I am sure that basically all of you on this reddit have already seen this analysis video on what Howard Shore did musically in the Lord of the Rings. However, if you have not come across this video yet and have seen the films, it is the best analysis on the material that I have ever seen and I would implore you to give it a watch. The development of the leitmotifs for characters and themes into film has possibly never before or since been so perfectly interwoven into a story. While re-watching this, my wife made the astute remark of how similar Howard Shore's concept was to Richard Wagner's works. (original creator of the concept - circa 1880) Now listening to the two composers side by side, it could not be more apparent. This gets me all the more excited now that Howard Shore has been confirmed to be the composer for Amazon's recently announced Rings Of Power series. I am on the edge of my seat to see what he does further for this come September! Let me know in the comments if any of you have given this video a watch and if you have any thoughts on it, musically or thematically.
Source of Subject line is via Youtube video of Twitter Screenshot here:
skip to 4:45 for Twitter screenshot
Concerning hobbits specifically. It’s my happy song, when I need to calm down, or pull myself out of a bad place in my mind, this song always does it.
It invokes a sense of comfort, happiness and contentment. Masterful
I know there is such a thing as recency bias but I would argue in the case of music there is such a thing as historical bias.
The way that these three men create music that matches so perfectly with the images on the screen and can elicit so much emotion even if you're not watching the movie is f****** incredible.
I mean think about the background music from inception, think about the opening crawl of Star wars, sounds of the Shire.
A massive portion of the world can hear this music and no matter what they're doing their emotions immediately change.
I know or at the very least I believe all three of these men have won Oscars for their composing but I think it's time for their work to start being taught in music classes in elementary schools and high schools and junior high schools across the world because they are that good.
The same goes for the composers of Zelda and final fantasy from Japan their music has changed culture
Deadline has broken a story that will have many people cheering: Howard Shore, who scored all six of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth movies, is in talks to join the Amazon Lord of the Rings prequel series set in the Second Age as composer.
Fellowship of Fans has backed up the story and gone further to say that Shore actually signed on several months ago and is already working on the project. They also claim that Bear McCreary will also work on the show's music. McCreary is best known for his work on the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica, as well as The Walking Dead, Agents of SHIELD, Outlander and the God of War video game series. McCreary's involvement has so far not been backed up by any other sources.
Shore joining the project will be well-received news by fans. Shore's work on the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy remains outstanding, netting him four Oscar nominations and three wins: Best Original Score for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King, and Best Song for "Into the West." He received a fifth nomination for his score to the movie Hugo. His other film work includes The Departed, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Philadelphia and Seven.
Amazon's Middle-earth series recently wrapped its first season and is about to start work on the second. Season 1 will premiere on Amazon Prime on 2 September 2022.
All if his music I listened to did not impress me very much at all, is there any that show his potential outside of his colabs with Peter Jackson?
The score for LOTR is widely considered to be one of the bests of all time. I was curious to learn about this subs favourite tracks from the albums.
So could y'all make a compilation list of your favourite tracks from the LOTR trilogy (complete recordings). Oh, let's add the tracks from the hobbit trilogy too!
PS - Expect to see the shire on everybody list ;)
I read that Jeremy Soule (Skyrim) expressed entusiasm for the project when it was announced back in 2019, but he clearified he wasn't involved in the project at the time.
As of now, I'm wondering if there has been some rumours concerning the composer of the show, and I'm curious to know your opinions on this (why it hasn't been announced yet), if you expect Howard Shore to return or a new composer handling the score of the series, and who'd you like to see write the music.
I've been privileged enough to be asked by u/Fellowshipoffans to attend a discussion in which it was revealed that Howard Shore had recently been brought into the fold of the show, beyond just a "themes by" credit.
Since Amazon is producing this show in partnership with Warner Brothers, who hold the rights to Shore's music, they should be able to use the same themes anyway. Shore's direct involvement is significant, because he could help shape the themes, the orchestrations and even compose a couple of new themes, much as John Williams had done for Solo.
Now, the question is, of the existing themes, what can/will/ought they use? And what NOT?
Whatever are "themes"?
Now, when I say "themes" I mean leitmotives (German for "leading musical motives"). Its basically a fancy name for recurring, evolving musical themes that represent various narrative elements: characters, ideas, sentiments, objects and places. These had been introduced by Richard Wagner in his Ring cycle, which consists of four operas or music-dramas - Ras Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried (and the concert piece Siegfried Idyll) and Gotterdamerung - in which there are about 180 leitmotives.
Curiously, in Wagner's later works (Parsifal, the Mastersingers of Nuremberg and his masterpiece Tristan and Isolde) this technique is not appearant, since the motives don't develop any specific associations. Most of the motives in Tristan are just an assortment of love themes, and most of the motives in Parsifal are generally related to the Knights of the Grail.
Following Wagner's example, Shore's six scores had accrued a catalog of over 160 themes. John Williams (following more in the footsteps of Wagenrian film composers like Korngold) who composed nine Star Wars scores (as well as two concert pieces - The Adventures of Han and Galaxy's Edge) had composed around 70 leitmotives.
Now, what these themes mean is a little tricky: certainly, leitmotives tend to be composed in such a way that their sound evoke whatever it is that they mean: the Shire theme is placid and folksy; likewise, the Luke Skywalker theme from John Williams' Star Wars is heroic and brash; the Giants' theme from Wagner's Das Rheingold is plodding and heavy.
Leitmotives will often tend to be orchestrated in certain ways: Wagner's
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I personally liked the Wheel of Time trailer, but I see a lot of people recently being unsure and hesitant to this upcoming show because of the quality of the trailer. So bringing in Howard Shore should decrease fan's skepticism. A familiar name can help with that in my opinion.
"Would the new Amazon series be better WITH Howard Shore or WITHOUT."
YES for WITH
NO for WITHOUT
With news breaking that Shore is to continue his work on Middle Earth with the Amazon series, I thought this essay was à propos. Now, Howard Shore's use of continually-recurring, ever-changing musical themes (also known as leitmotives or "leading musical motives") is quite unique in the history of film scores. Of course, many film scores use recurring themes, and quite a few use leitmotives (as in, themes that constantly return and change), but whereas most film composers will use leitmotives as per the example laid down by Wagnerian Hollywood composers like Korngold, Shore goes right back to the source of the technique: Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy, Der Ring Des Nibelungen.
Shore is an avid opera-goer (he had converted his score of The Fly to an opera), and will have heard the Wagner tetralogy (and probably the related concert piece, Siegfried Idyll) and indeed ended his scores with a beautiful tribute to Wagner.
Today, I'll look at all the ways Shore uses his leitmotives in ways that directly mirror Wagner. These are:
- The sheer number of the themes
- The specificity of the themes
- The orchestration of the themes
- The variation of the themes
- The creation of new themes out of older ones
- The use of "embryonic" forms of themes
- The division of the themes into sets and subsets of related themes
- The interweaving of the themes towards the resolution of the story
I'll be comparing Shore with the Ring cycle as well as with other works of film-scoring, most notably John Williams' exceptional work on the Star Wars films. It pays to mention that, unlike Wagner and Shore, Williams scored the Star Wars films one at a time, without worrying too much about creating a strong throughline, and this will reflect itself in the music as we examine it. Nevertheless, both works are in the Wagnerian mould to a large extent.
The number of the themes
The sheer number of these themes is what separates the mature leitmotif from the reminiscene themes of operas that predate the Ring: in Verdi's Aida, there's a figure that always accompanies Amneris onto the stage and in the Singspiel Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber (a composer Tolkien and Wagner much admired) there's a chord associated with the villain Samiel; in Wagner's *Loh
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It plays throughout this track and pretty much throughout the whole score. What is making that high pitched whining sound?? Is it feedback? Some kind of synth? An instrument with a filter on it?
Somebody help me.
