The upcoming Prime Video seriesThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerhas already sparked strong reactions in the Tolkien fanbase. The initial secrecy around the production, while intended to keep the details of the series under wraps, spawned a series of wild theories about the nature of the story audiences would see on screen. The sparse details given even by the first few teaser trailers left many viewers still uncertain as to the tone and nature of the story for quite a long time. As the release date nears, however, the production has offered a more complete view of the scope and themes of the series with a rapid-fire release ofinterviews, panels, and full-length trailers.
The worries of a concerned fanbase are in many cases quite valid. The fans of Tolkien’s world have come to it in a number of ways: some who fell in love with the books first, some who saw thePeter Jacksonfilms and were inspired to read the books, and even some devotees of theRankin/BassandBakshiversions as well. The stories and themes of Middle-earth are sacred ground for many, and so there is always going to be concern over the way in which new hands will shape a visualization of Middle-earth. Whatever those concerns are, though, in one respect at least a concerned audience can rest easy: the series is going to soundexactlylike Middle-earth.
On August 19, Amazonreleased the full scorefor the series along with aninterview with the composer,Bear McCreary, on the same day. Particularly for fans of the Jackson films, the soundtrack will present a glorious return to Middle-earth with all the joy, laughter, sorrow, and loss that are so central toHoward Shore’s original score. So go ahead,give it a listen. I’ll wait here.
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Wasn’t that great? There are a number of aspects to the soundtrack that make it an excellent production, but one of the most distinctive contributions to its quality is that McCreary approached the soundtrack in the same way that Howard Shore did when he first composed the score forThe Lord of the Rings.
Richard Wagner has been calledthe “man who invented modern movie music,”and one of his most famous compositions is the opera cycle “The Ring of the Nibelungs.” Wagner’s operatic style relied heavily on the usage of “leitmotifs,” which are brief musical themes that are attached to certain people, objects, places, or ideas, like a kind of musical nametag. Each of these themes identifies its subject, but can also be modulated in order to express changing emotion, or come into contact with another leitmotif and create a new theme, reflecting certain events in the story. In Wagner’s “Ring,” for example,there are more than 60 leitmotifs, expressing everything from the gold and the ring to the character of Alberich, Wotan, and the famous “Valkyrie” theme.
When composing the score forThe Lord of the Rings, Shore took a page out of Wagner’s book, composing a soundtrack withmore than 100 leitmotifs. There is a Ring theme, as well as themes for Gondor and The Shire, Elves, Dwarves, Rohan, and Moria. Shore even gavea nod to the Wagnerian inspirationin a theme he used inThe Return of the King. Ultimately, it ended up creating one of the most memorable film soundtracks of all time and has an instantly recognizable style that has imprinted an association for many as the quintessential Middle-earth music.
What McCreary has done in his composition is to create a perfect companion piece to the original Shore soundtrack. It recalls some themes of the earlier work without copying them and approaches the world in the same style without being redundant or derivative. Rather, it does exactly what many hope the TV series itself will do: it sets itself in a similar landscape as the Jackson films but takes the opportunity to explore new and different territory in the same world.
For one thing, there is a song sung by a Harfoot, “This Wandering Day,” which incorporates some Tolkien quotations and has a feel similar to that of the various Hobbit poems and walking songs of the original books. But there is also a brand-new set of themes and leitmotifs, which are interspersed and interwoven throughout the score like the threads holding together a tapestry. There are themes for the Harfoots, Numenor, Valinor, Galadriel, Sauron, Nori, Prince Durin, and of course the mysterious Stranger, each of which is seen in various different forms across the soundtrack, interacting with other themes along the way, creating a subtle musical narrative that tells a story of its own. Part of that story leads to more speculation about the plot of the series as well. For one thing, there are a couple of tracks on the album in which the Sauron and Galadriel themes intersect and are played over each other, promising some interaction between the two, though the nature of that interaction remains to be seen.
Perhaps the best example of this score and the way that it respects its sources without being derivative, though, is in the Khazad-dum theme. Shore’s Moria theme fromFellowship of the Ringwas dark and brooding, evocative of the cavernous and grim emptiness of the vast lost Dwarven kingdom. But McCreary’s theme, while it fits in to some degree with that aesthetic, evokes the vast kingdom of the Dwarves differently: his theme for the kingdom is not of loss and emptiness, but is full of the vibrant sounds of an industrious society clearly at the peak of its prowess. It clearly operates in a similar space to Shore’s work (and is complemented by a title track written by Shore himself), but takes the opportunity offered by the vast and rich complexity of Tolkien’s world to bring to life through music all the promise and peril offered by opening up a new path in the world of Middle-earth. The score itself, just like the world Tolkien created, is somehow both nostalgic and new; distinct and yet in some way strangely familiar.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerpremieres with its first two episodes on September 2, exclusively on Prime Video.
