3,949]

1 hour ago, TitanicFan2018 said:

The Shire leitmotif does kind of sound like the love theme from Braveheart.

 

Kinda. The way both melodic lines open is kind of similar, and of course some of the instrumental choices are close. But I don't know how much of it was temp-track emulation and how much just comes down to the "celtic" quality that both tunes are supposed to posses.

 

I should however mention that there isn't any one Shire leitmotif, per se. Its a tune that Shore twists into several themes: with a functional harmony, its the Shire theme; backed by hymn-like chords, its essentially Frodo's theme - which is perhaps the one that feels most like the Braveheart material; folksy and adorned by grace notes its a theme for Hobbiton; playful and reedy (come The Two Towers) its a playful theme for Merry and Pippin, etcetra.

 

And of course the Shire theme has that lush B-phrase.

[TitanicFan2018 30]

I'd say that love theme from Braveheart was influenced by Vaughan Williams.

 

That said, I'm currently working on a custom complete score for LOTR: FOTR.  In the score presentation, I renamed a few cues (some are incorrectly titled with respect to the scene they're heard in, but a couple I renamed to reference them being film version cues), and also made audio adjustments to some others.  Another note, I put the track "Flaming Red Hair" with the additional music as it honestly stands out from the rest of the score.

 

SCORE PRESENTATION

 

1. Prologue: One Ring To Rule Them All

2. Concerning Hobbits [film version]

3. The Shire (this was the cue used for the OST version of "Concerning Hobbits")

4. Very Old Friends

5. A Long Expected Party

6. Farewell Dear Bilbo (used the ending of the "Rivendell" cue" to remove Bilbo singing)

7. Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe (reconstructed the opening of the cue to remove Bilbo singing, restored the choir using "The Shadow Of The Past" from the OST, removed "The Drinking Song" sung by Merry and Pippin at the end as I don't think it should belong in the score presentation)

8. A Conspiracy Unmasked

9. Three Is Company

10. The Passing Of The Elves

11. Saruman The White

12. A Shortcut To Mushrooms

13. Strifer

14. The Nazgûl (removed Aragorn singing)

15. A Knife In The Dark [film version]

16. The Caverns of Isengard

17. Flight To The Ford [film version]

18. Orthanc

19. Rivendell

20. The Sword That Was Broken

21. The Council of Elrond [film version]

22. The Great Eye

23. Gilraen's Memorial

24. The Pass of Caradhras

25. The Doors of Durin

26. Moria

27. Gollum

28. Balin's Tomb

29. Khazad-Dûm

30. Lament for Gandalf / The Mirror of Galadriel (crossfaded both cues into each other as heard in the film)

31. The Fighting Uruk-hai / Farewell to Lothlorien

32. Parth Galen

33. The Departure of Boromir

34. The Breaking Of The Fellowship [film version]

35. May It Be / End Credits (crossfaded the song into the cue in which Edward Ross sings)

[Chen G. 3,949]

42 minutes ago, TitanicFan2018 said:

The only gripe I have about it is that Enya's vocals are kind of buried in the audio mix

 

You might find Enya's album version of Aniron useful:

 

 

Also, no edit of The Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack will be complete without some of the stuff that's in the fan-credits of the film. Especially the magnificent early version of The Breaking of the Fellowship.

 

And of course you'd also need to look through the Rarities Archive, and a few other nuggets that circulate in JWFan.

[Kühni 485]

.

[Chen G. 3,949]

38 minutes ago, Kühni said:

Also necessary: "The Prophecy" from the OST.

 

Oh, absolutely.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yes!

[Bilbo 3,709]

For the cello line alone its worth including! 

 

Magnificent cue. 

[Chen G. 3,949]

The rarities alternate is also nice. Not nearly as... energetic (for lack of a better word), but it has that wonderful Numenore theme.

[Kühni 485]

5 hours ago, Bilbo said:

For the cello line alone its worth including! 

 

[Gollum Cat 24]

On 10/13/2018 at 9:40 AM, Chen G. said:

The rarities alternate is also nice. Not nearly as... energetic (for lack of a better word), but it has that wonderful Numenore theme.

What is this Númenor theme?

[Holko 9,519]

Is it the Gondor Theme with the D section that is neither the Ascending nor Decline one?

[Chen G. 3,949]

44 minutes ago, Gollum Cat said:

What is this Númenor theme?

 

Its a variation of the Gondor theme, used only for the Last Alliance in an early version of the score, where the end of the theme is different to both the ascending and the descending variants. Its essentially the genesis of both.

 

I've seen a draft of The Music of The Lord of the Rings where Doug contemplated putting it in the theme list at the top of the book as an "unused theme" where he calls it the "second-age Gondor theme".

 

I like to think of it as the Numenore theme. It certainly works with regards to the Tolkien canon, and within the scope of Shore's score, he does apply the Gondor in decline theme to Arnor once, where Aragorn mentions its downfall.

 

If down the line someone wants to get really clever, they'd put the Rivendell arpeggios behind this melody line and call it Earendil's theme. 😉

[TitanicFan2018 30]

Also, there are no sloppy film edits in LOTR as far as I know.  The score was treated with immense respect, much like many other films.

[Holko 9,519]

The Khazad-Dúm bit in the Warg attack is the worst I can think of. The score is cut up and dialled out in quite a few places, but the execution is indeed anything but sloppy. And nearly everything still underscores what it was intended to, it's late editing changes and major restructurings that caused some cues to be cut up while others were rerecorded.

[TitanicFan2018 30]

5 minutes ago, Holko said:

The Khazad-Dúm bit in the Warg attack is the worst I can think of. The score is cut up and dialled out in quite a few places, but the execution is indeed anything but sloppy.

 

It's nowhere near like how the score in Titanic was treated - a bunch of sloppy micro-edits, mixing up multiple cues, even places where two different cues or parts of the same cue overlap

[gkgyver 1,645]

On 15. Oktober 2018 at 6:11 PM, Chen G. said:

 

Its a variation of the Gondor theme, used only for the Last Alliance in an early version of the score, where the end of the theme is different to both the ascending and the descending variants. Its essentially the genesis of both.

 

I've seen a draft of The Music of The Lord of the Rings where Doug contemplated putting it in the theme list at the top of the book as an "unused theme" where he calls it the "second-age Gondor theme".

 

I like to think of it as the Numenore theme. It certainly works with regards to the Tolkien canon, and within the scope of Shore's score, he does apply the Gondor in decline theme to Arnor once, where Aragorn mentions its downfall.

 

If down the line someone wants to get really clever, they'd put the Rivendell arpeggios behind this melody line and call it Earendil's theme. 😉

 

Last Of The Dunedain 2:10 onwards kind of does it.

[Faleel 5,346]

On 10/24/2018 at 3:32 PM, Holko said:

The score is cut up and dialled out in quite a few places, but the execution is indeed anything but sloppy.

The Hobbit on the other hand....

[Chen G. 3,949]

Mostly An Unexpected Journey, and even that's not so bad.

 

The Battle of the Five Armies reuses some of the same pieces in several places (the dragon sickness material from Mithril for Thorin overcoming his dragon sickness; pieces of Sons of Durin for the Chariot sequence and riding up Ravenhill), but overall the later two benefitted from having the scoring process close to home.

[Richard Penna 3,684]

On 10/24/2018 at 8:25 PM, TitanicFan2018 said:

Also, there are no sloppy film edits in LOTR as far as I know.  The score was treated with immense respect, much like many other films.

 

I can think of at least one (the build-up to the Rohan theme as they ride out of Helm's Deep - obscured by sfx) but largely yes, the music was treated with a lot of respect. Certainly compared to how most scores for 3+ hour epics are treated these days.

[gkgyver 1,645]

On 4. November 2018 at 10:40 PM, Chen G. said:

Mostly An Unexpected Journey, and even that's not so bad.

 

The Battle of the Five Armies reuses some of the same pieces in several places (the dragon sickness material from Mithril for Thorin overcoming his dragon sickness; pieces of Sons of Durin for the Chariot sequence and riding up Ravenhill), but overall the later two benefitted from having the scoring process close to home.

 

Didn't the last two have the scoring sessions not so close to home, and wrapped in September, contrary to the up until deadline scoring of AUJ?

[Holko 9,519]

The last two were recorded by Pope in NZ, no?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yes, so close to home.

[Jim Ware 526]

5 hours ago, gkgyver said:

 

Didn't the last two have the scoring sessions not so close to home, and wrapped in September, contrary to the up until deadline scoring of AUJ?

 

Both had scoring schedules running well into October.  Smaug had at least one session in December I think.

[Holko 9,519]

The one where they recorded wild bits striped because the final chase was still not locked?

[Jim Ware 526]

Yes, over a month after the main sessions (including Extended Edition material) were over.

 

Five Armies finished scoring in early October (aside from a choral session in February 2015 for the Extended Edition).

[Incanus 5,714]

20 hours ago, Jim Ware said:

Yes, over a month after the main sessions (including Extended Edition material) were over.

 

Five Armies finished scoring in early October (aside from a choral session in February 2015 for the Extended Edition).

Was that choral music even used in the final EE of BotFA? I remember that you or Doug mentioned that it didn't make it to the final film in its intended form.

[Jim Ware 526]

4 hours ago, Incanus said:

Was that choral music even used in the final EE of BotFA? I remember that you or Doug mentioned that it didn't make it to the final film in its intended form.

Only a couple of bars if I remember correctly.

[Incanus 5,714]

Damnation!

 

 I also would have loved for PJ to include the entirety of Gandalf's eulogy for Thorin. I imagine that combined with Shore's original music would have been a surefire tearjerker.

[Kühni 485]

.

[Incanus 5,714]

7 minutes ago, Kühni said:

 

I heard about that. Wasn't there a drought in New Zealand that year that prevented them from using the waterphone...?

Well that was dry.

[Faleel 5,346]

On 11/4/2018 at 4:40 PM, Chen G. said:

Mostly An Unexpected Journey, and even that's not so bad.

 

The Battle of the Five Armies reuses some of the same pieces in several places (the dragon sickness material from Mithril for Thorin overcoming his dragon sickness; pieces of Sons of Durin for the Chariot sequence and riding up Ravenhill), but overall the later two benefitted from having the scoring process close to home.

Nah, there is loads of wierd editing in DOS and BOTFA, awkward reverb endings etc.