"Films That Are Better Than Their Scores"

[THEfranz_conrad 0]

I actually find the LOTR films only slightly as interesting as their scores, which are the real triumph.

I've possibly looked at the Shore scores a little too closely though:

E.g.

'Foundations of Stone'

http://au.msnusers.com/SMME/Documents/TTTE...EPrologue%2Epdf

'Emyn Muil' and 'The Taming of Smeagol'

http://au.msnusers.com/SMME/Documents/TTTE...TEEemynmuil.pdf

'Three Hunters' and 'Realm of the Horse Lords'

http://au.msnusers.com/SMME/Documents/TTTE...TEE3hunters.pdf

'Riders of Rohan' and 'Fangorn Forest'

http://au.msnusers.com/SMME/Documents/TTTE...EE3hunters2.pdf

On the Weir scores - what he shares with Scorsese and Kubrick and Mann is a tendency not to have his films dominated by an original score but more by pieces selected by him. Even Jean-Michel Jarre in Gallipoli was not composed for the film - it was a case of a surviving temp track. There's usually some original music in there in the films I find most interesting - e.g. Master and Commander, Truman Show, Fearless, Picnic - but that original music tends to be highly atypical for the genre by intention. Usually of course the most memorable pieces in the films - Albinoni's Adagio, Gorecki's Symphony III, Vaughan-Williams Thomas Tallis Fantasia, Beethoven's... (forgotten the name) and the Kilar and Chopin pieces from Truman Show - tend to be most effective, and this is something I think he shares in common with those other directors. Kubrick's post-Strangelove work rested heavily on memorable classical pieces with little original score (which, when featured, tended to work against genre - as in Abigail Mead's, Wendy Carlos' and Jocelyn Pook's scores for the final three). Scorsese has become much the same - his 'classical' pieces are rarely concert hall birthed - pop tunes selected specially for the purpose, though he occasionally throws in classical pieces (e.g. Casino's finale, Bach's Toccatta and Fugue in The Aviator, standard selections in The Age of Innocence). Original scores in Scorsese films tend to be as against-the-mould as those in the films of Weir and Kubrick, though date less obviously because of the prominence of acoustic elements in the writing of Howard Shore and Elmer Bernstein (and Philip Glass - though Kundun is more the exception Scorsese film than the rule).

[A24 4,346]

I re-watched Year of Living Dangerously tonight and decided that it had an ok score.  The electronics still sounded silly, but also a bit more fitting with the film itself.

I don't really understand how Weir's music fits in with Scorsese and Kubrick.  I understand the concept of using atypical music to get a point across, but not really with original music.  Using the electronics to the extent that Weir and Jarre did back in the 80s wasn't necessarily all that timeless.  The music dates the films that would otherwise be timeless.

Not really. You speak of them as if they were all treated with an 80s Miami Vice-like score. I think you just can't stand electronic scoring/instruments. I think you want all films to be the same with the same music (orchestral/symphonic style). I could be wrong of course but your post is stearing my thoughts that way.

If the Weir films were scored with typical orchestral scoring they would lose a bit of their originality. They would have a score just like any other score you hear these days. I'm glad they turned out the way they did.

----------------

Alex Cremers

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

Why is everyone under the assumption that every time someone anwers they automatically hate the score? I am of the opinion that a score should be neither better ot worse than the film, they should compliment each other equally. But some scores that don't do this for me include Pirates, Goldeneye, Troy and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[MrScratch 294]

The four movies/scores I listed are films that I actually watch far more than I listen to their soundtrack. And in the case of OFOTCN I've never even heard the score outside the movie, nor do I have any desire to. The other three, I do own the soundtracks. And apart from SPR, I really don't think any of the themes from those movies are all that memorable. But, in no way do I hate the music. All four service the films well enough, but in my opinion, don't make for that good of a listening experience on their own.

Yet, those four movies are probably in my top 20 favorite films. As a soundtrack collector, I feel the need to own scores to my favorite films whether I like them or not.

Jeff

[TheRuleOfThirds 0]

Not really. You speak of them as if they were all treated with an 80s Miami Vice-like score. I think you just can't stand electronic scoring/instruments. I think you want all films to be the same with the same music (orchestral/symphonic style). I could be wrong of course but your post is stearing my thoughts that way.

And I think you're being a bit melodramatic.

I like a lot of Goldsmith's electronic stuff. If it were easier to come by, I'd probably get Runaway and like it. I love the pseudo-pipes in Timeline. Joe Dante's scores (and movies) are like 100 times more entertaining thanks to Jerry's synths. Let's not forget Rambo, either. Even though it's not Goldsmith, Tron is one of my favorite scores. My point is, there's a certain time and place to use electronics tastefully. I question Weir's judgment here.

If the Weir films were scored with typical orchestral scoring they would lose a bit of their originality. They would have a score just like any other score you hear these days. I'm glad they turned out the way they did.

Which, by that reckoning, would render Spielberg's films unoriginal and typical simply because John Williams does the same thing he's always done for Spielberg films.

[A24 4,346]

And I think you're being a bit melodramatic.  

I like a lot of Goldsmith's electronic stuff. If it were easier to come by, I'd probably get Runaway and like it. I love the pseudo-pipes in Timeline. Joe Dante's scores (and movies) are like 100 times more entertaining thanks to Jerry's synths. Let's not forget Rambo, either. Even though it's not Goldsmith, Tron is one of my favorite scores. My point is, there's a certain time and place to use electronics tastefully. I question Weir's judgment here.

I question yours.

[ChrisAfonso 186]

I like a lot of Goldsmith's electronic stuff.  (...)  I love the pseudo-pipes in Timeline.

I find those absolutely horrifying. The get on my nerves as soon as they start playing.

-Chris, who finds Goldsmith's Timeline mediocre. All of that he has done before, and done better.

[Morlock 11]

I think the synth work in Timeline is atrocious.

I don't know about all Weir scores, but IMO Witness would have benefitted from a non-synth approach. Weir's musical choices are very strange, IMO they hit as much as they miss. Truman Show and Dead Poets Society had the perfect musical accompaniment (Having the Philip Glass pieces in Truman Show, as well as Glass himself I think was a particularly inspired choice). Master & Commander I think was on the right path with the pre-existing music, but I sense that the score was intentionaly dumbing it down, and removing any semblance of rythem or melody just for the sake of it, when a good theme, or a solid action track might have been right for it. I think Weir should team up with Goldenthal, they could really work well together. Or maybe he should bring Jarre out of his retirement. Now that he's past his infatuation with synths, who knows what they could do? (Plus, I would get seriously excited if I knew a new there was a new Maurice Jarre score in the making)

[A24 4,346]

I think the synth work in Timeline is atrocious.  

 I don't know about all Weir scores, but IMO Witness would have benefitted from a non-synth approach.

It would only have benefitted if the synth score didn't work.

[Morlock 11]

I obviously don't think it entirely worked.

[A24 4,346]

I obviously don't think it entirely worked.

You don't know what you're saying. I'm glad you didn't produce Witness.

[A24 4,346]

Here's someone who knows what he's saying:

One aspect that I feel the need to point out is the music score by Maurice Jarre (composer of such films as Dead Poet's Society and Ghost). Nominated for an Academy Award, Jarre chose not to accomplish his wringing of emotions by using a 900-piece John Williams type of orchestration. Instead, he relies upon mainly a synthesizer to accomplish this feat. Although this seems like an unlikely choice, this tends to lift the film to an even higher plane. For whatever reason, the movie gods give this music score life, and it becomes a fitting theme for the simple life of the Amish. - Excerpt review DVD Verdict

[Morlock 11]

You don't know what you're saying. I'm glad you didn't produce Witness.

So am I, I'm not such a huge fan of the film.

[pixie_twinkle 48]

All Three Lord of the Rings movies.  I thought the scores were subpar and not fitting of the film.

Absolutely. Movies: 8/10, scores: 2/10. I REALLY disliked these scores. Shore had SO much to work with visually and ended up writing such simplistic, bland (IMO!!!!) music. The blandness is my own opinion. There's no denying the simplicity of the music though.

Others: King Arthur. The score was really bad. The film was only quite bad.

For Your Eyes Only.

As for Goldeneye, I'm gonna open myself up for a kicking here and say I quite like this score. It is far more original than the somewhat derivative scores for the last 3 Bonds. I HATED the score to Die Another Day. It doesn't count in this thread though because the film was worse!

[Justin 2]

Others: King Arthur. The score was really bad. The film was only quite bad.

While I was far from being impressed by "Zimmer's" King Arthur the film was so unbelievably boring that I couldn't even make my way through the whole thing.

Justin

[A24 4,346]

All Three Lord of the Rings movies.  I thought the scores were subpar and not fitting of the film.

Absolutely. Movies: 8/10, scores: 2/10. I REALLY disliked these scores. Shore had SO much to work with visually and ended up writing such simplistic, bland (IMO!!!!) music. The blandness is my own opinion. There's no denying the simplicity of the music though.

The music is not challenging and that's why the masses think that this is the best music ever written for film.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

FotR was amazing. For some reason, the music just felt perfectly Tolkien to me. The first one is probably still the best, with RotK coming in second and TTT coming in third.

[Morlock 11]

Kind of like how the theme from Sky Captain sounds like Hook and The Rocketeer.  

But that one sucky theme.

The music is not challenging and that's why the masses think that this is the best music ever written for film.

No, you just haven't really listened to it. And it has been proven that you don't like anything that did well in the box office, save kinda maybe X2. So go on, bash the LoTR scores, but the world stopped listening a long time ago.

[A24 4,346]

 

The music is not challenging and that's why the masses think that this is the best music ever written for film.

No, you just haven't really listened to it. And it has been proven that you don't like anything that did well in the box office, save kinda maybe X2.

Wrong, successful or not, it has nothing to do with how I understand or appreciate music. What do they teach you in the army, Morlock?! Please, don't go too simple on us. I wouldn't be listening to J. Williams if I was against commercial success. You silly you, how little sense you sometimes make.

I think the music and the monotonous script are two very obvious shortcomings in the LOTR series. You, with voice of the masses, are only acknowledging my findings.

---------------

Alex Cremers - boy, this feels like old times

[Morlock 11]

Yet you often bash those who like JW because of Harry Potter or Star Wars, and rarely talk about his big scores, usualy going for his more intimate ones. You rarely talk about any big, Hollywood movies, save to bash them. Oh, and you refer to everyone who finds your opinions disagreable as 'the masses'. You call people who are dissapointed JW is doing Memoirs of A Geisha and isn't doing then next Potter film close minded (or the masses), when you are just as close minded for seemingly only liking the JW of Empire of the Sun, Accidental Tourist, JFK, Stanley & Iris. Oh, and I think you said once you liked Qui Gon's theme.

You're just arrogant and pretentious, and too arrogant and pretentious to realize it. It's not LoTR you hate, it's the fact that billions others love it.

If it has nothing to do with the grosses, than I guess this is just one mighty big coincidence.

Of course, you are welcome to dislike the LoTR scores. But until you can convince someone that you've actually given them a real listen, I'm afraid you will simply be countered time and time again (not that you'd mind that, after all, that'd just reinforce how stupid the masses are).

It must be some deep genetic subconcious thing or something, because you seem to genuinly believe success has nothing to do with you not liking most successful movies and their scores.

[A24 4,346]

Yet you often bash those who like JW because of Harry Potter or Star Wars, and rarely talk about his big scores, usualy going for his more intimate ones. You rarely talk about any big, Hollywood movies, save to bash them. Oh, and you refer to everyone who finds your opinions disagreable as 'the masses'. You call people who are dissapointed JW is doing Memoirs of A Geisha and isn't doing then next Potter film close minded (or the masses), when you are just as close minded for seemingly only liking the JW of Empire of the Sun, Accidental Tourist, JFK, Stanley & Iris. Oh, and I think you said once you liked Qui Gon's theme.

 You're just arrogant and pretentious, and too arrogant and pretentious to realize it. It's not LoTR you hate, it's the fact that billions others love it.  

 If it has nothing to do with the grosses, than I guess this is just one mighty big coincidence.

 Of course, you are welcome to dislike the LoTR scores. But until you can convince someone that you've actually given them a real listen, I'm afraid you will simply be countered time and time again (not that you'd mind that, after all, that'd just reinforce how stupid the masses are).

 It must be some deep genetic subconcious thing or something, because you seem to genuinly believe success has nothing to do with you not liking most successful movies and their scores.

A real listen? Are you kidding? If I detest what I'm hearing during the movies, why should I buy the CDs and listen to them real carefully? That doesn't make sense to me. Sometimes it doesn't take long to form an opinion. I'm intrigued or I'm not intrigued. I know when something might eventually intrigue me. The music of LOTR to me is so uninteresting (both as music AND score) that it throws me off, so why should I investigate this music any further? I leave that for the Zimmer-loving Morlocks of the world. You love overly clear music that guides ones emotions through the story with no surprises or challenges. The music of LOTR did not create any worthwhile chemistry. The composer was probably instructed to stay away from "experimenting" as far as he possibly could resulting in harmonies so bland that it makes the Titanic score almost seem avant-garde in comparison.

I don't think I ever said I liked Qui-Gon's Theme but I'm quite fond of The Phantom Menace as a whole. I think the rerecording of Jaws is fantastic. Certainly Jaws was a Box Office smash. But also Star Wars, Superman, Schindler's List, CE3K: they were are commercially big successful movies. Which is not to say that Empire of the Sun, Accidental Tourist, JFK, Stanley & Iris aren't great, of course!

So what if I don't find Potter all that interesting? When I listen to Potter, I hear a Williams who took a few steps back and rehashed what he already had done multiple times before. As a long time fan of Williams (you just discovered him and bought 50-80 CDs at once) you kinda expect him to grow, to seek new directions, other projects. You don't want him to stand still. As a composer and music lover I also seek new directions, new ways, new impulses, new sounds. I explore something, I live with it for a while, and then I go on to the next. I've been doing this on a daily basis, for longer than you are living, Morlock. I'm at a stage in my life that I want more than what everyday cinema can offer me.

PS: What do you mean I'm too arrogant to realize I'm arrogant? Look at your previous signature!

----------------

Alex Cremers - entering new levels of arrogance.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

to shock Alex, I think that BladeRunner is a better film than its score which is awful. I hate that electronic noise and its one of the main reasons I am not fond of that film.

[A24 4,346]

Like so many great movies, Blade Runner is not a crowd pleaser. For instance, fans of Emmerich usually don't like Blade Runner.

[bondo 33]

Well, the crowd sure as hell enjoyed the LOTR concert, giving Shore numerous standing ovations.... I was one of them!

[JoeinAR 1,949]

so Alex what do you think of BR's score, I admit I do not like Vangelis' music. I do not like electronic scores for the most part.

[A24 4,346]

Well, the crowd sure as hell enjoyed the LOTR concert, giving Shore numerous standing ovations.... I was one of them!

People who attend a Britney Spears concert usually tend to enjoy it too.

[bondo 33]

You're really comparing those who attend the symphony to Britney Spears fans? Air-tight argument ya got there!

[John McClane 1]

People who attend a Britney Spears concert usually tend to enjoy it too.

Please don't do that name again on this board, Alex. This is supposed to be a forum where people talk about music.

[John Crichton 4]

FotR was amazing. For some reason, the music just felt perfectly Tolkien to me. The first one is probably still the best, with RotK coming in second and TTT coming in third.

Spot on.

[SturgisPodmore 0]

The Forgotten. I really liked the movie, especially when that detective lady got sucked away. But the score really pretty much sucks. It works in the film as just background music, but not on the CD player. All I like is the first track.

~Sturgis

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Planet of the Apes.

I do not like JG's score to the movie.

[David Coscina 4]

The Forgotten.  I really liked the movie, especially when that detective lady got sucked away.  But the score really pretty much sucks.  It works in the film as just background music, but not on the CD player.  All I like is the first track.

~Sturgis

Well I didn't care for the last act of the film where it just kind of imploded into itself but I think Horner was doing his best immitation of James Newton Howard's Sixth Sense. Sounded very similar in its harmonic progressions, at least for the main theme.

[pixie_twinkle 48]

FotR was amazing. For some reason, the music just felt perfectly Tolkien to me. The first one is probably still the best, with RotK coming in second and TTT coming in third.

Spot on.

I really disagree, but I appreciate that this is an old topic now and I've certainly had my say on this in other threads over the past few years. I promise to stop bashing Shore (who's score to Aviator I really quite liked!). I just feel he was the wrong choice for LOTR. I recently bought the DVD of Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" (for an amazing 10 bucks at Blockbuster!!). Now the music for J of N is stunning. Very haunting, epic sounding music. It really struck me how perfect that theme would have been for LOTR! Has anyone else heard the music from Jesus of Nazareth? Maurice Jarre at his most evocative and sumptuous. The main theme puts warm shivers up my spine every time I hear it.

[deth 0]

Anyways, why did Serra do GoldenEye to begin with?

He was asked to.

Neil

Alright, than who requested him? The director? One of the producers?

Or is it unknown who wanted him?

the producers.... after they couldn't get John Barry.

anyways, my vote goes to another Bond film.... Licence to Kill....

[THEfranz_conrad 0]

All Three Lord of the Rings movies.  I thought the scores were subpar and not fitting of the film.

Absolutely. Movies: 8/10, scores: 2/10. I REALLY disliked these scores. Shore had SO much to work with visually and ended up writing such simplistic, bland (IMO!!!!) music. The blandness is my own opinion. There's no denying the simplicity of the music though.

The music is not challenging and that's why the masses think that this is the best music ever written for film.

Humility and all that aside, the mind boggles at the conclusion that Shore's music was not challenging at all... How many people round here actually agree with this rot?

[pixie_twinkle 48]

In what way was it challenging?

[A24 4,346]

 

Humility and all that aside, the mind boggles at the conclusion that Shore's music was not challenging at all... How many people round here actually agree with this rot?

Well, like I just said, the masses love this music ... so not too many. The music is as challenging as listening to a New Age CD found at the local grocery store. It's sounds loud but it's orchestral wallpaper accentuated by the images. It's "Enya" all over again. Alex North would've been fired from the project if he were the composer. Fear leaves no room for freedom.

----------------

Alex Cremers

[Bowie 45]

I find the music perfectly clichéd and simplistic for a good-and-evil tale written yonks ago. I consider the film and score sort of Renaissancey in its ideals. And so I will never choose to listen to it. Whereas Star Wars is Romantic in derivation (well, Greek tragedy Romantic), and emulation, and the deep, swirling passion and fiery furore of fantastic emotion is what I choose to listen to.

Bowie - who's known to talk shit, so if you think I'm mistaken, please speak up!

[THEfranz_conrad 0]

Well, like I just said, the masses love this music ... so not too many.

Well... I've seen more evidence of mass infiltration on this board than any of the others in the four years I've been poking my nose around the online community (I'm not counting that New Age hymn chapel theonering.net - completely uncritical adoration of Shore there, how unlike the attitude to Williams here...), but I won't pick more fights than I have to tonight.

In what way was it challenging?

There's a dozen ways to answer this question. The cheakiest is to say outright that if it doesn't suit your notions of what makes good music, then you find it challenging. But that's an argument that isn't really persuasive at all. Since music and our valuation of it is subjective ultimately (no, don't worry, I'm not heading down the postmodern path), I'll speak of the sense in which I found the music of the trilogy challenging.

I'll first note that I found the films themselves challenging - in that they isolated aspects of the books I didn't feel were that important and played the drama with a sledge-hammer. When I came to the films, I was increasingly sensitive to films which pushed all the right buttons - hence my distaste for the films. The interesting flipside is that at the time all I wanted to listen to were scores that pushed the right buttons - The Empire Strikes Back was my favorite score, followed by Kilar's Portrait of a Lady. (Those two remain at the top of my list to this day.) And so when I bought the CD of Shore's music for FOTR four weeks before the film was released, I didn't get it. Sure - there were the diatonic hymns at liked rearing their heads every now and then, but where were all the THEMES? Evil seemed to have more of a chaotic presence than an organised one, and Lothlorien was eerily amelodic to my ears at the time. I set the CD player to repeat the tracks featuring the two main hobbit themes (Shire A and Shire B - aka A Hobbit's Understanding - as I've come to know them) and the Enya song, which pushed all the right buttons. I had about 200 soundtracks at the time.

Jump to three years later - I had 700 soundtracks at the time - and in the Sydney Opera House I watched Shore rehearse the different sections of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in his LOTR Symphony (not a classic symphony, but you couldn't really call it a concerto or a cantata either). I knew every note played by just about every instrument, or as many as you could make out in the score recordings' muddy bass-heavy mix. So what happened? Well I was challenged on a few issues of what I considered good film music.

1. Western Nineteenth Century Romantic Orchestral Writing is the Correct Idiom for Film - Not hard to see where this comes from. Usually we come to know film music via something like Superman, Batman, Conan the Barbarian, Star Trek II, King Kong, Lawrence of Arabia, etc. And I suppose it mostly comes from the idea that this orchestra is not part of any recognisable social grouping in our society - like Latin, it is almost a dead language in anywhere other than film and the little-attended concert hall. (Forgive me the generalisations.) So when we hear the strings and the oboe solos and the bassoon and the french horn and the cor anglais... it tends not to raise any flags. By this reasoning Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a superb score - possibly the best of the Harry Potter scores. Why? Because it doesn't really waver from that idiom - well, there are some modernist passages, but nothing that really gets the blood running cold like the dissonant textures of 'Apparition on the Train' in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I submit that the score for the most recent Harry Potter adventure actually shares this characteristic with Shore's LOTR scores - it's written by someone not afraid to venture beyond a safe idiom. Williams' score is like his little tour through the history of music - from Renaissance stylings to brassy jazz to the lovechildren of Lygeti. Williams took a real risk in the use of jazz - for while film music fans are starting to get over it, we're still not wholly able to shrug off some of the cultural associations of jazz. Jazz is a living language outside of its appearances in film in a way that the Western symphony orchestra doesn't come close to. It's the same with rock music or dance music - find me two composers more loathed across the message boards than Trevor Rabin and Eric Serra, the paragons of writing those respective fields. And why do we have difficulty with their music? Because it is simple? Well yes, relatively ... but surely also because we find the images they conjure - Bono crassly preaching on Third World poverty or sexy bodies mindlessly thrashing away in strobe lighting - very detached from what we appreciate and aspire to. [NOTE: Another Williams' score I so admire for its diversity of idioms is AI, Artificial Intelligence, which is actually in my estimation the Maestro's greatest work to date. (Though you've got to have heard the Oscar promo to give it its due I think.)]

So too Shore gives Middle Earth a world of musical diversity - he starts with a structure of cultures, from there deriving batches of themes and motifs for races, characters and ideas. And he has the flexibility as a composer to recognise that the result must be a musical world with as much potential for collision of style as the races it depicts. The Elves are factions, and those factions have totally different musical languages. Neither is particularly sympathetic to the musical language of the Dwarves, which is brutal and vulgar to both, but not incapable of expressing a nobility that all three possess. So too - the language of the Rohirrim and the Hobbits and the Gondorians and Isengard and the Dead and the Morgul Host are all going to be different to some extent. And in every culture's case, while there are some orchestral elements, the music is true to that culture, with the orchestral elements more woven in (to use a phrase of Doug Adams). Shore had this to say in one of his filmscoremonthly.com interviews about this (speaking about the realistic folk sound he brought to the hobbit music):

I wanted it to feel like it was the Hobbits playing.  We were so conscious of the cultures: that in Lothl?rien the music felt Elvish, it felt like it was being played in Lothl?rien.  Same in Rivendell.  You  

wanted to feel like it was part of [the culture].  That's why we used the Dwarves in Moria.  It's the dying culture - you hear the sound of the Dwarves.  When you look down in those caverns you hear these voices coming up from thousand of feet below. And it's the same thing with Hobbiton.  You wanted to feel that the Hobbits were playing the music, so that's why it has that quality to it.  

I don't need to tell you all these styles and devices - the Dead Marshes is dominated by a very simple tool - aleatoric choral writing (if it could truly be called writing). Hobbiton is all folk idiom and diatonic hymns. Gondor is all heraldry and the same kind of romantic writing that much of the original Star Wars trilogy got drawn from. Mordor is series of unstable polyphonic themes with screaming ancient double reeds and modern brass that tread a knife-edge between order and chaos - wholly unseductive form of evil. The purity of a boys choir singing oriental styled hymns is the Voice of the Ring itself - a kind of evil so attractive it appears pure.

And then of course... there's the pop ballads and New Age stylings. Let's leave the End Title songs out of this for moment - consign them to the same trash heap on which can be found 'For Always', a trash-trove of Horner songs, Andrew Lloyd Webber anthems (note - pop anthems are music with their own recognisable associations in our times, hence our displeasure?) and the like. New Age music - what's it doing here representing Elves? Whether it's the deftly handled melange of Eastern textures in Lothlorien or Enya and various classical-trained vocalists gliding up and down the minimalist string writing for Lothlorien [EDIT - Sorry - this should read RIVENDELL, not LOTHLORIEN here), it's representing a culture. And yes, there's no escaping the fact that people gather round Stone Henge or Tolkien's grave and sing songs like this - yeah, I know all about that. And I know Enya's 'Book of Dreams' and 'Orinoco Flow' and the Uillean Pipes of Horner's Titanic are the most bloody annoying tunes we've heard (again - there's a reason for that - and it's social!).

But exercise a little patience and try to look past the associations of a piece of music - recognise that here in Shore's work he is playing on our perception of ethereal textures as an accompaniment to the Elves. He's set himself the difficult task of writing more than cliche Oriental music for ney, sarangi and other instruments not within the experience of many composers, and layering all that with alto choir as well. In his Rivendell music across the three films - well represented in the cue 'Many Meetings', 'Anduril' and 'The Leavetaking' - he writes completely original New Age music based on a minimalism close to that of Philip Glass' later works. And its music that feels more stripped down - detached from earthly timbres and instrumentation - it's like it's not connected with anything physical at all. (Lothlorien has a stronger relationship with nature - and there the feeling is quite different.)

So - one thing which I think was challenging for me to get over - and I don't think I'm the only one, is the diversity of the idioms employed to depict this world of cultures interacting. The value of the distinctness of the cultures is that it heightens and supports a sense in the viewer of cultural distinctions which are wholly simulated for the film.

Now - I have to leave this debate for now. I'll come back tomorrow night, and list point number two of what I think is challenging about Shore's music for the trilogy. In total there are four points, and I'll give each of them as good a discussion as I can without running out of time to live my life. So be nice - don't tear me to shreds - if I come across as arrogant or ill-informed, chide me. But I'm trying to have a serious discussion here. I'm prepared to concede in the end that the music is not challenging to anyone here, but for the moment I'm tempted to think that the only reason it hasn't proved challenging is that noone has really listened closely enough. Please prove me wrong - and then this debate will probably head to more difficult territory for me. My girlfriend's called, so I must go.

[Docteur Qui 1,544]

At least this isn't as bad as the Shore praise on a James Bond forum about Arnold's replacement that I read. One guy compared Shore with Mozart, and continued on to slag off Silvestri, Williams, Barry and even Goldsmith. I'd paste his post, but he went on and on talking nonsense...

[THEfranz_conrad 0]

"At least this isn't as bad..." - Damning with faint praise.

Shore compared to Mozart... wrong medium really. Perhaps the comparisons to Silvestri, Williams, Barry, Goldsmith are a little more appropriate, but only because it's comparing apple to oranges and not caviar. On a personal scale, I would look forward equally to a new work from Williams, Shore or Goldsmith (assuming the latter were still alive and the new work wasn't a Star Wars score or something), followed by Barry, with Silvestri bringing up the rear. Possibly an orchestral Thomas Newman or an Elliot Goldenthal score would rate first for me. Just personal preference I suppose - Alexandre Desplat, Kaczmarek, Elfman, Kilar and Tan Dun are also pretty high on my list.

I'll come back to this tomorrow night. But seriously fellas - if you agree with me or not, tell me why. We might as well make a good dialogue of this instead of whacking each other with clever one liners and emoticons.

[fommes 153]

I very much enjoyed reading your post, so please keep 'em coming!

(Sorry for the one-liner.)

[Henry B 50]

For me, Lord of the Rings is a love-hate thing. The music ranges from toweringly heroic or tear-jerkingly sentimental to laughably simple and uninteresting. Return of the King has the advantage of a better sound mix, more detailed orchestrations (strings and winds), and interesting conjugation of familiar themes.

[John Crichton 4]

For me, Lord of the Rings is a love-hate thing. The music ranges from toweringly heroic  or tear-jerkingly sentimental to laughably simple and uninteresting.

I pretty much agree with this. The "simple and uninteresting" definately describes The Two Towers. Fellowship has some wonderful moments. RotK starts out great (the early Gondor cues), trails off quite a bit after that, but the last 30-45 minutes are really good.

[THEfranz_conrad 0]

Just so nobody thinks I've cut and run on this little argument I started, I plan to reply when I've got a spare hour to type the next slab of thoughts up, but I've been a little pressed for time between work and a short film I'm prepping.