Imagining and writing The Lord of the Rings was a mighty undertaking, as was Peter Jacksons effort to film a trilogy Stanley Kubrick once pronounced as unfilmable. As shown in Doug Adams suitably massive tome, The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films (published by Carpentier along with a bonus CD), composing the 10-hour score for Jacksons three movies was no small undertaking.
Adams wrote the account with full access to the archives of the composer, Howard Shore (who previously worked with Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Jonathan Demme), and the project was almost as time consuming as the writing of the music itself. The Oscar-winning score was part of a much larger process of fleshing out J.R.R. Tolkiens world, Middle-earth. Linguists were employed to expand upon the various languages Tolkien created for his races of beings, sets were built, costumes sewn and chain mail forged. Where many directors would have left the heavy lifting to the CGI department, Jackson was determined to realize the fantasyas much as possiblewith old school resources. Tolkien might have admired his diligence. Whether he would have approved of turning his trilogy into film is a different question.
Aside from the projects scale, the score would be challenging to any composer who wanted the music to be the storys lifeblood, expressing its poetic heart, as Adams writes. The ideal was for music that would sound organic in Tolkienland. He would need to invent a rich musical history that was every bit as varied and detailed a Middle-earths own. Linking the hours of music are themes that develop throughout the trilogy as they might in a symphony. Each culture of Middle-earth has a sonic key. The hobbits are given a Celtic tinge, the Elves sound decidedly Eastern and Isengard is marked by harsh, metallic sounds.
