The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an iconic and well-known series of movies, not just for how they touched the hearts and the lives of fans worldwide, but for their critical acclaim within the film industry. Winning 475 awards out of 800 nominations, the trilogy is, to this day, the most awarded movie series in cinematic history, with recognition across the board of writing, acting, effects, costume, and many many more. But arguably one of the most stirring and emotive sets of awards for the films is those awarded to composer Howard Shore, who received 3 Academy Awards, 3 Grammy Awards, and 2 Bafta nominations. Shore himself describes the Lord of the Rings music score as the pinnacle of his career, and it is a soundtrack that has stayed with him for all of the years of his life.
Shore also did the musical score for The Hobbit trilogy just over a decade later, which was once again revered globally for its stirring and epic composition, which enhanced Peter Jackson’s movies to a new level. Now, again nearly a decade later, fans are about to see another return to Middle Earth, but this time with Amazon at the helm, as the latest rendition of Tolkien adaptations is about to hit the big screens. With less than a month to go until the series is released, Amazon has just released the Rings of Power soundtrack, and fans' hopes and fears have surged as they have received their first glimpse into the emotional resonance and reverberating impact that the musical score will have on the show and its success, or its failure.
The mastermind behind the latest soundtrack is Bear McCreary, whose name may be recognized for other hugely successful musical endeavors, such as Battlestar Galactica, God of War and The Walking Dead. McCreary’s talents are unquestionable, and his career as a composer has had many highlights so far, but will the sudden release of his Rings of Power composition help him to soar to even greater heights, or fall utterly short of the pinnacle that Howard Shore has set for the music of Middle Earth? As a first look at the playlist, as well as looking at the first fan responses from listening to it, it seems that McCreary was successful and that he not only managed to capture the same essence of Middle Earth that Shore so masterfully set a precedent for all those years ago, but managed to perfectly reflect exactly what the new Rings of Power series is all about.
When listening to his work, there are a lot of similarities between his creation and Shore’s, both capturing the vast epic-ness of the world, as well as speaking of a time of ancient myths and legends. It is heroic and majestic, but as McCreary himself pointed out, Shore's music is of a different era to the Rings of Power, which is set thousands of years prior to The Lord of the Rings and even its predecessor The Hobbit. The Middle Earth of these later years is an old one, one nearing the end of all the magic from the world, and thus, is filled with an eerie sadness and melancholy.
This is due not just to the fear and pain caused by the mighty power of Sauron and the death that he caused, but also because of the diminishing of the Elves. Shore captured this feeling of ancient civilizations that, while still powerful and mighty, were drawing to their close, packing his music full of a beautiful sadness that speaks of the fading of magic from the world. Even The Hobbit, while set earlier, still told a story of the demise of entire cultures, the once great and mighty dwarves cast from their home, and longing to reclaim it.
If Shore’s Middle Earth was one of melancholy and the wistful crumbling of one great race, then McCreary’s Middle Earth is one that speaks loudly of the might of these cultures at the pinnacle of their power. His music plays like the predecessor to Shore’s, like the music of mighty people before they fell to sickness, greed, and ruin. The best comparison is that Shore’s music is like the faded and often crumbling frescos of a church, still mighty, beautiful, and powerful, but lacking the color and vibrancy of when it was first created. McCreary’s new piece “Khazad-dum” is a great example of this, so-called after the sprawling dwarven kingdom of the same name, one of the mightiest cities found in all of Middle Earth, and at a time where it was thriving. The song booms of power and might, dwarven hardiness and strength at its absolute peak, far removed from the sometimes feeble sounding faded cries of Shore’s Dwarven scores.
“Galadriel” is another great example of what McCreary is so masterfully doing with the music choices for Rings of Power. Galadriel has always been shown to be not only a beautiful and almost ethereal character, played so enigmatically by Cate Blanchett in the Peter Jackson films. She shows power and wisdom, poise and elegance, something that the Rings of Power series appears to be flipping on its head.
The music for her character starts off as a beautiful elvish lament of sorts, reflecting the well-known and stereotyped beauty of her character, but as it continues it builds and builds until it crescendos into an epic soundtrack. This perfectly sums up what Amazon is doing with her character, giving her a much darker story of grief and pain, showing multiple scenes of her donned in battle armor and fighting for her life. Audiences have seen this kick-ass version of Galadriel before, but this might be the first time she is seen to physically struggle and get beaten down time and time again. McCreary’s music score beautifully mirrors the traumatic rise in her journey, in the same way that Shore’s mirrors her diminishing and departure to the West.
Shore created some of the most powerful music that perfectly sums up the magical world of Middle Earth, pushing forward the notion of the sheer majesty of Tolkien's rich and wonderful creation, but at the same time encapsulating the deeply ingrained melancholy that sits upon the land. This is possibly summed up best in the deeply moving piece “Evenstar” composed by Shore and sung by Isabel Bayrakdarian, which not only conjures up images of beauty, love, and hope for the future, but captures all the sadness that must come with these things for Arwen if she chooses to remain in Middle Earth.
McCreary takes everything that Shore has done, and transforms it into something that works with the new context of the show, exploring the various nuances of a different, more powerful age, but that still remains explicitly Middle Earth. His music is full of hope for a world that has not yet known the terrible wrath and destruction of Sauron’s hands, and it brings hope to those who listen, that Rings of Power will burn with Tolkien’s heart at its center.