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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Their Scores

The first thought that crosses my mind, when I think of ‘Their Scores’ is the aural grandeur of symphonic swells that were scored to match up with the ever mounting visual grandeur in their movies. It is the grandeur that hit me instantly and grabbed my attention towards the phenomenon called background score. So, while I try to speak about my favorite ‘Their’ movie scores, I would like to start with the theme of visual grandeur. And that brings me to ‘Lord of the Rings’. The world is yet to see something that, if not more at least that is as visually spectacular and arresting as Lord of the Rings.

I am a big fan of Lord of the Rings trilogy and Howard Shore’s score for the movie. While, there is so much music throughout the trilogy, the one I have picked is ‘Lighting the Beacons’ from Return of the King. I get an overwhelming exhilaration whenever I watch this scene. The visual beauty, the thematic importance of the scene and the music, all put together stands out as a crescendo for what this audio-visual medium of cinema is capable of.

Suspicious strings creeps in hesitantly as Pippin secretively climbs up Amon Din to light the beacon, which would trigger the Gondor’s signal to Rohan for help. Once Pippin reaches the top and fires the beacon, the score starts off and as the flame moves from one peak of snow caped mountain to another, the momentum and loudness of the brass section of the orchestra builds up and up with strings stirring and swirling around. It all then bursts out to a bombastic beginning of the main Gondor theme (that fills most part of the Return of the King’s score) implying that Gondor is reaching in utmost desperation and urgency for aid from Rohan.





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

LOTR score is a milestone in film score,represents the power of symphonic scores.
if u read LOTR and listen to the complete score of the 3 films,u can really visualize & feel the conflict of middle earth.truly an awesome achievement for film music:
hats off to howard shore