The score calls for an ensemble of a symphony orchestra, stage "bands" featuring non-orchestral instruments, multiple choirs, and several vocal soloists.
While not as widely admired by critics as his The Lord of the Rings, Shore's score remained a financial success, peaking in the top ten album charts in multiple countries, and garnering award nominations.
The musicologist Doug Adams described these as "an encyclopedic network of leitmotifs: dozens of themes that represented cultures, characters, objects, and dramatic concepts in Middle-earth.
For example, Adams writes, the home-loving Bilbo's "Shire" theme starts out with "safe, warm harmonies and cozy melodic contours."
The theme then "moves into a new key and exposes Bilbo’s emerging thirst for excitement with leaping intervals and a stout, confident tone"[1] In contrast, the leader of the Dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield, seeking to regain his Kingdom under the mountain of Erebor, has a "proud, compact figure rising in three horn-calls, but remaining stubbornly affixed to its root (A–C; A–D; A–E).
This accompanies female voices singing in Elvish Ninque sile mise nár / Nóna silme andané, meaning "A white fire shines within her / The light of a star, born long ago”".
[2] This included Neil Finn, who performed "Song of the Lonely Mountain" in An Unexpected Journey,[3][4] and later Ed Sheeran and Billy Boyd.
Within the underscore, Shore utilized soprano voices, featuring Clara Sanabras and Grace Davidson, often in conjunction with the music of nature or the Elves.
As with The Lord of the Rings, the scores from The Hobbit were largely vocal works, including choirs and soloists, as well as diegetic music, and songs for the end-credits of each film.
Shore composed "The Valley of Imladris" - a diegetic piece (heard by the characters) for lute, lyre, wood flute and harp performed in Rivendell.
Other diegetic music was composed by The Elvish Impersonators, Stephen Gallaghar and members of the cast, including the source songs and a "trumpet fanfare" that sends the Dwarves off to the Lonely Mountain.
In The Lord of the Rings original soundtrack releases, several pieces of music were edited out of their film order to create a concert-like program, with concert suites of various themes.
Soundtracks for The Hobbit have been released in an extended, two-disc form, offering over two hours of music each, with liner notes by Doug Adams.