As you might expect of anything connected to The Lord of the Rings, the numbers behind Howard Shore's score for the Peter Jackson film trilogy are mighty impressive:

• Four months of solid research.
• Nearly four years to compose.
• A total of 11 hours of music.
• More than 50 leitmotifs (individual themes).

"It was pretty daunting at first," Shore admitted of the task. "Writing film scores is always difficult to do - but the funny thing was, I didn't want to stop when it was over."

Shore has since moved on to other projects: He's preparing a staged version of The Fly for L.A. Opera with film director David Cronenberg and author David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly). [More]