I’ve never seen the film, but by Sunday I’ll have sat through it six times (three rehearsals and three performances).
It will be interesting to see how it all works. Presumably our timing will have to be absolutely spot on to synchronise with the film, but our scores are pretty light on with cues. I hope the conductor gives us lots of entries.
Wow, that sounds so cool. Let us know how it goes.
Elvish lives! 
That’s great; have a blast! Quel marth - elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo. - Good luck - a star shines on our meeting!
Elvish is a nuisance. Apparently there are quite a few typos in the words in the score, of which we’ve only just been informed. Had it been written in any of the usual choral languages, someone in the choir would have picked up the errors straight away.
You just don’t have the right kind of geeks in your choir. 
I’m currently working on my own arrangement of Donald Swann’s “The Road Goes Ever On” for voice and guitar. At least there, the Elvish is pretty straight-forward, and was proof-read by Tolkien himself.
Yes, you’re right. We have no elvish scholars. We do have lots of other geeks though, particularly among our student choir Vox, with whom we’re singing. But their geekish wisdom seems to extend only to minute knowledge of the plot and/or extensive collections of LotR plastic figures, brought to rehearsals and placed on the piano to provide “atmosphere”.
The St. Louis Symphony did this a few weeks ago. Several of the chorus members were complaining that the score was clearly meant to be recorded in studio and not performed live; there were several places where it was extremely difficult to find pitches.
All through rehearsals we’ve been wondering how we’re going to get certain of our entry notes from what appears to be thin air. At rehearsal yesterday the conductor, Ludwig Wicki, suggested we bring tuning forks to the performances.
I found this review of the recent St Louis performances. There was an interesting comment from the choir’s “language coach”:
This certainly echoes our choristers’ comments.
I’ve never heard of this. Do they do this to other movies? Because I would think that, because of the constructed languages, this would be a lot harder than other movies. It would seem odd to start with this one.
Is there a special version of the sound track, or is the actual sound missing? (I assume you wouldn’t just be playing over the original score. That wouldn’t work well at all–although it’d be easier to find your pitch.)
A few. The Wizard of Oz was given the same treatment a couple of years ago.
The film has the dialogue, but all of the orchestral and choral music is removed. We’re doing that live.
We had the final rehearsal last night. It has come together pretty well, although there are still issues. I’ve been hampered by never having seen the film. As a result I have no idea how long there is between our entries. Our scores give no information other than “'Scene ABC: Tacet”. Scene ABC may go for 20 seconds or 10 minutes. And it’s almost impossible to hear some of the entry notes in the orchestra (of course we can can tune from a hammer!), so we’re just having a stab at what we think is right and then tuning as quickly as possible to the correct note.
Our biggest problem though is actually the lighting. In order not to detract from the film, we’re in a box on the side of the stage, with practically no light. Most of the mistakes we’re making are a result of simply not being able to see our scores. And that means that we’re also getting a lot of the words wrong too. The text in the scores is very poorly formatted and difficult to read even in full light. In semi-darkness it’s almost impossible.
However, putting all that aside, the sound is still very good and I’m sure it will impress the audience at the first performance tonight.
We’ve just finished the last of the three performances. It was the Sunday afternoon matinée (on Mothers’ Day), so the audience comprised lots of family groups. All three performances went very well, and the three full houses were very appreciative.
I now know certain sections of the film very well. But there are also long gaps when I was singing or otherwise watching the conductor and madly counting bars. I may have to get the DVD and actually watch the whole film now.
I went to the performance at the Saint Louis Symphony. I’m sure it was difficult, and I noticed a lot of the instruments and vocal performers had a LOT of downtime, but…
From an audience perspective, it was amazing. Really, really stunning and moving. The movie was incredibly enriched by having all of the music performed live. It’s a shame one of the posters up above thinks they won’t do The Two Towers, because I’d pay for a ticket in a heartbeat. I thought it was phenomenally successful.
Glad to hear it went well! Will you be doing the other two films in the future?
I’d expect so. This one got three absolutely packed houses and presumably made a profit.
That’s pretty much the response we’ve been hearing from people too.
Update: the Sydney Symphony has confirmed that *The Two Towers *will be given the same treatment in 2012. So presumably my choir will be singing the soundtrack as we did for The Fellowship of the Ring.