Posted on 04/27/2002 3:36:49 PM PDT by maquiladora
It's not often you have the opportunity to hear an Oscar-winning score being recorded after it has already received an Academy Award - but it was my good fortune to be present at the recording sessions for the Special Edition Lord of the Rings DVD at Abbey Road Studios in London with composer Howard Shore. More often than not, the great film scores are performed just once: given voice by dozens of talented performers in a studio, destined never to be heard "live" by the public outside of the film. It is a rare privilege indeed to experience first-hand the creativity it takes to bring this music to life.
You can feel the great sense of history as you walk through Abbey Road's hallowed hallways. Posters for some of the great film scores recorded there adorn its walls: the original Star Wars trilogy, Lawrence of Arabia, Braveheart, and more recently, Titus, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Shore, the composer of the most recent score to join that exalted list, recorded the vast majority of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring there last summer, and the scoring crew had returned once more to add the musical accompaniment to Peter Jackson's director's cut of the film, due to be released on DVD in time for Christmas 2002 (and to coincide the release of the trilogy's second instalment, The Two Towers).
Although the final cut of the movie ran for almost three hours in total, Jackson felt that, for the DVD release, a number of previously deleted scenes needed to be re-included to provide a new, "definitive" version of the film. This decision provided Shore with a tricky musical task: as well as the film now featuring completely new sequences, some scenes were now longer than they had been before. As such, Shore took a three-pronged approach to re-scoring the film. Completely new music was written for the brand new scenes; music previously written but not recorded was performed for the first time to take account of scenes deleted from the final print; and existing cues were adapted and re-recorded to allow for the additional footage inserted into existing the scenes to be scored. With me so far? Good.
Sunday April 14th 2002 was Hobbit Day at Abbey Road. Shore had gathered together almost 100 members of the London Symphony Orchestra in Studio One of the great building to record new music for additional sequences taking place in Bag End, and in and around the Shire. In the control room, recording engineers John Kurlander and Toby Philpot and the Abbey Road technical staff were working hard under the watchful eye of music producer Michael Tremante and New Line Cinema's music executive Paul Broucek. In addition to the traditional symphonic complement, Shore had a Celtic band in an isolation booth, led by virtuoso Irish fiddle player Dermot Crehan, and consisting of a fiddle, two guitars, a pennywhistle, a bandoleon and a bodhrán drum.
Shore's first cue of the day was the film's new opening sequence, which now featured narration by Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins, reading from the introduction to his book "There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale". As amusing new footage of hobbit life flashed across the screen - accompanied by Bilbo's musings of how hobbits are well known as eaters of food, drinkers of ale, and smokers of pipes as opposed to great warriors - Shore's jaunty Hobbiton theme rang around the studio. Crehan's fiddle sang, and the strings rose in unison to perform a beautiful new version of the "Concerning Hobbits" cue, highlighting Shore's obvious but little-heard talent for musical elegance and lightness of touch.
A further sequence, elaborating on the conversation between Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) as they travel in a cart to Bag End, in which Frodo tells Gandalf of the strange behaviour he had noticed in his uncle Bilbo, was the next to be attempted. To capture the uneasy dichotomy of Bilbo's love affair with The Ring, Shore combined the lovely Shire theme with a new sequence of quite harsh dissonance as Bilbo, fearing that his beloved Ring has gone missing, ransacks his own home. Having heard nothing but Shore's gorgeous Gaelic tones for almost two hours, to suddenly be exposed to the most savage (and loud!) string-led chaos was a quite jolting experience, and drove home the talent that Shore - and indeed every other composer - has to elicit polar emotions through their writing.
Amazingly, it took almost four hours for these two cues to be recorded. Shore's meticulous rehearsal procedures, coupled with and the engineers' desire to recreate the same sonic atmosphere they had had previously at Air Lyndhurst Studios by opening or closing the door to the isolation booth, was not helped by the fact that, half way through one cue, one of the studio laptop computers exploded in a massive explosion of static over the studio speakers and the player's headphones! This event caused some uproar, and also led to the afternoon's funniest quote from Dermot Crehan who, having been conversing with Shore in his lilting Irish brogue all afternoon, eventually came over with sound system with the now-immortal line "Howard, its Dermot... there are brains on the floor in here".
The previous day, Shore told me, had been Lothlorien Day in Abbey Road, in which Shore had recorded new music for additional sequences taking place in Galadriel's magical Elven settlement. As in the original score, Shore used the usual symphonic orchestra, augmented by a group of Asian and Oriental percussion devices, as illustrated by the vast array of gongs and Gamelan bowls still hanging at the back of the studio. Most interestingly, Shore described to me one particular instrument he used which was made out of a whole, hollowed-out tree-trunk with strings stretched along the underside of its base. Apparently, the ethereal-sounding instrument was most commonly used in musical healing therapy - the patient lays inside the instrument, and the vibrations produced by the plucking of the strings are supposedly considered beneficial to the soul.
We left the studio while the orchestra were on a break, and as the engineers were setting up for a further new sequence in which Ian McKellen as Gandalf sings a song at Bilbo's 111th birthday party (which, sadly, I did not hear). Howard told me that he and his crew would be recording at the Colosseum in Watford during the following week, where the acoustics for recording the choral elements of the score were better. New music for Moria, the conclusive battle at Amon Hen, and additional choral overdubs would be recorded there, before they returned to Abbey Road the following weekend to finalise the mixing.
I feel truly privileged to have been present at this session. I was watching, at 3am, when the Best Score Academy Award was presented back in March. As Shore's name was read out, I literally leapt from my chair with delight, little-knowing that I would be talking to the man himself, and listening to the music live, little more than a month later. I would like to offer a huge thank you to Michael Tremante and Paul Broucek, for allowing me to experience this wonderful event; to Shullie and Lou Horsfield-Porter for keeping me company; to the Abbey Road canteen staff for one of the best bacon butties I have ever eaten; and of course, to Howard Shore, for his warmth, generosity, and abundant talent. Here's to another Oscar in 2003!
I'm going to be watching that this week!
Was it you, mom who mentioned you keep the window open and the sound up so you can hear if anything is going on in the Eagles' nest? When I got up this morning I opened the site just in time to see the second one fly in!! I wish I knew which was the Mom and which the Dad!
Shore had a Celtic band in an isolation booth, led by virtuoso Irish fiddle player Dermot Crehan, and consisting of a fiddle, two guitars, a pennywhistle, a bandoleon and a bodhrán drum.
Oh my goodness, I can't wait! I just love "Concerning Hobbits" and I really believe it's because of it's Celtic leanings.
That's ok about you forgetting me, HOTD...that's the good thing about posting in the topics. I saw it right away!
So Hair....how did you manage to double-post? :D
I hope all the hobbits haven't been taken by orcs or wraiths or something. Is awfully quiet, and I pinged a bunch of 'em. I know they would be interested in this!
I was brain-dead last night and didn't even think to ask. Does this mean that they'll be putting out another soundtrack on CD?
Hope so!!
Dan
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