Magpie
Immortal
Oct 8 2010, 2:57pm
Views: 2744
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Magpie Shiny Bits of Information: One of the things I noticed almost immediately about The Two Towers score was the blending of themes. I had just wrapped my brain around this new concept (for me) of themes. Although I was recognizing the easy ones, The Shire and the Fellowship Themes, I had to work hard at most of the rest. I knew ‘that music’ sounded familiar but I wasn’t always sure where else I had heard it. I had to listen hard to tell the difference between the similar sounding danger motifs. I pulled hundreds of soundclips from the DVDs and listened and categorized and plopped them into folders with names like: Arwen, Gollum, Shire, Isengard, Sauron. And then came The Two Towers and bam... I was faced with blends. Although this is not addressed at all in the Music for Middle-earth material, I think it’s a fundamental part of how the story and the score are progressing. Here are a few examples. All text below in red, excepting anything in parenthesis following “Magpie:”, is from the Annotated Score of The Two Towers, written by Doug Adams. This pdf was offered for free on the official soundtrack site in conjunction with the Complete Recordings of the TT. But is has since been removed from the official site since all that information was folded into Doug Adams' newly released book. I have soundclips of this music to listen to. You can find zipped files of these clips individually on my shiny html formatted version of this discussion. Or, you can download a zipped file containing all the clips from YouSendIt. This larger file is only available for one week.
Fellowship/5 Beat Pattern Blend/Isengard: As the forces of evil advance their campaign to overtake middle-earth, the Isengard music adopts a parasitic stance, writhing its way inside any music it encounters in an attempt to corrupt its host. Here Isengard’s Five Beat pattern forces itself upon the Fellowship theme, deforming the melody with its tilting mechanical might. Pity of Gollum/Ring Theme Blend: Violins rise through the three opening pitches of Gollum’s Pity. But instead of proceeding back down the line, the strings leerily divert up for two sighing pitches a half-step apart—the first notes of the History of the Ring. Frodo probes Gollum’s history, even calling him Sméagol for the first time in the story, but in one short passage, the score tells us everything we need to know. Gollum’s sad theme now interweaves with the Ring’s History theme. The Pity of Gollum and the History of the Ring have twisted into a single, tortured whole. Gollum’s history is the Ring’s history. Gondor/Rivendell Arpeggios Blend: In The Realm of Gondor’s opening pitches we are reminded of (Aragorn’s) heritage, and his regal birthright. But Aragorn is not yet ready to claim that birthright. His mind is torn between his responsibilities in Middle-earth, fears of his own potential weaknesses, and his love for Arwen. Beneath the Gondor theme the Rivendell arpeggios begin to flow, warm but somber, devoid of the lucent orchestrations that colored the lines in The Fellowship of the Ring. (Magpie: I’m not sure if this is a blend as much as it is one theme overlapping another as the scene shifts. The Rivendell Arpeggios follow the scenes segue from Rohan to Aragorn’s flashback of Arwen in Rivendell.) Rohan/5 Beat Pattern Blend: The Uruks gradually begin to bleed through the Elves’ defenses, scrabbling deeper inside. Having passed the Elves, the Five Beat Pattern meets the Rohan Fanfare, trampling not up against it, but directly through it. The score sounds the two lines in counterpoint, deforming Rohan’s rural beauty with the Uruk’s cumbrous brutality. Rohan/Fellowship/Lothlórien Blend: The main gate (of Helm’s Deep) is about to fall. With no choice left, Théoden commands all troops to fall back to the keep. French horn sounds a proclamatory call of the Rohan Fanfare, which closes with the opening three pitches of the Fellowship theme. Trumpet echoes the call, likewise beginning with Rohan’s Fanfare, then concluding with a turn from the Lothlórien theme.
Magpie Conversation Prompts: Three Movies, Three Scores: Had you noticed these blends? In what ways do you think The Two Towers Score differs from the Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King scores?
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