Due to the holidays, we’ll be continuing our stories related to the 15-year anniversary of the release of FOTR into this week. No series about The Fellowship of the Ring would be complete without mentioning the amazing music of Howard Shore and some of the talented people who brought it to life.
From the minute the screen lit up to the end of the credits, Shore’s Oscar-winning score held us spellbound. As the music accompanied the action of the movie, unique themes for the cultures of Middle-earth, even The One Ring itself, wove themselves through the movie seamlessly. Haunting solos and full-voiced choirs added both poignancy and excitement to the film. If you’re like me, you literally wore out your first CD of the score! Fortunately, there were a number of opportunities to acquire other editions such as The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Complete Recordings.
For many of us, that just wasn’t enough. We flocked to live performances of the Fellowship score at Radio City in October of 2009 and many other locations around the world since. Here is TORn’s exclusive interview with Howard Shore in October, 2011 about the live performances. In October of the following year, we were treated to the book The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films: A comprehensive Account of Howard Shore’s Scores by our good friend, Doug Adams.
Short of watching the movie (again), listening to the score of FOTR offers us all a way to bring back the excitement and memories of 15 years ago, and all the Lord of the Rings goodness that has followed since. We’ll leave you with some TORn exclusives by one of our score-obsessed staffers, Earl – some interviews from our celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the release of FOTR:
Earl: Over the years, I’ve done a bunch of interviews with folks who were involved in various musical/soundtrack aspects of the LOTR films. These are links to the interviews related to the FOTR soundtrack:
Plan 9 interview – composed and performed music from such scenes as Frodo’s “chicken dance” at Bilbo’s Birthday party, Merry and Pippin singing in the Green Dragon Inn.
Aivale Cole (nee Mabel Faletolu): the heartrending of voices that engulfs the broken Fellowship as they emerge from the darkness of Moria and grieve over Gandalf’s fall into Khazad-dûm.
Miriam Stockley: elvish singing of “The Footsetps of Doom” the theme of Lothlorien.
