Today is the 99th Anniversary of the birth of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and many other works. His works have served as the inspiration to painters, musicians, film-makers and writers, to such an extent that he is sometimes seen as the “father” of the entire genre of high fantasy.
“Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy-story… The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.” J. R. R. Tolkien
My first connection with Tolkien was as a teenager. I suppose it was at a age when many young people turned to science fiction and the world’s of fantasy to inspire them as to what the world should look like, rather than what it was in reality. Having first read The Lord of the Rings, I then went back to The Hobbit and when it was dinally published The Silmarilion’. The first music I encountered which was associated with Tolkien was by the Swedish musician, Bo Hansson’s album ‘Music Inspired by The Lord of the Rings’ which was released in the UK in 1972 and topped the album charts. I still have a copy of it in my vinyl collection.
With the making of the Peter Jackson trilogy of The Lord of the RIngs, more music came to my attention, in particular the beautiful ‘May it Be’ by Enya. She had provided the soundtrack to the first year of David’s life when found it difficult to sleep – her album Shepherd Moons was his lullaby.
After flying to New Zealand to observe the filming and to watch a rough cut of the film, Enya returned to Ireland and composed “Aniron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen)” with lyrics by Roma in Tolkien’s fictional Elvish language Sindarin, and “May It Be”, sung in English and another Tolkien language, Quenya. Howard Shore then based his orchestrations around Enya’s recorded vocals and themes to create “a seamless sound”. In 2002, Enya released “May It Be” as a single which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. She performed the song live at the 74th Academy Awards ceremony with an orchestra in March 2002, and later cited the moment as a career highlight.
The music of The Lord of the Rings film series was composed, orchestrated, conducted and produced by Howard Shore. The scores are often considered to represent one of the greatest achievements in the history of film music in terms of length of the score, the size of the staged forces, the unusual instrumentation, the featured soloists, the multitude of musical styles and the number of recurring musical themes used. Shore wrote many hours of music, effectively scoring the entire film length. Over 13 hours of the music (including various alternate takes) have been released across various formats. Shore conceived the score as operatic and antiquated-sounding. He made use of an immense ensemble including a large symphony orchestra (principally, the London Philharmonic Orchestra), multiple instrumental “bands”, various choirs and vocal and instrumental soloists, requiring an ensemble ranging from 230 to 400 musicians.
Shore also provided the soundtrack for the three Hobbit based films. The Hobbit themes are very Celtic-sounding, scored for Celtic instruments namely fiddle and tin whistle. Their maturation through the story has them not only transform melodically and harmonically, but also make use of the orchestral relatives of the folk instruments with which they are originally played. The music is stepwise and calm, with old-world modal harmonies to evoke familiarity.
Billy Boyd who played Peregrine Took in the Lord of the Rings, wrote the melody for and sang the song “The Edge of Night”, which was featured in the Return if the King. The song was later used over the trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the final film in the trilogy. Boyd also wrote and performed the song “The Last Goodbye”, which is played during the ending credits of the film.
