Blog Post 7: The genius of Howard Shore: One of the most awarded film series in history and why its music is so groundbreaking.

The Lord of The Rings film trilogy is one of the most celebrated pieces of media in our time. It has broken multiple box office and academy award records and continues to harbor a large fanbase. For this blog post, I am choosing to focus on Howard Shore’s original scores for these films, as he uses many of the same themes throughout each movie. Howard Shore is a Canadian composer whose career has brought us many of our favorite musical moments in film composing scores for well-known films such as The Silence of The Lambs, or Mrs. Doubtfire. However, Shore is best known for his work on Director Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings trilogy. Before composing for this project, Shore had never been a part of a large-scale film before. I would like to mention that, yes, Shore is yet another white male composer. There are many other incredible composers from underrepresented groups that I could have chosen, it just happens to be that a white man composed the piece of music that completely changed my view on the creation of music and the art of scoring films.

For me, Howard Shore created more than just music to accompany film, he added more to the story. For example, he uses one theme throughout the entire film trilogy, the shire theme, and changes it around in different ways to give us reminders of where the journey started, and where it will hopefully end. For the more gruesome themes, he uses unconventional meters such as 5/4. He evokes intense emotion with his technique and skill and for me, it is impossible not to cry every time I finish a watch through (which is a lot).

Here is a really phenomenal video that deep dives Shore’s score and looks into what techniques he uses to evoke emotions and set the scene. I Highly recommend watching.

At first I thought that finding sources for the premier of these films and specifically this score would be difficult but not surprisingly, I’m not the only person with great adoration for Shore’s work on these films. One of my sources is from the University of Illinois press called “Scoring the Familiar and Unfamiliar in Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings” by Vincent Rone. This article consists of over 30 pages of Music Theory analysis, facts about how Shore composed the piece, and how Shore was able to masterfully bring these films to life. Usually anything related to music theory causes me to mentally check out, but looking at Shores score from a music theory approach made me appreciate it even more.

Here is an example of how detailed this article is:

Obviously, the premier of these films across the world was a great success. As well as the fact that they released a new film within a year so fans didn’t have to wait 2–3 years between films. Although this was great news for fans, this meant that Shore had to write an almost 12 hour long score in one go, instead of waiting and writing a new one for each film. The outcome of this is that we get a lot of what Rone calls “leitmotifs” or simply put, musical themes, that appear many times throughout all three films. For example, the shire theme, which we hear the most, the fellowship theme, Aragorn and Arwen’s love theme, and many more. This allowed shore to take these leitmotifs and use them many times throughout the movie while still changing the tone and mood to fit the scene. This is one of the main points of this article. Rone mostly writes about shores success in reusing the same music over the span of three movies yet is still able to make it feel fresh and new.

My other source is a 2002 article from the Oxford Press that is covering the Oscars for that year. The article mentions the success of the Lord of The Rings and that Howard shore took home the Oscar for best original score. However, a year later in 2003 the filmmakers would take home many more awards, 11 to be exact, not losing in a single category. All three Lord of The Rings films combined earned a total of 17 Oscars as well as many other awards from other highly esteemed award ceremonies. During the time when these films were coming out, they were mostly being recognized for other aspects such as directing and camera work, and although Shore received many awards for his score, it wasn’t until a while later that people began to fully appreciate the genius of his composing.

Here is another video from the same channel that explores a different part of Shores Composition style.

Howard Shores ability to add so much to an already incredible story is what makes me so attached to his scores. Every time I watch these films I am awe struck at the majesty of his compositional abilities and how well they bring the world of Middle Earth to life. His music breathes life into the story and makes the audience care and connect to the characters and to the story.