Composer Howard Shore reveals some interesting things about his work on The Lord of the Rings scores in an interview with film music site Tracksounds. He's discovering new meaning in his own music.
When I was recording THE TWO TOWERS, we recorded it section by section. I never heard the music in total until I saw the finished film. But even the film doesn't have the complete score in it. The original soundtrack we put out was only an hour or seventy minutes, so that wasn't complete either. It wasn't until I put all the music together and took the time to listen to those three hours of music that I began to understand how it was really shaped, what the form was. It started to make more sense to me the more I listened to it. Now, having listened to it all many, many times, I have begun to understand it in a different way. Even though I had created it and wrote it...it was like writing chapters but not reading the whole book....[B]ecause the composition is based on Tolkien and the intricacy, the complexity of it is due to the complexity of the book. Even I didn't really see it all because it was like I was looking at in very small pieces. It wasn't until I assembled it all that I began to understand how it all related.... It's like we are discovering it now more than when I was actually writing it! It wasn't that it was perfectly planned. It's because 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.
Hear the unabridged music:
• The Two Towers - The Complete Recordings
• The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings
Meanwhile, plans for additional films may be starting to take shape, according to Variety.
As for "The Hobbit," [MGM chief Harry] Sloan confirmed MGM was in talks with Peter Jackson to make two movies based on J.R.R. Tolkein's [sic] "prequel" to "The Lord of the Rings."However, making the film is contingent on negotiations with New Line, which owns the right to produce "The Hobbit" (MGM owns only the right to distribute the films). And people close to Jackson say that until his ongoing lawsuit with New Line -- over monies he says are owed him from the "Lord of the Rings" franchise -- is settled, a serious conversation over "The Hobbit" cannot proceed.
Even so, Sloan remains optimistic. He said the first "Hobbit" pic would be a direct adaptation of "The Hobbit," and the second would be drawn from footnotes and source material connecting "The Hobbit" with "The Lord of the Rings."
That last bit is very intriguing. Which "footnotes and source material" exactly? The lode is rich for sure.
Posted by Alan at November 18, 2006 10:14 AM