A Hobbit's Tale

:: Howard Shore ::

Howard Shore is the renowned film composer of the LOTR scores. Born on October 18th, 1946 in Toronto, Ontario (Canada), he was the musical director of the first Saturday Night Live band. He has composed the scores for over 50 movies including "The Silence Of The Lambs", "The Fly" (directed by David Cronenberg with whom Shore was also associated on "EXistenZ" and "Crash"), "Mrs Doubtfire", "Philadelphia", "Seven", "The Game", "The Cell"...

Howard Shore has spent a year composing for "The Lord Of The Rings". He's been keeping Tolkien's books at his side as a source of inspiration : "I'm continually rereading the texts as I'm composing. I'll have the pages of the book open at the piece or sequence I'm writing." The FOTR score was the winner of the 74th Annual Academy Award in the category "Best Original Score." Howard Shore has won a 2003 Hollywood Film Award for Best Music-In-Film.

The score for The Return Of The King also won the Best Score Academy award. The score for The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy has topped Clasic FM's 50 Movie Soundtracks poll (May 2005).

"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." (Full interview on soundtrack.net).

"It's my biggest score ever. The challenge was to take the listener on an emotional journey through this time and place called Middle-earth. It's a three- to five-year project." [...] "I've always been a huge opera fan, so I had a good background in what sort of music was required for such an enormous story," Shore said. "I looked at it as more of a historical piece, and I found myself doing research that took me back to the beginnings of music and notation. Hence, there is a great deal of solo and choir singing - in essence, the beginnings of music."

"We wanted Shelob to be a piece within the film. It was specifically done to feel different, in the same way that when you hear the music from Moria, you know you're in Moria. And when you hear the music from Rohan, you know you're in Rohan. Shelob was a similar challenge : let's create something that sounds specifically like Shelob, and you'll know you're in Shelob's lair. Frodo enters Shelob's lair and passes through, a little worse for wear, and, well, I don't want to ruin it for you! But I wanted the feeling inside the lair to develop in a very specific way, and that's why I have that very deliberate "walking" feeling to it, as Frodo walks into the lair. Then there's this feeling that something is wrong, and a series of confrontations with Shelob, followed by Sam's arrival and battle with Shelob. It's very cut down: the composition is maybe 14-15 minutes long, and on the CD it's maybe 4-5 minutes long." (Read the full interview on soundtrack.net).