Posted in: Movies | Tagged: entertainment, film, howard shore, lord of the rings, NYCC

NYCC: Lord Of The Rings – The Music Of Middle Earth Panel

Published Fri, 10 Oct 2014 06:30:04 -0500

Sofia Annunziata writes for Bleeding Cool:

Where do I start?

Howard Shore, the composer of the score for the entire Lord of the Rings movies, made some very interesting points, but the panel was not what I had expected it to be. It was extremely quiet, and you could barely hear what Shore was saying, that coupled with the fact that the panel next door was extremely loud, meant missing a lot of what he was saying. Being a musician myself, I had expected, them to at least play excerpts of the music, and was sorely disappointed when they didn't. I feel it would have made the panel much more interesting. The entire thing felt more like a bad college lecture, and I half expected to hear crickets chirping in the room.

Putting all of that to side, Shore did mention some interesting things about his process in writing the now legendary score. He discussed how hard it was to write music that told a story, especially such a complex fantasy story. He also brought up how Wagner inspired his use of recurring themes in the music. I especially found it interesting that he read little parts of the book, while writing the score, and even had his own "good luck copy".

He also faced the challenge of incorporating the songs and poems of the trilogy into the music itself, while making it work with the plot. Shore said that while he wrote the Shire theme and the Fellowship theme first, the theme for the Destruction of the Ring was the most difficult to write.

In all Howard Sore has written over 20 hours of music for the trilogy!

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