SafeUnderHill

Warmth is the perfect definition of a lot of the string writing in that film. Take the music of the opening credits, for instance - so inviting. And then it turns on a dime and just keeps getting darker and darker leading into Lord of the Rings. The same applies to the Shire and Rivendell material.
 
The Dwarvish music, by comparison, can't help but sound foreboding and melancholic, and it really comes into its own in The Battle of the Five Armies: Easily the best use of "Grunters" in Mithril, and some of the lowest singing in the series in "The Darkest Hour" - gives Russian Oktavists a run for their money.

Hey, I still say DoS is the best of the lot! Someone just needs to re-record it under the baton of Shore with a new mix.

The idea to use the Maori choir for Moria was Jackson's; The Rohan theme that we got was the result of Peter Jackson wanting something more hummable than Shore's early ideas; The idea to give Smaug a Far-Eastern flavor was Jackson's, although I believe the specific choice of Gamelan was Shore's; It was Jackson who gave Howard the direction to write a theme for Laketown that was out of "17th Century Cornwall." It's all in the documentaries.
 
That's of course not to take anything away from Howard Shore. It is his music, but as they say - its a collaborative effort.

I meant Conrad Pope's contribution. And I was being a bit facetious myself.
 
I like the films, and not because I ignore their shortcoming, but rather in spite of them. I like the aggrandising of The Hobbit, because it: a) turns into something that I can enjoy more as an adult; b) makes it blend better with The Lord of the Rings. It fades into Fellowship of the Ring quite seemlessly.
 
I think there aren't so much fabrications that arise from this being a prequel. I think most of the major changes have to do with Thorin. Like I said earlier, Thorin in the novel doesn't really accomplish anything, so having him kill Azog and even let him at least have a go at killing Smaug - was a good idea, thematically. I may not like the execution of some of it, but on the whole I like the choice.
 
I am of the opinion that the only film that got the short end of the stick in the process of turning this into a trilogy was An Unexpected Journey. The other two - I like preety much as they currently are. Don't want no fan-edits.

They're what raised my awareness to film music, and I really like the films, so I naturally agree.
 
If anything, Howard Shore only got better at weaving a large number of leitmotives in a relatively short composition. Only Return of the King reaches the density of the Hobbit scores. And its got some wild musical colors: just about everything from Gamelan to bagpipes.
 
It also occupies both the underscore, the digetic and source music and even a lot of sound effects: from the diegetic horn call in Battle of the Five Armies to the bowed waterphones of Mirkwood.
 
And I also love that Shore got to explore his Dwarven material in this trilogy. It was glorious in 2001 and it was glorious and 2012.

I find it incredibly amusing that on the forum titled John Williams Fans, there is so much criticism being pointed at the man who is quite possibly Williams'  closest associate in the last decade or two. 
 
 
In a way, its perfectly natural for us to be unable to fully separate the impression of the film from the impression of the music, because the music was composed for the film. As Howard Shore would have said it, its like Opera.
 
 
Which is what I like love about it!
 
It gets even darker in Battle of the Five Armies. Its a trully bleak film, and it concludes on a tragic note with Thorin's demise, especially in the Extended Edition.
 
 
Sure. Its a much more dramatic ending, and it transformes the Hobbit into something more than a children's book, which is why I accept (and very much enjoy) the darker, more adult and grandiose vision of the films. The Hobbit book does have those elements in there, and Tolkien had the intention to go back and rewrite it, to bring the more foreboding elements of his Middle Earth writing forward.
 
You start reading (or watching) what feels like an episodic adventure, but by the finale, all those episodic parts pay off: The blades from the Troll-hoard, the Goblins vengefullness, the Eagles, Beorn, the Silvan Elves, etc...
 
 
But if that is the case, why isn't the actual film mix like that? It much more resembles the previous installments.
 
And yes, the New Zealand Symphony has their own sound, and as he so often does, Shore wrote to their strengths. There's some fantastic growling low brass in there, which fits the forces of evil in these films like a glove. And than Pipe Organ in the Town Hall almost makes you wish they'd used in for Sauron in the Lord of the Rings, too.
 
Curiously enough, its the only Middle Earth not to feature a boy choir!

I don't think it was unanimous at any point. Since when have we all been able to agree on anything here?

So, recently wanted to learn how to use InDesign, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to revisit this analysis, as I was never pleased with it. I thought my description of both the music and the scenes it underscores was pretty bad (the thematic analysis also had quite a few mistakes), so I decided to redo it from scratch, and here is the end result in PDF format (also updated the main post of this thread). Spoilers for Season I in it.
 
Pretty happy with it. The PDF has the same size as the previous one, yet it offers pictures of higher quality and (and that's what I'm quite pleased with) embed audio samples for the themes too (you'll have to download the PDF (button on the left) to be able to play them, though). I'm guessing this is that kind of stuff @SafeUnderHill would like for the LOTR book (the design of which, as you'll see, was a source of inspiration for that new PDF).
 
On a sidenote: I tried to go into a bit more detail when it comes to describing the music (thus being a bit more specific when referring to some instruments instead of simply talking about "brass, woodwinds, percussion and strings", and also mention a few musical techniques as well), but I still remain very much a newbie when it comes to this, so it is highly probable there are quite a few mistakes in that regard. If you see any, feel free to point them out and I'll correct them as soon as possible.

Yeah, I also never percieved it as a lift from Hugo. Its just that both compositions are in a more classical idiom. We also get to explore some medieval/baroque sounding music in the following film, with Laketown. But halfway into Battle of the Five Armies we are well into the romantic style of Fellowship of the Ring, so there's a nice progression there.
 
There's also an evolution from a more instrumental score in the first two films into a more operatic score with voices going into Lord of the Rings, although all of the Middle Earth scores use voices extensivelly.
 
 
I actually think the latter two scores (and films) are tonally more like The Lord of the Rings in that the music helps in driving home a lot of the dark and elegiac aspects of the story. By comparison, An Unexpected Journey stands out as a score written in a much more bold and heroic vein, much like the film.
 
I think the orchestrational difference complements the films' exploration of new, uncharted territory in Middle Earth. The fantastic low brass of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra works well in accenting the foreboding element of those two scores.
 
I think, if the (speculative) difference between the dulogy and trilogy is to be explored, this would be a good point to start: I don't quite know what the tone of the second installment in the proposed dulogy will have been; but with the trilogy, we got three films and scores, each darker than the next.

Both are amazing themes are among the best Williams ever composed.  

Tough to choose, but right now I'll pick Rrey's Theme.

Yes In the next few days ! 
 

I also gave it another listen and I love the more classical feel of the music for Bilbo. In the Lord of the Rings, the music evolves from folk music to more orchestral and sophisticated music. In The Hobbit, there is also a bit of development from a more classical sound into the more romantic sound of the rest of the music of Middle Earth.

I do believe that that's what was going through the filmmakers minds when they lost those themes. I think they just found them a little to bold for the tone of the later two films. It makes sense on paper and I don't mind it all that much while watching, but I do think one or two cameos would be nice.
 
Since Shore binds Thorin's theme to the Company theme, Thorin's theme sort of carries on the associations of the Company theme. In the Extended Edition, we are also introduced to the House of Durin (in its definitive form) much earlier, so it takes the place of that theme nicely. For the general audience, the Laketown theme takes the place of the company theme in terms of something they can hum.

But not the most dramatic.
 
If I were to distill the verbal chunk I wrote above, I'd say this: that it is the least-flawed (or, better yet, closest to being "technically" perfect) entry doesn't necessarily mean that its the best
 
Although again, if I favor Return of the King better its only by a hair. They're all cut from the same cloth. The same is true, for me, in trying to pick a favorite out of The Hobbit trilogy. In both cases its the result of the filmmakers having scripted, filmed and assembled all three at the same time.

Hi, it's my first post here, hello to you all  

This place seems like my best shot at doing this, so I've got 2 questions for the awesome @Doug Adams:
1. We know the lyrics for LotR film music come from texts in Quenya, Khuzdul, Black Speech, etc., but the actual lyrics in the tracks quite frequently used only parts of the source texts, often out of order, or even just some syllables of the original words, sometimes not making much sense in the final effect. Were the texts simply edited to suit the music or...? How did the process of turning the source texts into the lyrics look like?
2. Is your upcoming Hobbit music book going to include lyrics to "non-canon" pieces like the film version of Thorin vs. Azog cue from AUJ? I really, really want to know what that piece's text is about.

This is the first time I've written a music.