Incanus

Williams is such a master at fusing the Golden Age Hollywood sound with his own and making it so thoroughly and effortlessly his own. He is indeed the successor of those early film music giants and as Mangold says it that above tweet, bringing this particular pure symphony orchestra sound to modern audiences. Such a gorgeous theme.

While I haven't seen the show, @Quintus, who is banned at the moment and thus cannot write this himself, asked me to convey a message to you all that he has watched the first episodes of this show and loves it.

OOoh! What is this Golden Age goodness! P.S. There is second part of the recording on the same Twitter account.

Especially when it is based on a very limited amount of Tolkien's actual writings. Pleasing hardcore Tolkien scholars among us would be easier if they actually had based the show extensively on Tolkien's texts and actually honored the author's work and not written mostly fan fiction. This show seems to be mostly very loosely inspired by Tolkien.

Exactly! A decision made even easier by the fact I don't have an Amazon streaming service subscription in the first place.

And the Adventures of Tom Bombadil theory grows stronger. Maybe the showrunners bought rights to that! What can we expect next? Tom Bombadil himself? Mewlips? Princess Mee? Perry-the-Winkle?

Well that is just as awful as the Gandalf speculation on the origin of the Stranger. Man in the Moon!

Masterful! I never realized Gandalf's battle with the balrog had millenia old roots! The Bridge of Khazad-dûm now makes much more sense. It all rhymes! Balrog: You powers are weak old man! I've been waiting for you, Gandalf. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now, *I* am the master. Gandalf: Only the master of evil, balrog! If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can ever imagine (and I'll change colour)! You will not pass!

His love of the halfling leaf will slow his mind obviously. He is too tobacco addled to do anything. I really wish this Stranger character won't be Gandalf but it doesn't look good.

I think it is both. Disregarding Tolkien's writings and offering cloying pandering to the audience and in a way pointing "Hey look at these things that you know! Isn't it nice, comforting and sweet that they are in this series as well. Comforting and you can name them and know they are hobbits or that is Gandalf. Wohoo!". If the showrunners had had guts they would have truly made this a Second Age story without the needless dangling of these identifiable LotR mascots in front of the audience. The world of Elves, Men and Dwarves of the Second Age would have been fascinating in itself and still identifiable as Middle-Earth without dragging hobbits into this tale.

Yes indeed and especially considering the source material the showrunners had access to (LotR), which gives no indication of such things anywhere. Even the Blue Wizards or other wizards beyond Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast are ever obliquely referred to in one line from Saruman: Later! Yes, when you [Gandalf] also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards.

Yeah that should indeed be in quotes.

The fan fiction just gets more fan fictional. What a travesty.

Howard Shore's theme has very much a TV series main title theme, meaning that it appears as a curtain opener and not in the underscore. It is such a brief tantalizing snippet with little time to develop but really makes me wish that he had actually scored the entire series. Hearing sort of proto-versions and explorations of many of his themes would have been fantastic. Shore's theme really feels like a small snippet that doesn't have much time to breathe or develop. Sadly. On the other hand I found McCreary's Galadriel theme cloying and try-hard from the first listen unfortunately. Not his finest tune by any means. But I leave you to discuss this music in peace. I have nothing especially glowing to say about it so I stop now.

Damn I have become truly allergic to modern film scoring stylings. I can't get into this music at all. Bear McCreary has always been very hit-or-miss for me and this is unfortunately a miss. Having Howard Shore's Middle-Earth scores for comparison doesn't really help but even judged on its own this isn't my cup of tea at all.

I was just listening to this today and was thinking the same. But it is such a fine and fun score along with the Arsenic and Old Lace. I think the way Steiner utilizes popular music in his scores (like in Arsenic and Old Lace here) is so very emblematic of his style and he does it very well and must have in part influenced film scoring in general when it comes to using popular music and folk tunes etc. to conjure time, place and other associations. And apparently Jack Warner indeed wanted Steiner to score everything wall-to-wall. It feels almost like it was a point of pride and prestige to Warner to have Steiner's music blasting through every scene even when a more minimal spotting would have been in order.

Wow, with every new detail that is revealed about this show, the less interested I become. I am not that interested in Tolkien fan fiction that I would actually subscribe to Amazon Prime Video for this.

Hi @Thomas Ketelsen! Nice to hear you have enjoyed my analyses of John Williams' music. Here are a couple of my older more extensive analyses from the Review section here at JWFan: A.I. - The Artificial Intelligence The Lost World - Jurassic Park Lincoln Other analyses (not just mine) can be found in the Score Analyses & Cue Lists -page of JWFan.

Simone Pedroni has previously recorded Williams' music for Varese Sarabande label on Themes And Transcriptions For Piano album and several transcriptions were done by Williams himself (Lincoln and The Book Thief suites). Keisuke Wakao's album was available also outside Japan but quite infrequently (E.g. I found my copy by chance for 5 € at German Amazon) and Williams did in fact only arrange The Days Between from Stepmom for it anf played piano for that track. The rest of the arrangements were by someone else. Sara Andon and Simone Pedroni recorded also an album of Ennio Morricone's music a few years ago so here's to hoping we'll get a new CD of these Williams arrangements. 🙂

Yes @Luke Skywalker there is one strange minuscule blip or distortion at 2:29-:30 in Journey to the Island on the 2016 set on the left channel. It is also present on the OST but the mix is different so you can't really notice it (I didn't until I checked after the 2016 set came out). Once you have heard it, you can't unhear it.

Nah I'll wait for the eventual re-release of that version instead of scouring the interwebs for a costly copy.

Heh I didn't even realize that this isn't yet on sale on LLL site since I preordered my copy at the Music Box Records, which had it available this morning. Although it will probably take 2-3 weeks before I get my hands on it.

Will do @crocodile! I have previously heard only the Prince and the Pauper but thought it was high time to get all of these classics. Now if only someone would re-record The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Herrmann or Varese re-release their old re-recording. That masterpiece should be in print!

Well I guess I have to get this! Curse you OCD!