Whenever I listen to "Chamber of Mirrors" (track 12), I think I'm listening to Lord of the Rings music. How much was Howard Shore influenced by this score?
Whenever I listen to "Chamber of Mirrors" (track 12), I think I'm listening to Lord of the Rings music. How much was Howard Shore influenced by this score?
Who knows, it all depends on what Jackson temp tracked the films with. From what I recall, in many print and video interviews at the time, Jackson used some of Shore's own music as temp tracks, such as his score for LOOKING FOR RICHARD, plus some Horner tracks, since at one point Horner was being considered.
It's interesting that you noted similarities with Shore's work, because Basil Poledouris was highly interested in scoring Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies. I think that it was told by Richard Kraft in an interview: Poledouris tried his best to get in touch with Jackson and company, to no avail. If I remember Kraft's words correctly, missing out on this project had a heavy toll on Poledouris.
I think Wojciech Kilar was Jackson's first choice, but the prospect of working on three movies of such scale over several years didn't appeal to the composer. Jackson probably temped his movies with several cues by the polish composer.
I think Wojciech Kilar was one of Jackson's first choices as a composer, but the prospect of working on three movies of such scale over several years didn't appeal to the composer. Jackson probably temped his movies with several cues by the polish composer.
Funnily enough I seem to recall a friend telling me that Basil had said that he would have liked to have scored Dracula, which ultimately went to Kilar.
Whenever I listen to "Chamber of Mirrors" (track 12), I think I'm listening to Lord of the Rings music.
I do too. Especially the part in "Chamber of Mirrors" that starts at 3:58 feels similar to something like "The Lighting of the Beacons". It's not the same melody but it has the same uplifting feel to it.
So every Friday I go on Apple Music and I look up new releases under soundtracks just to see what new items they have. To my surprise they had the new Conan the Destroyer 2 cd set. Which is weird because it was released by Intrada and didn’t think there would be a digital release. But what is even more interesting is that disc 2 has an extra 4 tracks totaling an extra 18 minutes. Here are the extra tracks:
14 Introduction 15 Winds of the Woods 16 Mordor's Four/The Fight/The Dragon 17 Mordor's Death/The Ending
Those appear to be Basil's music cues from The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular which ran at Universal Studios from 1983 to 1993. They were re-recorded for the Prometheus/Tadlow cd some years back. I presume these are the original tracks.
I understand there was an effort by Intrada to get those on the cd. Looks like Universal found a way to release those cues themselves on their own label.
Happily you can download them for $4 to add to your Intrada disc.
This online release has been taken down. Someone at Universal may have mistakenly released these 4 tracks. Those who grabbed them in time are the lucky few.
