On Howard Shore's Fellowship of the Ring

Movie soundtracks have in the past 10 or 15 years come into their own. Frequently, the music is actually better than the film it accompanies. And though there are so many soundtracks I love, if there was only one score I could save, only one which I could preserve, it would be Howard Shore's Fellowship of the Ring.

This is a score set apart from others, a score truly unique. The listener doesn't need to know what's going on in the story, for the music itself expresses a story. It has a life of its own. And, what is most important, it is the most musically universal score I've ever heard. It combines vocal sounds with instrumental ones, and it splits instrumental sounds equally between strings and brass and wind. This universal quality enables Shore to play with his themes, and to keep the soundtrack from becoming limp and stale.

The CD begins with foreboding music, then moves into the sounds of chaos and darkness, with wisps of mysterious string melodies playing throughout. Then it slowly becomes light and cheery, with the sound of a well-tilled field and brightly colored fences, the sounds of joy and the familiar. Ah, the flute and the fiddle! The village tavern, Rip Van Winkle, such are the impressions on my mind.

Now, I could go on and describe each track and images it brings, to my mind at least. But it would be far, far better for you to get the soundtrack yourself and listen, really listen to it. What images does it bring to mind? What emotions stir in your breast? Listen to it repeatedly, let its tones become a part of your very being.



And you will forever be the better for it.