Howard Shore

Howard Shore is one of the most respected, honored and active composers of film and concert music working today. Setting the standard for evocative and expressive film scores including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Shore creates music that is instantly recognizable and resonates long beyond the life of the film. Shore's scores for The Lord of the Rings trilogy were awarded four Grammys and three Oscars including "Best Song" for "Into the West."

Howard Shore on...

The Lord of the Rings

SoundtrackNet 20.11.2001

I was attached to the film in July 2000, and had a prior commitment with ‘The Score’ in January 2001. I started writing intensely in February on the Moria sequence, and I had started writing thematic material as far back as October. I wrote the Shire theme, and Frodo’s Theme in October, and the Fellowship Theme in November. But before any of that, I did about four months of research.

I thought of it [The Fellowship] as Act One of an opera. When you go to the opera, you quite often may have a symphony orchestra in the pit, a sixty-person choir on stage, and soloists. You could make the argument that all film music is operatic, but this is different. Between the orchestra and the choir, I had 200 pieces at my disposal, as part of my palette to work from. There are also some North African instruments, and an Indian bowed lute which I used in ‘Lothlorien’.
 
 
Howard Shore, IGN.com 17.12.2003

The music is representing Middle Earth, a culture 5000 years ago. I'm showing you the origins, possibly, 5000 years ago of what this music then became. So Celtic music is one of the oldest [forms of] music in the world, so this [what you are hearing in the scores] might have been some of origins of it 5000 years ago and then it evolved to what you know as Celtic music.

There's characters, there's culture and there's objects attached [to the music]. It's based on Wagner's storytelling and he was the first to do this kind of thing. He was the first to say 'It's okay to feel something when you hear music and to attach motifs to characters.' He did that over a 100 years ago.
 
 

His relationship to director Peter Jackson:

We worked really close together. I've never had a relationship like this, that's why I really treasure that relationship. […] So even though I was doing the composition and the orchestrating and the conducting, while I was doing that Peter was with me every step of the way. He knew what I was writing every day. We were talking about it or listening to pieces or discussing them. […] He would work with me like an actor. You're conducting and the conducting is a form of expression because you're capturing… it's like photography, you're trying to get the great take. […] It was like having a great Buddha in the recording studio who is constantly showing you a better, more expressive way of creating the music. So once I knew that I was like 'Oh, this is fantastic’. I mean it's like having this great god to oversee it.

So the cinematography is balanced to the editing and the art direction is balanced to the screenplay and the composition. And when you see that, this movie I think shows you a really great balance of all of those things. That's the whole idea; you should be experiencing the movie as a world.
 
 
Howard Shore, Tracksounds 2006

There is only one ‘Lord of the Rings’! […] I'm doing an opera now because I need to create some music like that. You build up a certain type of thinking and you need the creative space to exercise. Films are great and fun and I love doing them...but as I said there really is only one ‘Lord of the Rings’. There was only that one book and I would love to find another subject that allow me to do that kind of work for.

In total there will be 10 compact discs...close to 11 hours of music! […] Well, the symphony is a six movement piece that runs two hours and ten minutes, so it is an edited version of the complete work. […] It wasn't practical to play 11 hours of music, but it was practical to play two hours in a concert hall with an intermission. In the symphony, you are only hearing about 1/5th of all of the music.

… the composition is describing Tolkien's world. It's inherent, then, that the music has the same complexity that Tolkien put into the book. It wouldn't be written correctly to his book if it were otherwise.

At the beginning of the project, the level of Tolkien's complexity seemed daunting, but after two years of writing it became interesting. So I wrote my way into it and around it and through it. ‘The Return of the King’, being the end, is really the culmination of all of the work that came before.
 
Peter and I both want to make the movie. We've talked about it. We really want to do it, so we're hoping it all works out. I would love to return to Middle Earth and write more music for that world.

• Howard Shore - Profile