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These pages contain program notes written for Redwood
Symphony. You are free to use the information in your own program
notes. If you quote me directly, please attribute it. Thanks!
These notes were edited, amended, and otherwise
improved by Eric Kujawsky, Peter Stahl, and Doug Wyatt.
Barbara Heninger
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Howard Shore
Symphonic Suite from "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring"
Howard Shore has proved to be a versatile -- and busy -- composer, from
late-night television themes (Saturday Night Live, 1975; Late Night with Conan
O'Brien, 1993) to suspense/horror films (The Fly, 1986; Silence of the Lambs,
1991) to comedies (Big, 1988; Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993) or dramas (Philadelphia,
1993; Gangs of New York, 2002). Born in Toronto, Shore studied at the Berklee
School of Music in Boston, then joined the rock group Lighthouse, for which he
played saxophone from 1969-72. From 1975-80 he was musical director for Saturday
Night Live, where he also occasionally played bit parts (once as a "killer
bee"). He teamed up with director David Cronenberg in 1979 and scored many
of that director’s moody horror films, then branched out into other genres; to
date Shore has written over 60 movie scores.
To compose the scores for each of the movies in Peter Jackson's Lord of the
Rings trilogy, Shore undertook both literal and figurative journeys, traveling
to New Zealand to see the film sites, but also reading the books by J.R.R.
Tolkein on which the movies were based. "Page by page, then note by note I
was able to uncover Tolkien's complex world," he writes. Shore studied and
used themes from music of the eighth and ninth centuries and included folk
instruments such as the North African rhaita (a reed instrument) and the
Norwegian hardinger fiddle to give his scores the feel of ancient legend. The
Fellowship of the Ring contrasts a Celtic-based fiddle tune for the hobbits and
their simple life in the Shire with ominously sliding and trembling strings,
harsh brass dissonances, and pounding percussion for the evil power of Mordor
that threatens the hobbits' world. Of course, an epic also requires an epic
theme, and Shore provides that with "In Dreams," which develops from a
haunting folk-like melody into a broadly sweeping hymn of triumph.
October 2004
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