What to Listen to After The Lord of the Rings Soundtrack

Howard Shore’s scores for The Lord of the Rings are one of the crowning musical achievements of the twenty-first century. For his work on the films, Shore garnered numerous accolades including three Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, and three GRAMMYs. More importantly, his work introduced new generations of audiences to the immersive power of a full symphony orchestra and chorus. From the rustic tranquility of “Concerning Hobbits” to the roaring fires of Mount Doom, we’ve paired our favorite musical moments with similar works by famed classical composers.

Shore composed, orchestrated, and conducted over ten hours of original music for the three films. Though he looked to Italian opera to inform his music’s emotional tone, Shore applied German opera’s principle of leitmotif to build a truly interconnected musical landscape. “The Lord of the Rings is the most complex fantasy world ever created,” Shore said, “so I’m holding a mirror up to it, musically, and attempting to create something that’s in the image of it.”

What is a Leitmotif?

A leitmotif (or leitmotiv) is a short, recurring musical theme associated with a particular person, object, place, or idea. Nineteenth-century opera composer Richard Wagner is most widely associated with this technique (though he avoided the term), particularly in his massive tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. Over the course of the trilogy, Howard Shore uses over 90 distinct leitmotifs to represent races, individual characters, locations, the Ring, and even Nature. 

Skilled composers don’t simply repeat a leitmotif over and over, they create variations of these themes that alter their moods and therefore their meanings. A composer may devise any number of different treatments of the same melody: they can fragment the theme, change its tempo or rhythm (a slower version may seem sad, relaxed, or noble depending on the context), or alter its harmonies (a previously dark, minor-key harmonization may become triumphant in a major key), among other things. The music of the Shire, for example, grows bolder and more heroic over time as the Hobbits mature upon their journey.

Concerning Hobbits

“Concerning Hobbits” was some of the first music Howard Shore developed for the trilogy. This pastoral theme represents the Shire and its diminutive denizens. Based on a major-key pentatonic scale, this folksy melody initially (excerpt below) evokes the comfort and tranquility of home; at other points [1:17:41], it represents the nobility and bravery of Frodo and Sam.

Grieg: “Morning Mood” from Peer Gynt

Edvard Grieg, one of the leading Romantic-era composers, composed incidental music to dramatist Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt in 1875. Like The Lord of the Rings, Peer Gynt is an epic tale of going “there and back again.” After the rousing “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” its most well-known movement is undoubtedly the serene “Morning Mood.” As with the Shire theme, a woodwind-forward pentatonic melody evokes rustic simplicity.

Holst: “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” from The Planets

Like Tolkien, Gustav Holst hailed from England and lived through the First World War. But while Tolkien was sent to the Western Front, Holst was rejected as unfit for service. During the war years, as Tolkien slowly gave shape to his mythology, Holst composed his own magnum opus, the seven-movement symphonic suite The Planets. The central movement, “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” blends light-hearted joie de vivre with profound nobility and courage, just like Shore’s Shire leitmotif. Both juxtapose the jaunty rhythms of lightly-orchestrated woodwinds with simple but stately diatonic melodies in the strings. 

Dvořák: String Quintet in E-flat Major 

Frodo and his companions aren’t the only travelers to have found themselves longing for home. At the end of the nineteenth century, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák moved from Prague to the United States to become director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. During a summer vacation to Iowa, he composed two iconic pieces of chamber music, the String Quintet in E-flat Major and the American String Quartet. Following the nationalist example of Bedřich Smetana, Dvořák employed folk rhythms and melodies from his native Bohemia; here, lively fiddling and singable tunes evoke the warmth of the local tavern.

Isengard

To represent the treacherous wizard Saruman and his home at Isengard, Shore created a driving, warlike leitmotif. One character describes Saruman as having “a mind of metal and wheels;” his theme is appropriately scored for low-pitched, metallic, and dissonant instruments like anvils, metal plates, bass drums, and prepared piano. 

Most Western music has a time signature based on multiples of 2 or 3 beats per measure, but the Isengard theme has 5 beats per measure. This uncommon time signature accompanies images of deforestation, the smoke and fire of subterranean factories, and the creation of the hybrid Uruk-hai monsters. In this context, the music reinforces that these are an affront to Nature itself.

Holst: “Mars, the Bringer of War,” from The Planets

Holst’s The Planets suite premiered in September 1918 during the last weeks of the First World War. The suite opens with the bombastic “Mars, the Bringer of War.” This music is appropriately militaristic and violent, building to a dissonant, quadruple-forte climax. Like the Isengard music, “Mars” is built upon a driving 5/4 time signature. Since its premiere, “Mars” has been said to depict the horrors of mechanized warfare, of planes, tanks, and barbed wire.

Wagner: Das Rheingold

Wagner’s epic Ring cycle begins with Das Rheingold. In this opera, the dwarf Alberich steals the Rhinegold treasure and uses it to create a ring with the power to rule the world. His theft sets in motion a course of events that reshapes the worlds and ushers in the twilight of the gods. The gods Wotan and Loge descend into Alberich’s subterranean kingdom to retrieve the gold. As they enter the kingdom, a choir of eighteen tuned anvils hammer out the dotted rhythm of the Nibelung theme. This percussive ensemble vividly depicts the toiling of the dwarves whom Alberich has enslaved. 

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 in G minor, The Year 1905

Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony, subtitled The Year 1905, commemorates the Russian Revolution of that year. Its second movement depicts the violent Bloody Sunday massacre, when soldiers fired upon demonstrators as they marched toward the czar’s Winter Palace. A full battery of percussion and overwhelming brass depict the slaughter. This evocative, programmatic symphony has been referred to as “a film score without the film.”

The Fellowship of the Ring

Whether traversing the kingdoms of Rohan or Gondor or sweeping across battlefields, the musical landscape of Middle-earth abounds with heroic themes. Perhaps none is more identifiable than the leitmotif depicting the nine-member Fellowship of the Ring. This assertive, brass-forward melody is harmonically inventive: while the melody itself is in a minor key, the harmonization is major. The theme links all three films; even when the Fellowship is broken, fragments of the melody continue to appear, uniting its members and their quest across space and time.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Eroica

Composers looking to convey heroism often turn to the brass section for its warm, powerful sound. That was true of Beethoven, who included a horn solo in the first movement of his Third Symphony, Eroica. At the end of the development, a horn famously appears to come in early; one of Beethoven’s friends recounted the composer’s annoyance when he told him it sounded wrong. Beethoven intended to dedicate the symphony, one of the first works of his “heroic” middle period, to Napoleon Bonaparte, but he furiously scratched out the ruler’s name after he crowned himself emperor.

Strauss: Ein Heldenleben

Like Wagner and Shore, Richard Strauss used leitmotifs to depict characters in his tone poem Ein Heldenleben. The hero’s theme is a bold, wide-ranging melody played by unison horns and cellos. Comparing his work to Eroica, Strauss joked that “while it has no funeral march, it does have lots of horns, horns being quite the thing to express heroism.” He also had a personal connection to the instrument: in homage to his father, a horn player, Strauss gave the instrument prominent placement in several of his works.

Janáček: Sinfonietta

Post-Romantic composer Leoš Janáček dedicated his 1926 Sinfonietta to the Czech army. An ardent nationalist, much of his music was influenced by fellow Czech composer Antonín Dvořák as well as folksong and the Czech language. To create an appropriately militaristic mood, Janáček scored the first movement, a variation on an original fanfare, solely for brass and percussion

Gollum’s Treachery

To represent Gollum’s twisted, deceitful nature, Shore created a slithering chromatic theme for the cimbalom. “It seemed like a good sound for a hobbit that had been corrupted by the Ring,” Shore wrote. “It had an agitato, quivering feeling to it.” As with other hammered dulcimers, the strings of the cimbalom are struck instead of plucked or bowed, resulting in a distinct timbre. Since its invention in Budapest in the 1870s, numerous composers have written for the instrument: Hungarians like Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók, and Zoltán Kodály as well as Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, and John Adams.

Dutilleux: Mystère de l’instant

Like many of his French contemporaries, Dutilleux absorbed the impressionistic tendencies of his predecessors Debussy and Ravel. In Mystère de l’instant, one of his later works, Dutilleux presents a mosaic of moments and tone colors, emphasizing the present over linear development. Cimbalom is given a prominent place alongside string orchestra and percussion.

Bartók : Adagio from Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

Though Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta lacks a cimbalom, its unsettling, tonally ambiguous character recalls Gollum’s dark side. The slinking music of the Adagio is downright creepy, enough so that Stanley Kubrick included it in his film The Shining. This movement is a prime example of what Bartók called his “night music,” where eerie dissonances provide a backdrop to lonely melodies and the sounds of nature.

Kodály : Intermezzo from Háry János Suite

With his comic folk opera Háry János, twentieth-century composer Zoltán Kodály popularized the cimbalom outside his native Hungary. The titular character, a military veteran with a fondness for drink, tells stories about his fictional exploits to anyone who will listen. “Every Hungarian is a dreamer,” Kodály said of his countrymen. “He flees from the sad reality of the centuries…into the world of illusions.” In the Intermezzo from the orchestral Háry János suite, solo cimbalom gives life to the whirling csárdás (a lively, traditional Hungarian folk dance).

Rohan

Steeped in Nordic influences, the music of Rohan expresses a nobility fitting for the Rohirrim and their warrior culture. Shore chose the Norwegian hardanger fiddle to represent the realm of the horselords. Numerous other composers have used this warm-toned instrument in their films, including Hans Zimmer (Dunkirk), Carter Burwell (Fargo), and John Powell (How to Train Your Dragon). When played on the solo hardanger, the Rohan leitmotif takes on a fragile but proud spirit.

Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor

One critic famously wrote of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius that “his forms are hewn out of the rocks of his native and Nordic mountains.” The same could be said of his early twentieth century Violin Concerto, his sole concerto. This dark and wistful work downplays the typical back-and-forth exchange between soloist and orchestra in favor of a more profound yet still virtuosic composition.

Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending

English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, a contemporary of Tolkien and Edward Elgar, completed The Lark Ascending around the start of the First World War. Originally for solo violin and piano, he later rescored the work for full orchestra, creating the version most performed today. He based the pastoral work on George Meredith’s poem of the same name, a paean to the skylark. The violin represents both the bird’s song and his flight: “For singing till his heaven fills, ‘Tis love of earth that he instils,” Meredith wrote.

Bach: Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin

Considered a kind of Mount Everest of the violin repertoire, J. S. Bach’s Chaconne for solo violin demonstrates the emotional power of a single instrument. Bach, himself a violinist, makes fierce technical and expressive demands of the soloist. Johannes Brahms wrote of this agonized piece, “On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

Twilight and Shadow

The Lord of the Rings contains more than just epic battle sequences, second breakfasts, and long hikes. Across the trilogy, the Elf Arwen must continually choose between immortality and a mortal life with her beloved Aragorn, the future king of Gondor. Their tale of doomed love inspired some of Shore’s most tender and ethereal music. In Return of the King, renowned soprano Renée Fleming gives voice to Arwen’s conflicted emotions.

Handel: “Verdi prati,” from Alcina

Doomed love, of course, has long been a ripe subject for composers (one of the very first operas is a seventeenth-century retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice). A century later, George Frideric Handel released his opera Alcina, the tale of a powerful sorceress undone by love. In the sumptuous aria “Verdi prati,” her former beloved laments that the beauty of the world in which she had imprisoned him will fade away.

Around the time she recorded her solos for The Return of the King, Renée Fleming released an album of Handel arias and performed the title role of Handel’s Rodelinda at the Metropolitan Opera. She told Howard Shore that the straight tone characteristic of so much of The Lord of the Rings’ music helped her prepare this Baroque repertoire.

Dvořák : “Song to the Moon,” from Rusalka

Rusalka, Dvořák’s most popular opera, presents the tragic tale of a water nymph who falls in love with a human prince. As in Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, she gives up her beautiful voice to join him on land. Rusalka’s Act I aria, nicknamed “Song to the Moon,” finds her longing for love, her soaring vocal line enveloped in yearning orchestral accompaniment.

Wagner: Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

The ultimate operatic tale of star-crossed love, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde continues to inflame passions with its groundbreaking harmonies and sensual orchestrations. In the opera’s final scene, Isolde has a vision of her deceased beloved returning to her. Wagner’s ecstatic music builds to a searing climax as Isolde succumbs, joining Tristan in eternal sleep.

The End of All Things

At the trilogy’s climax, Frodo at last succumbs to the power of the Ring. Sauron, now aware of how close the Ring has come to its destruction, frantically orders his Nazgûl toward Mount Doom. With thundering timpani, a wailing Elvish chorus, and Renée Fleming’s ethereal soprano, perhaps no cue in Shore’s score captures such a dramatic combination of triumph and terror (below).

Orff: “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana 

To set the collection of medieval poetry Carmina Burana to music, Carl Orff turned to late Renaissance and early Baroque models including William Byrd and Claudio Monteverdi. The work opens with the bombastic “O fortuna,” which has appeared in hundreds of films and commercials since its premiere in 1937. A unison chorus chanting in Latin grows over a long crescendo, building a sense of foreboding Galadriel might have described as “the footsteps of doom.”

Verdi: “Dies irae” from Requiem

When Verdi’s Romantic choral masterpiece debuted, critics dismissed it as an “opera in clerical dress” (it didn’t help that the work was performed at La Scala, one of the world’s greatest opera houses). Evoking the Last Judgment, the “Dies irae” opens with a flurry of dramatic musical gestures including pounding chords and bass drum, trembling strings, dizzying trumpet figures, and a fierce chorus.

Prokofiev: “Alexander’s Entry into Pskov” from Alexander Nevsky

Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev’s score to the film Alexander Nevsky is one of the few examples of film music that has moved to the standard classical repertoire. He collaborated on the film with director Sergei Eisenstein (the Odessa Steps scene from his film Battleship Potemkin is regarded as one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time). The film details Prince Alexander Nevsky’s defense of Russia from Teutonic invaders, a timely theme when it was released in 1937. Later, Prokofiev created a cantata based on music from the film; here, a triumphant Nevsky enters into the newly-liberated city of Pskov.

The Grey Havens

The trilogy concludes with Frodo, Gandalf, and a select few others departing Middle-earth from the Grey Havens. This scene opens with a tin whistle, played by Sir James Galway, intoning a serene melody. Intersecting rising and falling cello lines, accompanied by a humming chorus, imbue their tearful farewell with a sense of hope. The harmonies move by fourths, shaping the theme like a succession of “amen” cadences.

James Galway plays Vivaldi

Globally renowned Irish flutist James Galway has had a remarkable seven-decade career. After a series of positions in leading orchestras including a tenure as principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Herbert von Karajan, he has become the leading ambassador of the classical flute repertoire. In this concert, given in Vivaldi’s native Venice, Galway and his wife, Lady Jeanne Galway, perform all six of the composer’s virtuoso flute concertos. As in his pictorial Four Seasons, here Vivaldi evokes images of nature in sound.

Klengel: Hymnus for 12 Cellos

German cellist Julius Klengel spent most of his career as principal cellist in the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory. He composed a large number of works for the instrument, including the sumptuous Hymnus for twelve cellos. This lush, late-Romantic work was premiered at the funeral of Hungarian conductor Arthur Nikisch in 1922.

Elgar: “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations

Like The Lord of the Rings, Elgar’s masterful set of Enigma Variations centers the enduring power of friendship. The work contains sketches of the composer’s friends and family; the popular ninth variation, “Nimrod,” was based on his publisher August Jaeger (Nimrod was a mighty hunter chronicled in the Old Testament, while “Jaeger” is German for hunter). Written at the end of the nineteenth century, this majestic piece is filled with lushly orchestrated themes.