Projecting Tolkien's Musical Worlds A Study of Musical Affect in Howard Shore's Soundtrack to Lord of the Rings

Revision with unchanged content. Explaining the meaning or affect of a piece of music is by no means an easy task. However, some success has been found through the work of Philip Tagg, whose technique consists of breaking down a musical example into minimal units of musical meaning (called musemes), comparing those units to other musical examples possessing sociomusical connotations, and demonstrating a transfer of musical affect from the music possessing socio musical connotations to the object of analysis. This work expands Tagg s techniques in an attempt to analyze the musical affect of Howard Shore s film score for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. After a discussion of J.R.R. Tolkien s description of the cultures of the inhabitants found in Middle-earth, this work dissects the thematic material of Shore s score, focusing on his incorporation of the music and culture of Tolkien s text into his film score through instrumentation and style, as well as utilizing musematic analysis to argue the musical affect of Shore s major themes that is projected on the audience. This book is directed toward any individual, musician or film enthusiast, who appreciates the ability for a film score to heighten the overall movie experience.