The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King turns 20 years old today! So what better way of celebrating its anniversary than listening to our newest release of Howard Shore’s score.
The Return of the King was released on December 17th, 2003, and reached the same critical acclaim as its predecessors, cementing Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien) as one of the greatest cinematic trilogies of all time. A landmark in filmmaking and the fantasy film genre, the film grossed over $1.1 billion worldwide and received numerous accolades. At the 76th Academy Awards, it won all eleven awards for which it was nominated, including Best Picture and Best Original Score, becoming one of the three movies with the most Oscar wins, along with Ben-Hur and Titanic. The Return of the King is not only considered a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy but also widely recognised as one of the most influential films ever made. It is undoubtedly a stunning movie that fully captures the depth of Tolkien’s epic universe with such an emotional depth that audiences continue to be left in tears at its conclusion.
Continuing the plot of The Two Towers, Frodo, Sam and Gollum are walking the final steps toward Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring, unaware of Gollum's true intentions of getting ahold of the ring by all means. Simultaneously, after their victory at Helm’s Deep, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli reunite with Merry and Pippin, before joining forces with the kingdom of Rohan to battle Sauron and his legions in the fields of Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor.
Five years after beginning his musical journey through Middle-earth, Howard Shore reaches end of the trilogy. The composer’s careful planning results in a score that merges all of the ideas hinted at in the previous two scores. At the same time, he matures existing themes, while debuting new motifs. Both scores for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were incredibly accessible scores for casual listeners. While the first score had numerous sequences of enjoyable harmonization, the second score went into moodier and darker terrains without losing its compositional approach. The Return of the King combines both qualities of its predecessors, and for this reason, it is perhaps the best of the three. Nevertheless, in the third score, Shore tends to depart from big singular statements of his main themes, as heard in the first two scores. Instead, he manipulates the themes, developing them as characters and cultures mature in the story. Thus, with proper patience and attention to detail, the listener will be able to detect the meticulous intricacies of Shore’s thematic integrations and relations.
As regards main themes, if the Fellowship theme was the main identity of the first score, and the Rohan theme was the one for the second score, the primary theme in The Return of the King is the theme of the Realm of Gondor. Shore had hinted at this theme in the previous scores, with a minor iteration of it during The Two Towers. Here, he presents this glorious theme in full orchestral power when the mighty Minas Tirith first appears on screen (track “Minas Tirith”), resorting to it during the later siege sequences to highlight the struggle of the city's soldiers. Another main theme can be identified for The Grey Havens, making its first appearance in this score during the cue “The Pyre of Denethor”, while Pippin and Gandalf discuss the afterlife. This warm theme is a gentle two-part progression of rising and falling lines accompanied by a humming chorus. The theme takes full orchestral force at the climax, when Sam physically carries Frodo on his shoulders to Mount Doom, a heart-breaking moment and the turning point of both the score and the film (track “The Path up Orodriun”). The melody returns during “The Grey Havens” cue, as Bilbo, Gandalf and Frodo depart to the Undying Lands, the humming voices of the theme serving as a heartening passage into the Blessed Realms of the Valar, while also providing comfort to the Hobbits that will continue their lives in the Shire without their friends. The Grey Havens theme ultimately becomes the basis of Annie Lennox’s song “Into the West” during the end credits.
Additional minor new motifs exist for several characters, situations and creatures. Among them, there’s a new flute theme for Sam and his future family life during the “Finale” track, a men chorus motif that oscillates as an obscure cloud of sound for the Army of the Dead (track “The Haunted Mountain”), and an unsettling motif for Shelob, heard during “Shelob’s Lair” that will send shivers down your spine.
As expected, almost all of the main themes from the previous scores return, perhaps the most adapted of them all being the thematic materials for the Shire and the hobbits. These are hinted at throughout the score, receiving their long-awaited pay-off during the epilogue, though their usual instrumentation is altered and not as playful as before. The hobbits have been forced to endure Middle-earth’s darkest moments, and therefore an understandable maturity is heard in the music for these characters. The full orchestral performance of the Hobbits theme in the track “The Return of the King” offers a lengthy satisfying resolution in what is easily one of the best moments of the score.
The Fellowship theme is referenced frequently throughout the score, maintaining its status as the musical bond of the entire trilogy and accompanying each surviving member of the original fellowship. The theme develops into a massive performance during the film’s final battle sequence (track “The Battle at the Black Gate”), erupting as never before in full orchestra and chorus.
The themes for the One Ring also come back to make their final stand; of them all, the one that stands out the most is the Evil of the Ring theme, aggressively accompanying the legions of Sauron as they march to Minas Tirith and storm its walls in the last battle for the dominance of Middle-earth, the tracks “Minas Morgul” and “The Pyre of Denethor” being perfect examples of this. However, the most impressive use of the themes of the One Ring come at the end, during the beginning of “The End of All Things”, where Shore blends all three themes together; the Seduction of the Ring, the Evil of the Ring and the History of the Ring themes playing in intricate unison as Frodo stands over the fires of Mount Doom. Here, the music effectively expresses the hobbit’s internal battle of throwing the Ring as it makes its final attempt to avoid being destroyed.
The themes for Gollum and Sméagol also return; however, due to the domination of the former over the later, Gollum’s Menace theme takes prominence over the Pity theme, coming closer to the ring’s themes as the deceitful character conspires to achieve his goal of stealing the ring; the tracks “Gollum’s Villainy” and “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol” present this material.
The thematic material for the elves also return, though to a lesser extent since the Elves are abandoning Middle-earth. The themes mostly move around Arwen, who insists on staying behind and supporting the world of men. The highlight of this material arrives when she convinces Elrond to forge the Sword of Arúndil (track “The Grace of Undómiel”) and be given to Aragorn (track “Andúril”), where the arpeggios of the Rivendell theme reach their grandest and most emotive state in the trilogy.
The themes for Rohan have a diminished role in The Return of the King, but make noteworthy appearances. The most significant of these occurs in the “The Fields of the Pelennor” cue. After their victory at Helm’s Deep, the nation of Roham becomes one of the forces that will help to defeat the darkness. It is for this reason that Shore dresses the Rohirrim with the Nature’s Reclamation theme, before marching at full gallop towards the orcs sieging Minas Tirith, with the Hardanger fiddle playing the Rohan fanfare one last time, undoubtedly one of the pivotal scenes of the film. Similarly, the thematic ideas for Éowyn introduced in The Two Towers, reach their peak when she decides to act independently and join the War of the Ring, ultimately slaying the Witch-King of Angmar, with triumphant French horns playing her main theme in the track “Shieldmaiden of Rohan”.
On the whole, The Return of King manages to bring everything to a satisfying close, and this is once again thanks to Shore’s compositional approach of treating the trilogy as one big nine hour movie. When listening to all three scores in progression, you can clearly tell how much Shore provides to the narrative of the films.
The lengthy finale of the film is grand and epic, reaching operatic proportions as Aragorn is crowned, and the Hobbits are heralded as heroes. However, the conclusion is very small and personal, coming full circle with tender recapitulations of the Hobbits theme and the warmness of Sam’s hopeful theme that uses the Shire's instrumentations. By revisiting the feelings of the track “Concerning Hobbits” from the first score, in a way, with his music, Shore has gone there and back again.
As the two previous scores, Reprise Records issued several releases, the main ones being a regular 72-minute album in 2003 and a 4-CD complete edition in 2007 totalling an outstanding length of 229 minutes of music. Following the approach of the two previous Lord of the Rings releases, Renovatio Records' album offers a 2-CD program of two hours of music that goes through all of the best parts of Shore’s score for The Return of the King, while maintaining the narrative arc of the film.
We kindly invite you to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this remarkable film by revisiting all three scores of the trilogy. The Lord of the Rings not only represents one of greatest fantasy books ever written and the first great cinema success of the 21st Century, it is also one of the finest pieces of work in the history of film music.
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