OhioHobbit
Rohan
"If we step back and think about it, music is one of the most peculiar conventions in movies. No one questions that music should be a part of movies because we’ve all grown used to the idea that, in a movie, when two people kiss, we should hear music in the background. Or when the platoon attacks the beach, a symphony should provide the inspiration behind their assault. Of course, no one has a soundtrack accompanying their real lives. But in movies we not only accept this convention, we demand it." (1.)
According to Peter Jackson "The music score on any film is obviously vitally important because it totally guides your emotions when you’re watching the film; I mean, the actors can do their job, the director can do their job in terms of creating a certain amount of mood and emotion. But, obviously, music is like so strong and evoking – what you should be feeling at any given time." (2.)
Movie music can be divided into two categories: diegetic and non-diegetic. Non-diegetic is what you normally think of as movie music, that which is outside the world of the movie. Diegetic music is music that is actually heard by the characters, like Pippin singing to Denethor, or Aragorn singing in the marsh, or the lament for Gandalf. Magpie’s site has a much more detailed explanation. The link to her site is given below.
I have long thought that it would be an interesting exercise to take a movie, maybe a short film, and have music created for it by several different composers. I think that the same movie would feel completely different each time. I did come across something like that on line. Lyricist Marilyn Bergman ("The Way We Were," "The Windmills of Your Mind"), at a symposium on movie music at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, did a presentation called "The Marriage of Music and Film." One of the things that she did was have three different composers, Henry Mancini, Dick Hyman and Mark Isham, provide music for the same 19-second film clip of a woman walking into a darkened house at the end of the day, turning on a light, climbing the stairs, entering a bathroom and starting to brush her teeth.
"Mrs. Bergman described the scene differently to each composer. Mr. Hyman was told that the woman comes home to a house that is blissfully empty and quiet now that her husband and his two children from a previous marriage have finally left. Mr. Mancini's description was that the woman comes home to the house that she had shared with a husband who walked out on her. Mr. Isham was told that the woman is unaware of something the audience knows - that there is an intruder in the house.
"While the scene was replayed, Mr. Hyman and Mr. Mancini each conducted a small orchestra on the stage. Mr. Isham played an electronic fragment he had written at home. In all cases, the clip came alive. Mr. Hyman's jaunty tongue-in-cheek music expressed quiet comic relief; Mr. Mancini's was wistfully romantic, and Mr. Isham's tinglingly suspenseful." (3.)
The first time that a movie sound track caught my attention, and the first one that I ever bought, was 2001: A Space Odyssey. The two main pieces, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and "The Blue Danube," were both composed by Richard Strauss and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The first was conducted by Karl Bohm and the second by Herbert von Karajan. I still get chills when I hear "Also Sprach Zarathustra," even though it has been over used in TV commercials, and I still think that the soundtrack had the best rendition of "The Blue Danube" that I have ever heard. But that is just me.
I think that the next time that a sound track made me take notice was probably the first Star Wars movie. I drove home with the closing theme in my head, probably driving a bit too fast. The composer for Star Wars was John Williams. Williams had just won an Oscar for Jaws and had a long list of movies and shows that he had composed the music for, one of which was the theme for the TV series Lost in Space. The music for Star Wars was recorded over 12 days with the London Symphony Orchestra. This was a bit of a gamble as it wasn’t the trend at the time to use traditional symphonic sound in movies. Lucas had been having a lot of trouble getting this first movie made and the music was the first thing that had actually exceeded his expectations. All of this information I got from the Star Wars Trilogy extras. I haven’t been able to find the source, but I remember hearing somewhere that the music made the movie seem larger and grander than it actually was.
George Lucas: "On the original film I was looking for someone who really understood classical movie scoring, and I was talking to Steve Spielberg about it and he had worked with Johnny (Williams) on Jaws and said, ‘This is the man for you.’ He’s perfect; he really understands the medium and once I worked with him on Start Wars, you know, I would never have anybody else doing it." (4.) "Johnny (Williams) really understands movie music; it is not just laid in there; he really tells a story." (5.)
Rick McCallum: "John (Williams) over sees the entire process of getting the music he has imagined inside his head out onto the screen. He and the music editor, Ken Wammberg, worked with a staff of orchestrators and, of course, the extraordinary London Symphony Orchestra – a group of more than 100 deeply talented musicians." (5.)
The next movie sound track that impressed me was the one from the first Star Trek movie. There seems to be a pattern here. I was absolutely mesmerized by the grand tour of the new Enterprise and I thought that the music was wonderful. But that is not the way it started out. Director Robert Wise chose Jerry Goldsmith to compose the music. According to the bonus features from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Directors Edition, when Goldsmith wrote the music for the grand tour of the Enterprise he was quite proud of it. But, when Robert Wise heard it he didn’t like it. Wise said "I listened to the first couple of pieces and it didn’t seem quite right to me. I got visions of sailing ships somehow." He couldn’t really explain what he didn’t like about, but he told Goldsmith that he had to do it over again and Goldsmith was crushed. He asked Wise just exactly what was wrong and Wise replied "There’s no theme." So, Goldsmith went away and reworked the music. When he played the new version for Wise, Wise said, "That’s it! Why didn’t you go with that in the first place?"
And then came The Lord of the Rings.
View attachment
Howard Shore, Composer/Man of Rohan
When Peter Jackson created the animatic for The Lord of the Rings, he used temporary music tracks from different movies. One composer’s name who kept showing up was Howard Shore. Peter decided he really liked Howard Shore’s music. But, this was not going to be a normal moving-scoring process.
Peter Jackson commented, "It sounds mercenary but we were looking for a composer who would give us a bit more than usual. The normal film industry arrangement is that you engage a composer, talk about the film and they then don’t start working till they get a cut of the movie. You pay them a fee for about six weeks and some composers do as many as four or five scores a year. We wanted to find the right person – somebody who was willing to commit to the project for a significant period of time – and Howard turned out to be perfect. He devoted himself to it slavishly and apart from Panic Room and Spider, which he scored for friends David Fincher and David Cronenberg, he worked virtually full time on The Lord of the Rings for three years. Unbelievable. He was as obsessed as we were!" (7.)
"Studio filmmaking in the classical Hollywood era emphasized efficiency, following an assembly-line mode of production with a highly specialized division of labor. Work on the score began when the film was in rough cut and was usually completed within three to six weeks . . . The process began with a spotting session to determine in which ‘spots’ to place the music. Composers produced sketches of the music, but orchestrators . . . produced the finished version of the score . . . The top Hollywood composers established long-term relationships with orchestrators or arrangers they trusted . . . Some composers had the privilege of conducting their own work, but usually it was the studio's musical director who conducted. Often, especially on ‘B’ pictures, teams of composers, arrangers, and orchestrators worked together, so screen credit can be misleading . . . " (8.)
According to Paul Broucek, Executive Music Producer for The Lord of the Rings, "Howard is incredibly hands-on as a composer in his whole approach. Because he not only composes the music, he orchestrates and conducts." (9.)
When Fellowship of the Ring was released, Howard Shore had been on the films for two years. As stated above, composers are usually on films for six to eight weeks. Howard Shore, himself, said, "When I’ve finished everything, you know, with the extended cut of Return of the King, it will be four years." (2.)
View attachment
The movies may be over, but the music goes on: The Lord of the Rings Symphony
"I think I started in the summer of 2000 with a trip to Wellington, and I started thematic materials in December . . . I think that research process took six months, but it was four months into it that I actually started to write pieces of music down on paper. I think I started on Dwarrowdelf first, and then I worked on Hobbiton. I wrote a few pieces in Moria, and then I worked on a theme for Hobbiton. I wasn’t scoring the film yet, but I was writing little pieces based on feelings that I had about those worlds." (10.)
"I go through a process of assimilation. I do a lot of research before I do any project, whether it’s a film like Naked Lunch or even films like Ed Wood, which required quite a bit of research to really try to capture the feeling of those worlds. Now, you’re looking at J.R.R. Tolkien and a much grander work that any of the ones I just mentioned, and of considerably more depth and complexity. You want to absorb the work almost totally. You want to work yourself inside of the piece. I do that by a lot of reading of other pieces I love. I studied ring mythology and other books about it." (10.)
"The book was always opened on my desk. As I was writing, I would reread a section, and watch Peter’s imagery and watch the actors, and then I would start to create pieces away from the film. I looked at pieces that might have influenced J.R.R. Tolkien when he was writing The Lord of the Rings. Then I looked at what had happened to culture and mythology after he wrote and published The Lord of the Rings. What had happened in the last 50 years since the publication of those books – not just in film, but in literature, music, and art? That was my studying" (10.)
According to Howard Shore, "Philippa, Fran, and Peter wrote the screenplay. The music, if you can take it one step further, is somewhat part of the screenplay. It’s part of the dramatic feeling – the music is part of the ‘life’ of the piece. They invited me, as a writer, to collaborate with them – the screenwriters – that was a wonderful thing to do. It doesn’t happen all that often on other films." (10.) "To be able to work with Peter as a collaborative filmmaker is a fantastic bonus for me because you are getting his input from the story telling aspect of it. You’re creating the imagery in it in music, so you’re both sort of working together to tell the story." (11.)
"Is music composed with (a) collaborative model of better quality than music composed solely by a trained composer? In the world of classical music and commissions and grants given to composers, that might be a relevant question. But with film score, the question of better really means: is it better for the film in the opinion of the director?
"How can composers be more collaborative in their composing? One way is to look for more ways to involve the director in the score creation process. By offering choices and options at various points during the composing process, whether the choices are logistical (choice of instruments), stylistic (choice of styles and genres) or actually involve choices among melodies, themes and other musical elements, choices give a filmmaker more of a role in the composing process, and today’s hands-on, digitally-equipped filmmakers clearly want more of a role." (12.) As Howard Shore agrees in The Lord of the Rings Fan Magazine, "The music was presented to Peter, Fran and Philippa several different ways. "Sometimes, it was just on keyboards or piano; sometimes it was mocked up, I would write the score in pencil, and then I would take the sketches that I was writing and mock those up and look at them against the picture in almost a storyboard kind of sense. We would look at it and discuss thematic material – you know, ‘Could we use this theme here? Is this a good point to use this theme? ...’ Those were the kinds of things we discussed." (10.)
View attachment
As Barry Osborne noted, "Peter and Fran were very clear that they wanted someone that would collaborate with them, that would be willing to invest the time to develop themes and to help us even in production." Howard Shore said, "He (Peter Jackson) might not be a musician in the traditional sense, but, I mean, he has a very, very good understanding of how to use music in a film and how to use it emotionally and dramatically and pacing. I mean, I think he has a fantastic sense of it." (2)
View attachment
Peter Broucek: "Peter loves his hit and wants to hear more of it."
The Two Towers, Extended Edition, Appendices disk 4, "Music for Middle Earth"
View attachment
London Symphony Orchestra, producers and technicians
As every TORn-sib knows (except perhaps some new ones), everything you could possibly want to know about the music from The Lord of the Rings can be found at Magpie’s website. She has kindly given me permission to include a link to it here and it is more than worth your while to check it out (thank you Magpie):
geocities.com/magpie930
Here are some more links for more information.
filmsound.org
musicfromthemovies.com
scorereviews.com
woodzie.org/lotr/
Are there any movie scores that you are particularly fond of? Do you own any?
Is there a particular theme or music (including vocals) in a particular scene in LOTR that is your absolute favorite? Is there anything you didn’t like?
When Fellowship first came out, it seems to me that there was some sort of controversy about Enya being part of it. Do you remember what that was all about?
The Lord of the Rings was composed as an opera. Should The Hobbit be written as an opera? Could it be?
Should the Shire theme and the Rivendell theme from LOTR be used in The Hobbit?
Is there any aspect of movie scoring in general or for LOTR that I haven’t brought up that you would like to talk about?
Sources:
1. inpoint.org
2. Fellowship of the Ring, Theatrical Edition, Appendices 2, "Music for Middle Earth"
3. query_nytimes.com
4. Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, Special Features disk, Web Documentary #12, Music.
5. Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, Special Features disk, "Within a Minute: the Making of Episode III," Score.
6. Fellowship of the Ring, Theatrical Edition, Appendices 2, "Music for Middle Earth"
7. Peter Jackson, A Film-Maker’s Journey by Brian Sibley, pg. 425
8. filmreference.com
9. The Two Towers, Extended Edition, Appendices disk 4, "Music for Middle Earth"
10. The Lord of the Rings Fan Club Official Movie Magazine, Issue No. 5, pg. 40-49
11. The Two Towers, Extended Edition, Appendices disk 4, "Music for Middle Earth"
12. filmmusicmag.com
According to Peter Jackson "The music score on any film is obviously vitally important because it totally guides your emotions when you’re watching the film; I mean, the actors can do their job, the director can do their job in terms of creating a certain amount of mood and emotion. But, obviously, music is like so strong and evoking – what you should be feeling at any given time." (2.)
Movie music can be divided into two categories: diegetic and non-diegetic. Non-diegetic is what you normally think of as movie music, that which is outside the world of the movie. Diegetic music is music that is actually heard by the characters, like Pippin singing to Denethor, or Aragorn singing in the marsh, or the lament for Gandalf. Magpie’s site has a much more detailed explanation. The link to her site is given below.
I have long thought that it would be an interesting exercise to take a movie, maybe a short film, and have music created for it by several different composers. I think that the same movie would feel completely different each time. I did come across something like that on line. Lyricist Marilyn Bergman ("The Way We Were," "The Windmills of Your Mind"), at a symposium on movie music at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, did a presentation called "The Marriage of Music and Film." One of the things that she did was have three different composers, Henry Mancini, Dick Hyman and Mark Isham, provide music for the same 19-second film clip of a woman walking into a darkened house at the end of the day, turning on a light, climbing the stairs, entering a bathroom and starting to brush her teeth.
"Mrs. Bergman described the scene differently to each composer. Mr. Hyman was told that the woman comes home to a house that is blissfully empty and quiet now that her husband and his two children from a previous marriage have finally left. Mr. Mancini's description was that the woman comes home to the house that she had shared with a husband who walked out on her. Mr. Isham was told that the woman is unaware of something the audience knows - that there is an intruder in the house.
"While the scene was replayed, Mr. Hyman and Mr. Mancini each conducted a small orchestra on the stage. Mr. Isham played an electronic fragment he had written at home. In all cases, the clip came alive. Mr. Hyman's jaunty tongue-in-cheek music expressed quiet comic relief; Mr. Mancini's was wistfully romantic, and Mr. Isham's tinglingly suspenseful." (3.)
The first time that a movie sound track caught my attention, and the first one that I ever bought, was 2001: A Space Odyssey. The two main pieces, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and "The Blue Danube," were both composed by Richard Strauss and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The first was conducted by Karl Bohm and the second by Herbert von Karajan. I still get chills when I hear "Also Sprach Zarathustra," even though it has been over used in TV commercials, and I still think that the soundtrack had the best rendition of "The Blue Danube" that I have ever heard. But that is just me.
I think that the next time that a sound track made me take notice was probably the first Star Wars movie. I drove home with the closing theme in my head, probably driving a bit too fast. The composer for Star Wars was John Williams. Williams had just won an Oscar for Jaws and had a long list of movies and shows that he had composed the music for, one of which was the theme for the TV series Lost in Space. The music for Star Wars was recorded over 12 days with the London Symphony Orchestra. This was a bit of a gamble as it wasn’t the trend at the time to use traditional symphonic sound in movies. Lucas had been having a lot of trouble getting this first movie made and the music was the first thing that had actually exceeded his expectations. All of this information I got from the Star Wars Trilogy extras. I haven’t been able to find the source, but I remember hearing somewhere that the music made the movie seem larger and grander than it actually was.
George Lucas: "On the original film I was looking for someone who really understood classical movie scoring, and I was talking to Steve Spielberg about it and he had worked with Johnny (Williams) on Jaws and said, ‘This is the man for you.’ He’s perfect; he really understands the medium and once I worked with him on Start Wars, you know, I would never have anybody else doing it." (4.) "Johnny (Williams) really understands movie music; it is not just laid in there; he really tells a story." (5.)
Rick McCallum: "John (Williams) over sees the entire process of getting the music he has imagined inside his head out onto the screen. He and the music editor, Ken Wammberg, worked with a staff of orchestrators and, of course, the extraordinary London Symphony Orchestra – a group of more than 100 deeply talented musicians." (5.)
The next movie sound track that impressed me was the one from the first Star Trek movie. There seems to be a pattern here. I was absolutely mesmerized by the grand tour of the new Enterprise and I thought that the music was wonderful. But that is not the way it started out. Director Robert Wise chose Jerry Goldsmith to compose the music. According to the bonus features from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Directors Edition, when Goldsmith wrote the music for the grand tour of the Enterprise he was quite proud of it. But, when Robert Wise heard it he didn’t like it. Wise said "I listened to the first couple of pieces and it didn’t seem quite right to me. I got visions of sailing ships somehow." He couldn’t really explain what he didn’t like about, but he told Goldsmith that he had to do it over again and Goldsmith was crushed. He asked Wise just exactly what was wrong and Wise replied "There’s no theme." So, Goldsmith went away and reworked the music. When he played the new version for Wise, Wise said, "That’s it! Why didn’t you go with that in the first place?"
And then came The Lord of the Rings.
View attachment
Howard Shore, Composer/Man of Rohan
When Peter Jackson created the animatic for The Lord of the Rings, he used temporary music tracks from different movies. One composer’s name who kept showing up was Howard Shore. Peter decided he really liked Howard Shore’s music. But, this was not going to be a normal moving-scoring process.
Peter Jackson commented, "It sounds mercenary but we were looking for a composer who would give us a bit more than usual. The normal film industry arrangement is that you engage a composer, talk about the film and they then don’t start working till they get a cut of the movie. You pay them a fee for about six weeks and some composers do as many as four or five scores a year. We wanted to find the right person – somebody who was willing to commit to the project for a significant period of time – and Howard turned out to be perfect. He devoted himself to it slavishly and apart from Panic Room and Spider, which he scored for friends David Fincher and David Cronenberg, he worked virtually full time on The Lord of the Rings for three years. Unbelievable. He was as obsessed as we were!" (7.)
"Studio filmmaking in the classical Hollywood era emphasized efficiency, following an assembly-line mode of production with a highly specialized division of labor. Work on the score began when the film was in rough cut and was usually completed within three to six weeks . . . The process began with a spotting session to determine in which ‘spots’ to place the music. Composers produced sketches of the music, but orchestrators . . . produced the finished version of the score . . . The top Hollywood composers established long-term relationships with orchestrators or arrangers they trusted . . . Some composers had the privilege of conducting their own work, but usually it was the studio's musical director who conducted. Often, especially on ‘B’ pictures, teams of composers, arrangers, and orchestrators worked together, so screen credit can be misleading . . . " (8.)
According to Paul Broucek, Executive Music Producer for The Lord of the Rings, "Howard is incredibly hands-on as a composer in his whole approach. Because he not only composes the music, he orchestrates and conducts." (9.)
When Fellowship of the Ring was released, Howard Shore had been on the films for two years. As stated above, composers are usually on films for six to eight weeks. Howard Shore, himself, said, "When I’ve finished everything, you know, with the extended cut of Return of the King, it will be four years." (2.)
View attachment
The movies may be over, but the music goes on: The Lord of the Rings Symphony
"I think I started in the summer of 2000 with a trip to Wellington, and I started thematic materials in December . . . I think that research process took six months, but it was four months into it that I actually started to write pieces of music down on paper. I think I started on Dwarrowdelf first, and then I worked on Hobbiton. I wrote a few pieces in Moria, and then I worked on a theme for Hobbiton. I wasn’t scoring the film yet, but I was writing little pieces based on feelings that I had about those worlds." (10.)
"I go through a process of assimilation. I do a lot of research before I do any project, whether it’s a film like Naked Lunch or even films like Ed Wood, which required quite a bit of research to really try to capture the feeling of those worlds. Now, you’re looking at J.R.R. Tolkien and a much grander work that any of the ones I just mentioned, and of considerably more depth and complexity. You want to absorb the work almost totally. You want to work yourself inside of the piece. I do that by a lot of reading of other pieces I love. I studied ring mythology and other books about it." (10.)
"The book was always opened on my desk. As I was writing, I would reread a section, and watch Peter’s imagery and watch the actors, and then I would start to create pieces away from the film. I looked at pieces that might have influenced J.R.R. Tolkien when he was writing The Lord of the Rings. Then I looked at what had happened to culture and mythology after he wrote and published The Lord of the Rings. What had happened in the last 50 years since the publication of those books – not just in film, but in literature, music, and art? That was my studying" (10.)
According to Howard Shore, "Philippa, Fran, and Peter wrote the screenplay. The music, if you can take it one step further, is somewhat part of the screenplay. It’s part of the dramatic feeling – the music is part of the ‘life’ of the piece. They invited me, as a writer, to collaborate with them – the screenwriters – that was a wonderful thing to do. It doesn’t happen all that often on other films." (10.) "To be able to work with Peter as a collaborative filmmaker is a fantastic bonus for me because you are getting his input from the story telling aspect of it. You’re creating the imagery in it in music, so you’re both sort of working together to tell the story." (11.)
"Is music composed with (a) collaborative model of better quality than music composed solely by a trained composer? In the world of classical music and commissions and grants given to composers, that might be a relevant question. But with film score, the question of better really means: is it better for the film in the opinion of the director?
"How can composers be more collaborative in their composing? One way is to look for more ways to involve the director in the score creation process. By offering choices and options at various points during the composing process, whether the choices are logistical (choice of instruments), stylistic (choice of styles and genres) or actually involve choices among melodies, themes and other musical elements, choices give a filmmaker more of a role in the composing process, and today’s hands-on, digitally-equipped filmmakers clearly want more of a role." (12.) As Howard Shore agrees in The Lord of the Rings Fan Magazine, "The music was presented to Peter, Fran and Philippa several different ways. "Sometimes, it was just on keyboards or piano; sometimes it was mocked up, I would write the score in pencil, and then I would take the sketches that I was writing and mock those up and look at them against the picture in almost a storyboard kind of sense. We would look at it and discuss thematic material – you know, ‘Could we use this theme here? Is this a good point to use this theme? ...’ Those were the kinds of things we discussed." (10.)
View attachment
As Barry Osborne noted, "Peter and Fran were very clear that they wanted someone that would collaborate with them, that would be willing to invest the time to develop themes and to help us even in production." Howard Shore said, "He (Peter Jackson) might not be a musician in the traditional sense, but, I mean, he has a very, very good understanding of how to use music in a film and how to use it emotionally and dramatically and pacing. I mean, I think he has a fantastic sense of it." (2)
View attachment
Peter Broucek: "Peter loves his hit and wants to hear more of it."
The Two Towers, Extended Edition, Appendices disk 4, "Music for Middle Earth"
View attachment
London Symphony Orchestra, producers and technicians
As every TORn-sib knows (except perhaps some new ones), everything you could possibly want to know about the music from The Lord of the Rings can be found at Magpie’s website. She has kindly given me permission to include a link to it here and it is more than worth your while to check it out (thank you Magpie):
geocities.com/magpie930
Here are some more links for more information.
filmsound.org
musicfromthemovies.com
scorereviews.com
woodzie.org/lotr/
Are there any movie scores that you are particularly fond of? Do you own any?
Is there a particular theme or music (including vocals) in a particular scene in LOTR that is your absolute favorite? Is there anything you didn’t like?
When Fellowship first came out, it seems to me that there was some sort of controversy about Enya being part of it. Do you remember what that was all about?
The Lord of the Rings was composed as an opera. Should The Hobbit be written as an opera? Could it be?
Should the Shire theme and the Rivendell theme from LOTR be used in The Hobbit?
Is there any aspect of movie scoring in general or for LOTR that I haven’t brought up that you would like to talk about?
Sources:
1. inpoint.org
2. Fellowship of the Ring, Theatrical Edition, Appendices 2, "Music for Middle Earth"
3. query_nytimes.com
4. Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, Special Features disk, Web Documentary #12, Music.
5. Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, Special Features disk, "Within a Minute: the Making of Episode III," Score.
6. Fellowship of the Ring, Theatrical Edition, Appendices 2, "Music for Middle Earth"
7. Peter Jackson, A Film-Maker’s Journey by Brian Sibley, pg. 425
8. filmreference.com
9. The Two Towers, Extended Edition, Appendices disk 4, "Music for Middle Earth"
10. The Lord of the Rings Fan Club Official Movie Magazine, Issue No. 5, pg. 40-49
11. The Two Towers, Extended Edition, Appendices disk 4, "Music for Middle Earth"
12. filmmusicmag.com
] The point is, as I said, the music "speaks" to me. I've been through a lot in the years that I've listened to LOTR's score, and therefore, I've empathized with different thematic notions at different points in time, which is why I can't pick a favourite, or a list of favourites. It's also the reason why I don't listen to favourite tracks. If I pop in the CD, I listen to the story, from beginning to end (not continuously of course). So for me, listening to this music is really like reading the book. 
]
