Howard Shore and The London Philharmonic Orchestra - The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (The Complete Recordings)
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Free Music Notes for The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (The Complete Recordings)
Free Music Review: The Two Towers--The Complete Recordings: A Critical Review
Hit: 5 Stars
* A Review of boxed set
* Download on MP3/ IPod Player
* Price
I think any music lover, and especially those who love classical, will want to take a look at this boxed set and The Fellowship of The Ring, Complete Recordings for the same reason. It is fabulous.
The boxed set, come in a square box that is roughly length of a hand. It opens with the DVD audio version on the left. A book placemarker over the remaining set to the right. There's a beautiful 43 and 45 page booklet, respectively (That is, Fellowhip, Two Towers-- in order) and not as noted as a 48-page. Nevertheless, it has some annotations about the orchestral construction and Mr. Shore's ideas on themes as it relates to the characters, places and events of the particular movie. There isn't a complete notation on all tracks. In the Two Towers booklet, 2nd to last page, Mr. Shore says more info can be sought from [...]
The Two Towers. (There are wonderful reviews of The Fellowship pieces already on the customer review page.) What I found in terms of themes is fewer than in Fellowship. The music, orchestration is coordinated with the film, but a lot more aggressive. This is not a bad thing. You can easily feel the story being told when as each track is playing-- no annotation necessary. I found Track 1 of disc 1, luring me in immediately. The opening theme is repeated periodically, but not as often as in Fellowship. Disc 1, according to the booklet, is Smeagol/ Gollum's descent. But any of the tracks as that same exalted beginning slowly (deteriorating?) to a slow, almost maudlin tempo nothing demonstates this more than track 7 or "The Banishment of Eomer". I wondered as the tracks were playing and realized that Smeagol's descent and quest for the rings is no different than each of the characters preoccupation with redemption and "demonstrating one's quality." The beginning of this piece is indeed one of royalty and by the end it has slowed down to one of almost torment. Also track 10, "Fangorn" there is (for the 1st time) an introduction of a drum set. This is the introduction of the city of Trees within Fangorn. It takes on a new, more profound reality when place in the context of their formation-- discussed in The Silmarillion-- when Yavanna, an angel is questioning Mamwe about the prophecy that both men and Dwarves would bear no responsibility for the life of trees. She imparts upon them the ability to show anger when their safety is in peril. Nothing is more clearer when you hear this.
Disc 2, revolves around the life in Edoras. The theme is replayed several times and each time the image of a possessed Theoden slumped on the throne and Ewoyn rushing out to the veranda and Gandalf, Aragon, Legolas and Gimli reach the gates of the city are reinforced in my mind. The grandeur of a once valiant and great kingdom, the sorrow of its lost. Along the way there's the return of the theme of Isengard interspesed.
Disc 3, The tempo is faster and more agitative. The theme is war runs through each track. This is indeed the most volatile of the the discs.
The Two Towers (and The Fellowship...) Complete Recordings require no imagination as to where the pieces belong. It's very easy to relive the movies as the tracks are played. There isn't a moment when you're not aware that this is a masterpiece of artistic expression.
Download info
Both The Fellowship and The Two Towers Complete recordings can fit as an MP3 file on a 1Gig player with several albums to spare. If you only buy an MP3 for the Soundtracks, you can definitely fit, the entire trilogy. And, I mean there also room for next years The Return, because in addition to the two complete I have an additional 5 album of average length.
*If you want to hear the Complete recordings in high fidelity, you'll need to make this adjustment. An uncompressed file format (there are several) will enable you to hear the recordings as they should be, unlike an mp3 file which removes sound code to make it small. For each box set, you'll need to have a 2 Gig player that will allow for uncompressed files. 1 Gig is not enough, 2 give you about 30 minutes of free space. For each minute of uncompressed music, you'll need 10MB of space. The Fellowship is roughly about 181 minutes in length and The Two Towers is roughly about 189 or a 4 Gig player for both boxed sets. If you're planning on waiting for The Return you may need only about 6 Gig's for all, because with the extra hour on a 4 Gig, that should offset if The Return...King Recordings runs into 4 discs.
For "I-Pod"
(I just got a wonderful email from D. McAlester about a better way to download an uncompressed version of the boxed sets. Instead of using the AIFF, "D" suggests using the file format Apple Lossless Codec...
Andre,
i would actually recommend converting to ALAC (apple lossless audio codec). It applies a simple run-length encoding compression algorithm, but unlike MP3/AAC it does not lose audio fidelity. The files are much larger than MP3/AAC, but about half to three-quarters the size of AIFF. )
If you have a PC (as opposed to a Mac) you'll need to upload the latest I-Tunes Music file from the Apple website. The Mac should already have it installed.
Then, Preference>
Advance>
Import>
(select) Apple Lossless (preferably) or AIFF
download, then sync as usual.
About the price. I've been a part of LOTR chat-room discussing various aspects of the Complete Recordings for several weeks now. My view is this. We should buy the Complete recordings because they far surpass the experience of the single-disc versions-- and I own them, too. But, that should not be taken for granted by the recording company as someone who'll pay anything for the boxed sets because I'm a fan. I used to work in the industry and I can tell you that the residual that Mr. Shore and co. are going to make is not nearly what they should be getting from the sale of each set. The manufacturing costs of a cd is 3 cents, the dvd is 6 and a double-side dvd is 9 cents. Artists are paid by a point system. 6 points, 7 points, 8 points. Each point can be worth approximately 4 to 5 cents each or thereabouts. For boxed a little more for music clubs, considerably less. For a $60 (or $75 MSRP), Mr. Shore will probably not get $5. So where does all the profit go to? That a question that has been historically answered in "production" "marketing", or a number of value one-term answers.
Just a short while ago, my daughter told me that she gets all her music from the internet. I was shocked when her mother and step-father don't see anything intrinsically wrong with this. Although I have grave concerns about the ethics of the recording industry, they do pay most of the artist some royalty. For that reason alone, I scolded her and told her that she is in part stealing the money from people who make their living as an artist.
If you love classical music...if you love the soundtracks. You'll love this work.
Free Music Review: Truly a Work of Art
Hit: 5 Stars
There are a couple of different ways you could approach the music of Howard Shore's complete "The Two Towers" film score. The simplest would be to just pop one of the CDs into your player, lean back and let this gorgeous music wash over you, carrying you away to Middle Earth. Or you could use the excellent 45-page program guide to help you explore the music more methodically.
As with the complete "Fellowship of the Ring", there is an excellent write-up on each of the major themes appearing in "The Two Towers". Some of the language can get pretty technical, such as this excerpt from page 29: "The keening rhaita and swelling mixed chorus return, bolstered by weighty brass writing, thicker accompanying textures, many aleatoric, and increased orchestral doublings." It was very helpful of the publisher to define "aleatoric" in a footnote. As for the rhaita, you can see a picture of it on page 41. It looks like some sort of woodwind instrument.
And that's another thing I like about the booklet: it is sprinkled with pictures of instruments, performers as well as characters and scenes from the film: Eowyn standing in front of the palace at Edoras, the wind whipping through her dress; the ents marching off to war; Merry and Pippin discovering the goodies in Saruman's flooded larder at Isengard.
For those with extensive orchestral musical training, there are little snippets of sheet music for each of the themes. Those of us who struggle with sight reading will appreciate this touch: the discussion of each theme includes a disc and track number, plus a time index, so you can hear it for yourself. Want to know what "The White Rider (In Nature)" sounds like? Try Disc One, Track 13, index 2:11. Very nice, especially if your player lets you scan tracks in a hurry.
Another item of interest is the section entitled "Nine Notes to Rule Them All" on page 24. It seems that the number nine plays a prominent role in the music of "The Lord of the Rings".
One thing I would have liked to have seen were lyrics to the songs, especially the ones in Old English. But at 45 pages, I suppose the program guide was already getting pretty bulky. Reference is made to a book called "The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films" as well as a tie-in web site, where we can learn more about the choral texts.
If you had asked me just a month ago what my all-time favorite film score was, I would cheerfully have answered "The Star Wars saga, all six movies". Indeed, the techniques composer John Williams used there resemble those for Howard Shore's "Lord of the Rings" score to a great degree. Both are based on something called "leitmotif", pioneered in the 19th-century by the likes of Richard Wagner and Carl Maria von Weber, wherein various characters, places and ideas have distinctive musical themes. There are motifs for the Fellowship, Eowyn, Gollum, Mordor, Rohan and the hobbits -- more than 80 in all, I've read.
A master composer can weave these themes together skillfully to convey different moods, to the point that it's possible to follow the plot of the story just by listening to the complete score. I can do this both with "Star Wars - A New Hope" and with "The Fellowship of the Ring". Because of the complexity of the music for "The Two Towers", I'll need to study it more thoroughly first, but even as I'm writing this I'm following the basic plot points. At this very moment, Gollum and Smeagol ("Stinker" and "Slinker") are having that wonderful "schizoid" self-conversation, where the Smeagol personality temporarily gains the upper hand ("Leave now, and never come back!") And now a gleefully cackling Smeagol is bringing the "nice hobbits" a brace of coneys, just before the Mumakil show up.
Another commonality between John Williams and Howard Shore is their use of real or made-up ancient languages in chorus, be it Sanskrit in "Star Wars - The Phantom Menace" or Tolkien's Elvish languages, Sindarin and Quenya, not to mention Black Speech for Mordor music and Old English for the Rohan themes. Now that I have the complete "Lord of the Rings" scores for the first two movies, I've revised my opinion: Howard Shore had done what I long thought was impossible -- he's surpassed John Williams in the sheer audacity and scope of his work. I can hardly wait for "The Return of the King" to round out the experience.
While an asking price of $60 is admittedly a bit steep, I was cheerfully willing to pay it. It most certainly was an incentive to take advantage of Amazon's "early bird" discount.
Finally, I most certainly concur with a previous reviewer's comment about the rubber DVD nub. Most of us, I suspect, are used to pressing down on a center locking button, then gripping the edge of the DVD and carefully lifting it free. Not here. Pressing down on that horrid piece of rubber only makes it grip the DVD more tightly. I found myself gritting my teeth as I twisted the DVD free, striving valiantly not to smudge it or, even worse, bend it unduly. The same is true when returning the disc to its place, trying to find that precarious balance between not mashing it down too hard versus having it pop free again and fall on the floor, face down.
Excessive bending can do fatal damage to a DVD, as I discovered much to my chagrin with the "Return of the King" movie boxed set which likewise had very tight DVDs. After six months or so, two of the discs showed signs of "DVD rot" and would no longer play properly. I had to replace the whole set. Fortunately, the maker had fixed the problem by then. Hopefully, the same will be true with the music.
Realistically, though, I probably won't be playing the DVD much. My only surround-sound stereo is my computer, and that isn't always practical for playing music. The CD audio is excellent, and certainly good enough for my needs.
Free Music Review: Forth Eolingas
Hit: 5 Stars
The best part about the movie "The Two Towers" for me was Miranda Otto. The second best part was the amazing score and now we get to hear it in all it's original glory. From the unused cues that we get to hear in full to the subtle little touches that Shore dropped in, everything can finally be heard in full, and in 5.1
The unused cues are something that should make film music geeks hate Peter Jackson with a strong passion. Unlike the "Fellowship of the Ring" complete score in which you only heard what was in the movie, in this one you get to hear all the stuff that was cut out for sound, for editing and my least favorite because it didn't fit Peter Jackson's "unique vision". In the movie when we first meet Treebeard we hear the same music from the first movie for the "Wraith stabbing sequence", in this we get to hear the original version that Shore composed that was cut out and it is amazing.
The biggest offender to me in terms of music that was cut will be the music on "Gandalf the White" in which you get to hear the original music that Shore wrote for the sequence when Gandalf is talking about how he came back to life. It was completely cut out of the movie and till now the only way you could hear it was in the Fan Club end credits on the Extended cut of "Two Towers". The original music for the whole seduction of the ring sequence with Frodo and the Witchking can also be heard here. In the movie we only hear the start then it's gone, and then we hear the end of it after Sam stops Frodo from putting on the ring. In this we get to hear everything and it's shame it didn't make it because it is a lot more effective with the music than it was with that annoying "oooo" sound that the filmmakers used for the seduction of the ring. I could spend 5 pages discussing the unused so just know that when you buy it you'll not only hear familiar music but brand spanking new ones too.
On this we also get to hear the genius and sense of humor of the master composer that we never heard in the movie due to sound or dialog. Like the little bass marimba he plays when the three hunters are standing out of Fangorn and all the wooden instruments that were cut out from the Treebeard sequences in favor of the sound.
My best advice to all fans of the movie and this music is to watch it with the movie and pretend as if it's an isolated score feature and I guarantee you will love the movie a lot more. All the unused cues when watched with the movie works so well that it makes you wonder why they were cut in the first place. It's really great to watch the return of Gandalf sequence with the original music and the same goes for the whole Frodo and Witchking moment at the end of the movie.
Action music fans will be in heaven with this as the action stuff kicks like a mule. There are lots of great stuff that should shake the subwoofer and make you cover your ears when it's cranked up way too high. The tracks "Retreat", "The Breach of the Deeping Wall", and "Théoden Rides Forth" should make fans of orchestral action happy since it comes on so strongly on the DVD's 5.1 audio. Unlike most composers Shore doesn't play the same repetitive crap over and over again but actually writes intelligent action stuff that not only serves the movie's purpose, but is an absolute blast to listen to. Shame "The Flooding of Isengard" sequence didn't get it's own track because to me that is the best piece of music in the whole movie and again you get to hear unused music on that one as well.
Overall if you're a true film music geek or you appreciate real film music then give this a listen. It's an amazing treatment to what is one of the best pieces of music ever composed and listening to Howard Shore in all his genius is a treat.
Bring on "Return of the King"
P.S.
And people please stop whining about the price. Just sell your soul to the devil like I did and you should be able to afford it.
Free Music Review: Beautiful Music, Painfully Priced
Hit: 5 Stars
I wrote an extensive review for the Fellowship of the Rings complete recordings, and most of what I wrote for that set applies here. This is wonderful music. Although it suffers a bit from being the middle movie (the themes feel less new, although there are new themes), I love hearing Miranda Otto's funeral lament in Old English and the full version of Gollum's Song, which is a wonderfully cathartic piece.
The box configuration is identical, including the impractical rubber "nub" for the audio DVD. The box is pretty, but it will not stay closed properly on the shelf, the glued-down paper wrapping will tend to snag and tear on the inside corners when you pull out the contents, and the box itself is prone to coming apart at the seams rather easily.
The DVD is still of somewhat dubious value, because of lack of widespread support for higher-bit-rate audio formats, and the fact that it is copy-protected, making it difficult, although far from impossible, to do anything useful with the audio data, such as put it on your portable player. You will probably want to put it in a more protective case. I would recommend removing the DVDs from their rubber nubs and placing them in those soft sleeves, and stashing those in the boxes.
The price really is a bit alarming; the list price of FOTR Complete is $59.98, and Amazon sells it for close to that ($2.10 off is not much of a discount). But although you are getting the same number of discs in an identical format, TTT Complete is listed at an astonishing $75.98, although Amazon's price is $60.99. Ignoring for a moment the audio DVD, that prices out at over $20 per CD for the music content, which is really, really high.
Unfortunately this leaves us fans in a bind; I want to support the release of this complete recording set and convince those that put it out to release ROTK in the same format. I really love the content of these extended editions, but not the packaging and presentation. A box with a lid resembling the Extended Edition DVD boxes would have been more practical and allowed the use of a larger format for the booklet, which has painfully small print (and the music notation is almost illegibly tiny). It also could have held a more robust case including a place for the audio DVD.
So the question then becomes (since I don't advocate theft), "do I send a message that this is just too expensive and go without it" or "do I grit my teeth and shell out over $60?" Personally, I caved in, although the fact that I spent so much on this boxed set slightly taints my enjoyment of it every time I listen to it or squint at the booklet.
I'm steeling myself for a list price of $99.98 for ROTK, which might mean a street price of $80. They'll do it, because they know they've got you. And unfortunately, they are right!
Free Music Review: Why fork out $ 70 for a soundtrack...!?!
Hit: 5 Stars
...A just question! More so when most people seem to regard the score for 'The Fellowship of the Ring' as the best of the trilogy. Is the complete recordings of 'The Two Towers' really worth the (extra) money?
The stories concerning the alleged supremacy of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' are widespread on the internet. Nevertheless I would say it is wrong to regard 'The Two Towers' as a lesser member of the family. Both* scores cover different ground in my opinion. Where 'The Fellowship' basically offers a more easy listening experience, thanks to our carefree little Hobbit friends, 'The Two Towers' supplies a more hefty, sometimes brutal, action score with beautiful vocals. Sometimes I prefer the first, sometimes the latter. It doesn't say anything about the quality of the score in my opinion, but depends entirely on the ear of the beholder.
The score for 'The Two Towers' really grabbed my attention as heard on the regular album, but on the complete recorings it simply blew me away. Even the most spectaculair track on the regulair album (16. Forth Earlingas) is presented in an even more spectaculair setting on the complete recordings (12. Théoden Rides Forth). The best just got better! Furthermore, the extra tracks add so much to the listening experience that listening to it all in one go almosts compares to...dare I say it...a Passion by J.S. Bach.
If you liked the regular album, you are going to love the complete recordings. For soundtrack enthousiasts living outside of America and who can count on a favourable currency exchange rate there really isn't any excuse not to purchase this magnificent set of what is sure to become, if not already is, an icon in filmmusic!
*For those who wonder why I left the score of 'The Return of the King' out of the above equation, the answer is simple: I have not had the pleasure to listen to it yet :-)