Music of The Lord of the Rings film series

Shore invited the musicologist Doug Adams to observe the composition process and to document it in what became the 2010 book The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films.

The actors Billy Boyd, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, Miranda Otto (extended cuts only for the latter two) and Peter Jackson (for a single tam-tam sound in the second film) also contributed.

The third film's end song, "Into the West", was a tribute to a young filmmaker Jackson and Walsh befriended named Cameron Duncan, who died of cancer in 2003.

For the recording process, which extended over four weeks per film, he arranged the music in long suite-like pieces for the orchestra to go through during a day of playing, rather than short cues, making the score more cohesive.

[24] The libretto was derived from several sources, including songs and poems written by Tolkien, phrases from the screenplay (often sung against the corresponding dialogue or recitation) as well as original and adapted material from Shore and from screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and others, all translated by Salo while stressing good choral sounds.

[28] Thus, Bilbo's farewell party sees the hobbits celebrating and dancing vigorously to music by Plan 9, a group who had long worked with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh.

For the Elves, the music is mainly women's voices, Rivendell[j] designed to appear as a timeless place of learning, while Lothlórien was by intention "mystical and exotic".

[e] In contrast, the Orcs of Isengard were accompanied by a 5-beat rhythm on steel plates, Japanese drums, and metal chains, giving a harsh industrial effect.

[36] For Gollum, a corrupted Hobbit in two minds with a strange way of moving, Shore used the cimbalom, an instrument like a medieval hammered dulcimer, giving a trembling feeling.

[37] For some concerts conducted by Shore, images of Middle-earth by the films' concept artists Alan Lee and John Howe were projected while the music was played.

[41] The symphony has a 19th century structure to give the audience a sense of history, hinting at the great lapse of time since the Third Age of Middle-earth.

It is conducted by Ludwig Wicki [de] and Erik Eino Ochsner and was performed around the world, including Switzerland, Australia and the United States.

"[48] The films' writer/producer Fran Walsh writes in the foreword that "Howard's music ... gave the cultures of the Elves and the Dwarves and the kingdoms of Men a powerful authenticity", and that "I feel enormously proud that [Shore's] beautiful work, beloved by so many around the world, has been so eloquently celebrated by Doug Adams in this fine book.

"[54] Adams notes that Shore commented that he wanted to give the impression that "the hobbits were playing the music", while Jackson said "Make it hobbity.

[56] The song has lyrics by Fran Walsh, and the film version is sung by the boy soprano Edward Ross of the London Oratory School Schola.

[64] For example, for the scene "The Court of Meduseld" in The Two Towers, Adams describes the picture as Théoden King of Rohan sits slumped in his throne, being whispered lies by Saruman's spy, the traitor Wormtongue.

The music is the "Gríma Wormtongue" theme, in which "contrabassoon, tuba, celli, and contrabasses wallow in a sepulchral, debauched chromatic line... colored by resonant bass drum strokes and a film of high string clusters.

In Scruton's view, "Howard Shore's evocative music for The Lord of the Rings exhibit[s] a mastery of harmonic sequences, polyphonic organisation and orchestral effect that would be the envy of many a composer for the concert hall.

"[66] Kristin Thompson, in the scholarly book Picturing Tolkien, writes that "even the film [series]'s harshest critics credit it with ... superb design elements, including ...

[68] David Bratman, in his survey of music inspired by Tolkien, provides what Mythlore called "justified and sharp"[69] criticisms of the film score.

She states that the scene borrows visually from the "Celtic" imagery of John Duncan's 1911 Pre-Raphaelite painting Riders of the Sidhe, giving an "otherworldly" effect very unlike the "playful tone" in Tolkien's text.

"[71] In Fimi's view, the "'Celtic' air and ambience" that Jackson uses for the Elves is reinforced by what Alan Lee called "the use of natural forms ... [and] of flowing graceful lines" and "elements of Art Nouveau and Celtic design".

[71] The translator Vincent Ferré, discussing what Tolkien might have thought of Jackson, given his comments on the now-lost script by Morton Grady Zimmerman, finds Shore's music "the most unengaging aspect" of the films, describing it as "sometimes so jarringly emphatic that the whole scene is dragged down into pomposity and slushiness.

"[74] The linguist and Egyptologist Alexandra Velten considers the lyrics in Tolkien's constructed languages – Adûnaic, Black Speech, Khuzdul, Rohirric, Quenya, and Sindarin – that are used for the songs.

"[75] Vincent E. Rone writes that while many commentators noticed that Shore had borrowed techniques from "Romantic opera, especially his predilection for Wagnerian leitmotifs", the score is "far more nuanced" than that, identifying each people – Hobbits, Men, Elves – with their own system of harmony.

She cites Jackson's remark that Tolkien's "music" is "imaginary", objecting only that his Gregorian chanting of "Namárië" and his "dramatic" performance of "Ride of the Rohirrim" give "a glimpse" of how he imagined his songs might have sounded.

She notes that the score is "pervasively orchestral and tonal" in keeping with Shore's intention to create "a feeling of antiquity", almost as if the music had been "discovered" rather than newly written.

"[80] The scholar of film music Kevin Donnelly describes the end credits of The Return of the King DVD as containing "a bizarre sonic occurrence", a quotation of Wagner's Siegfried theme from his Ring of the Nibelungen opera cycle.

He calls this ambiguous, as it might be referring to the evident resemblance of The Lord of the Rings to Wagner's operas, or "obliquely" to the question of race in Middle-earth, whether depicted by Tolkien or Jackson.

These annually published collections, titled The Complete Recordings, contain the entire score for the extended versions of the films on CD, along with an additional DVD-Audio disc that offers 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround mixes of the soundtrack, and liner notes by Doug Adams.