Our journey through Middle-earth continues with the release of 2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second installment in the world-acclaimed trilogy directed by Peter Jackson and based on the novel by J. R .R. Tolkien. The original cast returns, now with the additions of Miranda Otto, Bernard Hill, David Wenham, Karl Urban, and Brad Dourif. Continuing the plot of the previous film, The Two Towers narrates three simultaneous storylines. Frodo and Sam continue their journey to destroy the One Ring, encountering the ring's former bearer Gollum, an untrustworthy character who helps the hobbits infiltrate Mordor. In the meantime, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli pursue the band of Uruk-hai that have taken Merry and Pippin. The three heroes eventually reunite with the resurrected Gandalf and join the crumbling nation of Rohan in a battle against the forces of Saruman at Helm’s Deep. Merry and Pippin, on the other hand, manage to escape their orc captors and while exploring the Fangorn Forest, they meet Treebeard the Ent, with whom they start planning an attack on Isengard, the fortress of Saruman.
Once more, at the time of its release, the film was acclaimed by both critics and audiences, with much praise for its action sequences, performances, and especially for the innovative performance capture that was used to create Gollum. Like its predecessor, The Two Towers managed to perfectly balance spectacular visuals and setpieces with emotional storytelling. Much of this is achieved thanks to Howard Shore's music, which again was overwhelmingly received.
By the time Shore won an Academy Award for the music of The Fellowship of the Ring, he had already written much of the score for The Two Towers, thanks to the approach of working on the trilogy as if it were one long film, much like it was filmed by Jackson. In The Two Towers, Shore develops themes introduced in The Fellowship of the Ring while debuting motifs for new cultures and characters. However, the sequel finds Middle-earth at its darkest time. For this reason, while The Fellowship of the Ring is a score with extended sequences of pleasant, quiet and ethereal harmony, The Two Towers is far more obscure in its themes and composition. The composer's intellectual and diverse approach continues, though, for The Two Towers is packed with themes and orchestral harmony, as well as some of the most impressive choral performances in the history of film music. The London Voices and all the featured soloist provide plenty of powerful performances, from the stunning choirs in opening track “Foundations of Stone”, to the choral dissonances of “The Dead Marshes”, the lovely vocal solos by Isabel Bayrakdarian in “Evenstar”, the prayer-like voices in “To Whatever End”, and Ben Del Maestro's boy soprano solo in the inspiring “The Last March of the Ents”. Additionally, the score for The Two Towers is much more diverse, its instrumentation expanding to log drums, bowed sitar, cimbalon, and bass marimbas, providing much texture to the music. However, perhaps the most significant of the debuting instruments is the Hardanger, a Norwegian fiddle that Shore uses to represent the nation of Rohan. The theme for Rohan is Celtic in nature, a noble melody that practically works as the central musical theme of the second film. The Rohan fanfare is hinted at during the cue “The Three Hunters”, when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli first get a glimpse of the country’s grasslands. The theme makes its full debut with the Hardanger in “Edoras”, a lamentful cue that perfectly encapsulates the tragedy of a once-mighty land that has succumbed to the forces of darkness. The “King Théoden” cue provides a powerful orchestral statement of the Rohan theme, after Gandalf frees Théoden from Saruman's control. This sequence alone is probably one of the best in the whole franchise, the music elevating the emotion in such a way that it inspires the audiences to rise from their seat along with Théoden. The cue later shifts to a heart-breaking lament as Théoden mourns the death of his son. It is in the composition of such cues where Shore truly excels, not only providing a narrative arc to the music but also reaching an overwhelming sense of despair that you will find yourself wiping your tears when the track concludes. Shore also develops heroic arrangements of the Rohan theme, as heard in the “The Battle of the Hornburg” and “Forth Eorlingas” cues, two standouts of the score.
The thematic material for Gollum is also noteworthy. The Fellowship of the Ring had alraedy introduced a thematic identity for the creature as it prowled the shadows. This theme represents the pity of Gollum and is mostly associated with Sméagol, the once hobbit that was corrupted by the power of the One Ring. Sméagol’s theme returns in The Two Towers, but since Gollum is a two-faced character, Shore also provides him with an additional menacing and slithering theme. This new theme appears for the first time in “Lost in Emyn Muil” played by a cimbalom, a distant relative of the dulcimer. This instrument is reminiscent of the thematic materials for the Shire in its instrumentation, and fittingly represents what Gollum once was, while also providing a quivering and unstable effect.
More new motifs exist in The Two Towers: Éowyn, King Théoden’s niece, receives a lovely four-note melodic phrase during “Edoras” that undergoes different variations as she relates with the King of Rohan and Aragorn; Gandalf’s White form gets a new melody, an extrapolation of the Fellowship material in high strings that can be heard at the end of the “The White Wizard” and "Forth Eorlingas" cues; the corruptive Gríma Wormtongue is treated with a pulsing line played by the orchestra’s lowest range instruments, heard during “The Golden Hall”; and the Ents are unsurprisingly represented by percussive wooden instruments, heard during the later half of “Into Fangorn Forest”. Notwithstanding, pretty much all of the themes already established in The Fellowship of the Ring continue to be explored and developed in The Two Towers. The most notable of the returning themes is perhaps the Nature’s Reclamation theme during the cue “The Last March of the Ends”, where it plays as a call to war to shed light over darkness and restore the balance in Middle-earth. Shore provides several recapitulations of themes introduced in The Fellowship of the Rings, namely the Fellowship theme in "The Three Hunters", the Hobbits theme during the opening of "Lost in Emyn Muil" and during "The Tales that Really Matter", and many more scattered throughout the score. The propulsive action music is also worth mentioning; cues like "The Battle of the Hornburg" is truly a tour-de-force, in which you will hear the Rohan theme literally battling against the Saruman/orc themes. Simply a feast to the ears.
As its predecessor, the score for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was released several times. The most significant of these releases were the regular album and a complete 3-CD album, both issued by Reprise Records in 2002 and 2006 respectively. As expected, the regular album proved to be too short, omitting many highlights of Shore’s score, while the complete edition had an impressive running time of almost 190 minutes of music. Renovatio Records’ release encompasses in a 2-CD program approximately 100 minutes of music that contains the best parts of the score, arranged in chronological order to retain the narrative arc of the film. Join us once more into Middle-earth and enjoy The Two Towers, where Howard Shore once more demonstrated the monumental effort put into The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the magnificent collision of emotional, fantasy, orchestral and choral power undoubtedly helping the music become the modern classic it has become.
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