Fun Random Facts About the LOTR Soundtrack
Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a filmâs music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OTâŚâŚbut composing the LOTR trilogyâs soundtrack took four years
The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkienâs languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene
When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. Thatâs how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of âwhat Gondor would sound likeâ and âwhat Lorien would sound likeâ long before any scenes in those places were filmed
Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam
Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)
The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and RivendellâŚbut a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated
Like Aragornâs theme. Itâs a lot less âobviousâ than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: itâs played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in RivendellâŚ.
Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her
Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is âwinningâ at the moment
The melody for Gollumâs Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (itâs Symbolic)
And then thereâs the really obscure ones. Like thereâs a melody that plays at Boromirâs death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss
Wikipedia actually has a list of these leitmotifs, click this link and scroll down to check it out if youâre bored
Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the charactersâ so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them. Â
You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A LotÂ
Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the backgroundÂ
I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these filmsÂ
Unlike the heroâs themes, which constantly change and grow, the villainâs themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change
Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didnât, he composed enough for âa month of continuous listeningââŚâŚ..where can I sign up