Lack of thematic consistency in LOTR score

Cafe Society
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[Silmarillion spoilers ahead]
This probably won’t be a long thread, but I 've brought it up before in other LOTR soundtrack threads and no one’s commented on it, so…

Some people have complained that the LOTR soundtracks are good, but have a flaw of being thematically un-unified, that is, they don’t stay with one thing for a long time and cannot make up their mind between different themes.

My counter to this is that, this thematic disunity was probably on purpose, to simulate the battle between the competing themes of the Ainur.

In addition, the “evil” theme in the score is even internally dissonant and doesnt seem to be played very well (to the point of seeming to miss some notes on the trumpet!) This too is in keeping with the competing theme, as the theme of evil was dissonant, filled with blaring trumpets and repeating notes.

Furthermore, I notice that the FOTR opened with darkness. Just the Music was playing in the background. This, again, is in keeping with the Silmarillion, as the Music occured before Sight was given.

So, do you think I’m right or was the music just composed badly? (actually I’m tending toward a mixture, it was certainly right to do all of that, but he could have done it better.)

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I know nothing about music, so please excuse my uninformed opinion. However, as someone who loves big, rousing classical scores, I have to say the LOTR score sucked big time.

I mean, take a movie like Jurassic Park which features the all-time best movie theme ever written: You can walk away from that movie humming/tapping along to that song all day, just feeling the movie in your mind. You’ll never forget that tune…daa daa da da, da da da da da daaaa daaaaaaaa. But with LOTR…hell, I forget the music the minute I left the theatre.

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Funny, I spend days with the song that played with the Wraiths on Weathertop stuck in my head.

4

And I catch myself humming that “fellowship” theme every time I’m walking somewhere.

Dumm, dummm, da da daaaaaaa, da da daaa da da daaa da da daaaa, dumm dumm dumm…

I love the LOTR soundtracks! It’s the kind of music that gives a false sense of purpose to whatever you happen to be doing. (I’m not just going out, I’m going forth!)

I don’t see the necessity of the music being “thematically unified”. It seems pretty clear to me that there are seperate, distinct themes for various characters and settings, and I don’t think the soundtrack is any worse for that. The word leitmotif is rattling around in my brain, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the correct term.

5

‘May it be’ by Enya and ‘Gollums song’ by Emilliana Torrini are both very memorable songs, although both of those only feature during the credits.

There is one tune that sticks in my mind constantly, its probably the same one arisu is thinking of, its heard mainly in FOTR but we hear variations of it in the TT, like a constant theme going through the music.

There were a few others that I remembered easily when I used to listen to the OST’s but Ive forgotten them now, which maybe proves your point, but then in saying that, I cant remember the Jurassic Park theme either.

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The score is incredibly consistent, and wonderfully done. I’m quite certain it will go down as one of the all time greats.

It’s not a case of “thematic disunity,” it’s just a case of there being many, many themes in the score. The score is rich and complex (and long!) because the movie itself is rich and complex (and long!) I’ll stick to LOTR here, but everything I say goes for TTT as well.

For example, there is no single “evil” theme in the movie. The uruk-hai have their own theme, done in 5/4 time to suggest their unnatural, origins. The Ring has not one but two themes, one for the Ring’s seductive powers, and another for its corrupting powers. The different races and areas each have their own theme–the Shire theme (which doubles as Frodo and Sam’s theme), a Lorien theme, Moria themes, a Rohan theme, etc. There’s even a unique dwarf theme, though we only hear it once when Gandalf lights up Dwarrowdelf. And then of course there’s the Fellowship theme (the hummable one.) It starts out strong when the Fellowship forms, but becomes more dissonant and fragmented as the Fellowship itself fragments. (But comes back big time in TTT.)

So there’s a lot of things going on in the score because there’s a lot of things going on in the movie. Contrast this to, say, an Indiana Jones or Superman movie, where both the movie and the score are deliberately very straightforward. This results in a highly hummable score … but there’s not much depth. (Quick! Think of a piece of Indy or Superman music besides the main character theme.) Star Wars is more complex, and so has a more complex score, etc.

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Wow, this is exactly how I feel about the Fellowship theme. I’ll hop in the car, pop in the CD, and go on a journey to Walmart! The Hobbit theme always makes me feel warm and fuzzy, but the Rohan theme from TTT is simply haunting and amazing.

I don’t know much about music, but I certainly don’t think the score of either of the LOTR movies so far sucked. Both are incredibly memorable and fit very well with the movies overall. The songs on the CDs may not transition very smoothly from one to the next, but the journey of our heroes isn’t exactly a walk in the park.

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I don’t really remember the LotR soundtrack. Wait… I’m remembering a little now, but not much. I don’t remember the Jurassic Park theme song either. I remember the Indiana Jones theme and the Star Wars theme, but they are just silly.

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You’re all talking about the difference between Howard Shore and John Williams, basically, since all the examples of “memorable” tunes have been by Williams. Listen to soundtracks by other composers, like Alan Silvestri, James Horner (Braveheart, for example, has a number of un-unified themes), or David Arnold to get a more contrasting sample. The examples mentioned are simply indicative of the way Williams writes. Howard Shore, OTOH, I think was taking a cue from Richard Wagner in using a number of leitmotifs for each of the races, areas, and characters. I think the result is entirely appropriate for the nature of the movies.

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I agree with Wumpus, and with av8rmike on this one. Comparing Shore’s LOTR scores (or any of Shore’s music, really) with Williams’ work is comparing apples and oranges.

Williams is the undisputed master of the “catchy” score. He has indeed composed many themes, from Star Wars to Jurassic Park, which are easily remembered once the film is over. His scores are also notable (to me) as being fairly shallow, and they usualy don’t stand up well to listening to them by themselves. There are exceptions, of course, but those exceptions are when Williams steps outside the bounds he usually sets for himself.

Williams’ score for Born on the Fourth of July for example, does not rely on a catchy theme to convey its feeling… it is one of his best scores, in my opinion, because it is one of his most effective. His music for Presumed Innocent is another standout score, a surprsingly simple and understated piece which really enhances the film, and is also quite good all by itself. And though I thought that Williams had really lost his touch recently, with lackluster scores for the Harry Potter movies and flat-out bad ones for the two most recent Star Wars films, he surprised me with a wonderfully fun score for Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. Again, for this one, he didn’t go for a catchy theme so much as an overall lighthearted tone to the music. He also got away from the standard “big orchestra” sound of his work and opted for a smaller, more intimate tone.

Which is all to say that Williams has done some great catchy themes, and a few truly great pieces of music… the two typically do not overlap.

Howard Shore, on the other hand, is a skilled composer as well, but in a totally different vein. Anyone familiar with his past work knows that he favors atonal, chaotic scores, often incorporating ambient sound unexpectedly. His music for Silence of the Lambs is a great example for this, as is the music for Seven. If you have, or can get, the Special Edition DVD for Seven, I highly recommend listening to the “Sound and Music” commentary track, which features Shore (among others) talking about how he composes for a film. It’s a very insightful look into how he works, and you can see how some of his methods have worked for the LOTR music.

When I first heard that Shore was the composer for LOTR, I wasn’t sure what to think… I only knew his work from the more understated music I’d heard for Silence of the Lambs or Seven or others, and I wasn’t sure how he would handle the big epic nature of the LOTR stories. Having seen the first two films, and listened to the soundtracks for them often, I can only say how pleased I am. He has proven himself more than capable of expressing the themes of the story on a large, almost operatic scale, and has really outdone himself for these movies. His music has been consistently good so far, and more importantly, it has been consistent to the themes and ideas and feelings of the story. He has also made soem very memorable themes (the “Fellowship” theme being perhaps most memorable to me), but he has not let them take over the whole score, which works very well for the story.

Personally, I’m glad that Shore was selected for the LOTR scores, and not someone like Williams. Williams would have overdone it, and as important as music is to a film (to me, anyway), it would have ruined the whole experience.

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One of the all-time great movie themes not by John Williams is Maurice Jarre’s barn-raising theme from Witness…

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I was thinking of the right word! Yay!

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From what you write, Avalonian, it seems that Shore’s previous scores ideally suited him to work on the LOTR soundtrack, i.e. leitmotifs representing the different themes of the Ainur, and specifically “atonal, chaotic” scores to match the dissonance of the theme of Evil.

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In fairness to John Williams, the main reason he writes all these scores that sound like remixes of Star Wars and Indy is that’s what directors and producers pay him to do. They all want that “John Williams feeling” and as a result he’s had to go to that particular well a few times too often. That’s why it’s so nice when Spielberg gives him the freedom to try something different, as in AI and CMIYK.

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Very true, though I didn’t think of it in those terms at the time. :smiley:

Shore had never done anything quite like LOTR before (at least, not that I know of), but he’s proved himself more than up to the task.

And Wumpus, you’re absolutely right about Williams, of course. He’s hired for specific reasons, and those usually have to do with composing a catchy theme for their movie. He’s hand a hand in pigeonholing himself, too, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t compose well. He just does it so rarely.