The Return of the King CD Review
By Doug Adams
The Lord of Rings: The Return of the
King *****
HOWARD SHORE
19 tracks - 72:35
If the past decade of films and film music has taught fans anything,
surely it's a stern reprimand about setting our expectations for
sequels too high. How many times over the past few years have listeners
and viewers tacked their hope for the medium to a project that failed
to live up to expectations? How often has a rotten follow-up had that
uniquely destructive ability to tarnish not only the picture at hand
but also all previous entries? That's our lesson in fandom, but it
reveals an even more potent aspect of creativity. Flash and dazzle is
easy; structure demands far more from an artist. It's rare today that a
sequel fails to offer more visual bang for your buck, but when FX gurus
are busy reinventing the wheel, where is story, where is ambiance,
gravity, ingenuity? Once again, where's the structure?
So is this the part where I break bad news about Return of the King? No. (Wicked,
tricksy, false!) This is my way of laying bare the minefield Return of the King set before
Howard Shore -- and explaining my pure joy at finding that he has
rounded of his massive Lord of the
Rings trilogy with a work of staggering emotion and
uncompromised musical worth. This is obviously not the first successful
sequel score in the history of film music. John Williams' oeuvre is
overrun with improved second acts. But when most composers turn in a
bettered sequel, it generally feels like a revisitation -- a second at
bat where the enhancements are earned through reconsidering the first
score. The composer may take score one from point A to point B, the
sequel from point A to point C. In Fellowship
of the Ring and The Two Towers,
Shore went from point A to B and B to C, respectively. Themes continued
developments without a recap, drawing fresh connections while pushing
the old in new directions; the palette widened incorporating a grander
sense of scope and advanced realizations of the styles.
Return of the King takes us
triumphantly to point D, which logically expands the compass even
further. Shore has built his emotional arc through nearly eight hours
of music before reaching this score, and now, as we reach the
destination, everything is touched with a sense of gravity. We've
earned this voyage; we've come to its conclusion naturally, and the
effects are nearly overwhelming.
Today's scores are littered with huge moments. In fact, many scores are
nothing more than constant strings of these moments, separated by what
the composer obviously considers filler. This has long been one of my
major complaints about modern scoring. It's built around a stream of
screams, committee-designed to pump the audience at every possible
moment. But it's musical steroids – a false shortcut that wears on the
ears and numbs the mind. Every epic moment in Return of the King is merited – as
are the more intimate.
This is another chapter, not another go at it. The primary theme this
time is Shore's noble Gondor melody, which first cameoed behind
Boromir's speech at Rivendell in Fellowship.
This unique melody is one of a very few in the Rings collection to begin with an
open leap -- here a perfect fifth -- creating a sense of stature among
the thematic hierarchy. (Almost all other Rings themes begin in either
stepwise motion or as triadic arpeggiations.) Although the tune itself
is set in a minor key, Shore derives endless variations in the
accompaniment to keep the harmonic and dramatic palette continually
invigorated -- not unlike prior major harmonizations of the minor-keyed
Fellowship Theme. This clever treatment of harmony goes a long way
toward establishing the ancient/modern sound Shore has brought to the
scores. Have diminished chords ever sounded as fresh as they do in Return of the King?
The Gondor theme and its stylistic insinuations immediately broaden the
music of Middle-earth, informing the listener that even if the plot
hasn't yet reached its resolution, the characters have arrived at the
end of their journey. Whatever will happen will happen here.
Also returning after their brief Fellowship
premiere are the shimmering brass figures heard behind Boromir and
Aragorn's "White Tower" chat in Lothlorien, here used as a History of
Gondor theme relating to the city's former glory and future potential,
and put to welcome use in the lustrous "Anduril" track.
That other ruined nation, Rohan, rouses its theme again here, now
stronger and more directed than in Two
Towers, as the king and leagues of horseman set off to play
their part in the war to come. Shore no longer treats this is a society
in decline. "The Ride of the Rohirrim" begins with a stunning
three-part dialogue for strings, solo fiddle and French horn, each
vying for chest thumping snippets of theme's opening. After a
particularly heroic flash of some Éoywn material, the track
concludes with a steely Lydian setting of Rohan's melody where tutti
brass builds into a rousing modal cluster -- a brilliant symphonic war
whoop.
Although the three Ring themes don't figure into this album as heavily
as they do the previous two, Shore begins the CD with an amazing set of
variations on each. In "A Storm is Coming" the History of the Ring
theme flows into a waltz-like mold, an elegant folksy variation related
to the original Hobbit music, but slightly different. After the solo
violin picks up the tune in a strongly European twist the music grows
angrier…belligerent even. In a violent flourish the Evil of the Ring
theme belts out its sustained tones in the winds as the Seduction theme
saws away over it in violin octaves. Below all this, the Descending
Third motive from the Mordor collection burrows lower and lower into
the orchestra.
This cue (which, incidentally, plays amazingly in the film) is
indicative of much of the Return of
the King approach. Fellowship
showed us the musical connections within Middle-earth. Two Towers broadened the world,
allowing the interconnected music to wander of its own accord. Return of the King brings
everything back together. As the story climbs to its dramatic peak,
Shore runs the themes into one another to create the sense that
Middle-earth is colliding – conflict is coming to a head. "Hope and
Memory" combines the reedy Shire theme with the harmonies and melodic
inflections of the Fellowship Theme. In "The Steward of Gondor," Pippin
(Billy Boyd) performs a wistful Celtic melody that's essentially a
crossbreeding of the open fifth leap of the Gondor melody and the
up-and-down stepwise motion of the Shire material. (Boyd provides a
lovely performance, appropriate both to his character and to the
writing.) These hybrid themes litter the disc, even in the villains'
music. "Minas Morgul" slices open the Mordor material so that the
remnants of the Isengard percussion and octave low brass can tromp into
the mix.
Thematically there's so much happening in this score, I honestly can't
imagine ever sitting through it without finding something new. The
listing above hasn't begun to detail what the music holds. Minor motifs
from the first film, such as the sighing Caradhras theme, return now
world-weary and bleak. Shore takes the Evenstar melody from Towers in new directions, exploring
the possibilities inherent in the florid line. The furious choral lines
behind Sauron's prologue meltdown in Fellowship
seek new levels of excitement in the disc's final tracks. Thematic
fragments no longer than a half a phrase subtly hint at the
psychological overhaul the characters are enduring.
Even instrumental colors return in familiar combinations with new
material -- especially those associated with Hobbiton. Dermot Crehan
once again plays the fiddle solos, and Irish flautist James Gallway
adds a new maturity to the whistle and flute parts. Gallway also lends
some pan flute lines to the Gondor material, performed with equal class
and commitment. Boy soprano and Two
Towers veteran, Ben DelMaestro makes a handful of appearances on
the album, but it's soprano Rene Fleming who makes the proudest
contribution to the score's vocal music. Ignoring, for the moment, that
the woman has a supremely radiant voice, her interpretations are
outstandingly nuanced.
Annie Lenox provides the score's final vocal statement in Shore's song
"Into the West." The melody here is drawn from the folk
instrumentations in the Shire music and the newly penned Grey Havens
theme. Don't let Lenox's past fool your ears. This tune is far more
than a simple pop ditty. It's a logical and moving extrapolation of the
material we've been hearing for three scores – a kind of Celtic lullaby
that ebbs and flows in gentle waves. Shore's sense of structure and
line is deceptively complex in this tune. The text is set to a natural
cadence that highlights the language with an almost Schubert-like
quality.
The only minor quibble I can offer here is that one disc is not nearly
enough to display what Shore has created for this film. But the same
can be said of the first two. The 72-minute running time passes in a
blink. Shore wrote even more music for Return of the King than for the
other two films, which means a few edit-heavy tracks on the disc have a
suite feeling more than a direct story arc. This will only frustrate
fans once they realize just how more music there is, but it bodes
extraordinarily well for future releases. (The edits are finely
executed and will only become noticeable once you've heard the uncut
tracks.) Shortened form or no, make no mistakes, this is an Act Three
score. The hour spent climbing towards this musical climax ratchets
everything up to Shore's most expressive and electrifying music in the
trilogy. Even the stops along the road bring new levels to the score.
"Shelob" is as dense and lucid a bit of action writing as has been
heard in film. In fact, I'm hard pressed to find parallels anywhere but
the concert world. Shönberg's Five
Pieces for Orchestra springs to mind most readily. And the
juxtaposition of light to dark colors in the score -- heard most
notably where soloists are pitted against massed orchestral forces --
reaches its zenith as the drama examines the plight of a few related to
the plights of many.
The score ends on neither a happy nor sad note, but with a sense of
noble resignation. Shore has always treated this music as an emotional
examination first and as a spectacle second. That's never been truer
than in the score's closing moments. There's no glorious celebration,
no maudlin weepiness. There's stillness and introspection and an adult
understanding that everything must end. It's a hard lesson for the
film's characters, and a more difficult one for us listeners. We may
never have another full Lord of the
Rings score to await, but we'll always have these three stunning
works that Shore has turned out. These works have not only improved the
musical landscape of the past few years, they've improved the art of
film music. These are landmark scores, not to be missed.
R.I.P. Michael Kamen (1948-2003)
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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