HOWARD SHORE

Yeah but in other scores he COULD write those, he never reaches the quality of LOTR.

Please tell what these scores are by lesser known individuals. I'm looking forward to hearing them. (Seriously -- Cosmopolis, which I understand is a bit like Breaking and Entering in owing a lot to the pop collaborator, is a style of music I like. I don't often hear it for films. Shore's CRASH shares some characteristics with it.)

I'll give you the four tracks I would keep and not edit anything out of at all.

1: My Dear Frodo
2: Radagast the Brown
3: Out of the Frying Pan
4: A Good Omen

Here's a few tracks that I'd suggest. I don't know the music well enough yet to suggest specific passages in each of the tracks, but they are mostly short enough not to outstay their welcome intact.

1: Old Friends
2: Axe Or Sword?
3: Under Hill
4: A Good Omen
5: The Edge of The Wild

It looks like it doesn't it? I hadn't realised this until I chose my 5. Perhaps the quieter tracks offer more variety: lots of action scoring covered in original trilogy.

I tend to like Shore's more primal material. It's also a great introduction to the score because it introduces a good chunk of the new themes.

Clearly Williams is also over-rated since he will never again reach the heights of Star Wars Original Trilogy (and we all expect him to with every new score), and his recent scores like Lincoln are disappointing in comparison.

One nuance that can keep this discussion going when it's overlooked: 'Overrated' does not equal 'bad'.

I think a lot of people judge him on the grounds of his LotR scores, because that's all they know of him. I get the feeling myself he is, as a composer, often not lauded by his full body of work and the composer he REALLY is. This generally goes when I hear comments like "ooohh, I LOVE Howard Shore, his music is sooo beautiful and EPIC". It puts me in the you-don't-get-it mode. I love his music and style, but I do get the feeling he's getting a bit bored or fed up lately. I love The Hobbit, I think its thrilling and it keeps growing on me, but I do think its not nearly as inspired or energetic as the original trilogy (yet?!).

Hi Bregje, if you're going for the best listening experience, you might want to check out the regular edition! In short:

Regular edition:
- Contains a more thrilling version of 'Roast Mutton' including an action oriented rendition of the Misty Mountain theme you hear several times in the film, but is missing from the special edition.
- Also contains some other alternative moments, as mentioned above in this thread, but as opposed to Roast Mutton, these aren't necessarily better, just different (though I do prefer the more understated flute version of the Shire theme on the regular edition).

Special edition:
- Contains extended versions of tracks, but this totals less than 10 min. You're not likely to miss the extra bits of these tracks when you're listening to the regular edition. For example, the Misty Mountain song by Neil Finn merely has a very long outro tacked onto the end, but the song itself doesn't really feel much longer.
- Most of the bonus tracks are obviously placed outside of the listening experience, with a gap of silence between the first bonus and the last track of the album and in-between the tracks themselves. As opposed to the track extentions, these tracks are new and fresh additions to the CD that you don't get on the regular one, but also somewhat short and do not flow as nice as the regular tracks, and as such are for me a 'listen once' affair.
- Within the listening experience, it contains the 'Blunt the Knifes' song. I personally found this track, with all the sound effects of the scene, distracting from the overall listening experience and is too different from the rest of the created mood.
- This release does contain a very nice and thick booklet with very interesting and extensive liner notes by Doug Adams about all the new and returning themes that is a very nice addition to the set. This is the main reason I'm happy with this set, ultimately.

Is there any sort of a chronological guide on what-piece-plays-where in the film for both the regular and the special edition of the HOBBIT score? Also, did someone write in a review / article how all those lotr themes (including the new hobbit score) are named?

I only have the digital watertower promo sent to the ifmca...does anyone have the booklet and can send me in pm the scanned pages with the themes' naming only?

Thanks Bob, deeply appreciated!

Goodness, that is long!