PR: The Hobbit The Desolation of Smaug (Howard Shore)

Oh stop it! I'm super happy that after 1.5 listens you managed to capture all of Shore's thematic beauty. See, after listening to the original Lord of the Rings scores that themes were obvious. I don't think he sugarcoated them or made them easier to digest, they were just there, where they were supposed to be.

The issue I have is this subtlety BS or themes that aren't so obvious... or the only way you can truly appreciate a theme is to buy the score on LP and play it backwards. Stop! Do you think people fell is love with scores like Star Wars and Fellowship because of subtlety? No, they were in your face. I mean for crying out loud, Shore scored the lighting of beacons like it was the last act of the movie. For some people that's over kill, for me, that's just about the right way of scoring a scene in an epic fantasy adventure film!

I still don't understand why the newest crop of directors, producers and composers are so afraid of melody. Jesus Christ, please let more Spanish people into Hollywood to show them how it's done!

-Erik-

PS - Have a listen to How To Train Your Dragon and Tron Legacy. Deeply thematic scores in the same vein as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

BTW, even though the themes in Smaug don't smack me right in the face the way the original LOTR scores did, I very much prefer Smaug over the deathly boring An Unexpected Journey. It's the orchestration that caught my interested and for some reason the album assembly is far more coherent and far more energetic and varied than An Unexpected Journey. Could that have something to do with Conrad Pope's involvement? Was he the only additional orchestrator on the project?

-Erik-

Responding to Erik, it actually took me about a dozen listens of Fellowship to get a handle on the "History of the Ring" theme, which is one of the most important themes in the entire series. Granted, I was much younger and less experienced back then, but the point is, I don't think the themes in the new trilogy are very much "harder to find" than the old trilogy. I agree that they could be a bit "bolder" and more "epic", like the Misty Mountains theme, but obviously Shore did not agree and I respect his vision; as an artist, I'd rather hear what the artist himself believes is his best possible expression, than something easily digestible for the masses. And I say that while also being someone who loves the film version of "Roast Mutton" way more than Shore's original version, and wish I could have a whole score filled to the brim with highlights like the former. So I do see both sides. And just the fact that there ARE both sides makes this an even more fascinating series of scores to listen to and analyze.

I love HTTYD and Tron. I probably love parts of HTTYD as much or more than anything that Shore will write for the Hobbit trilogy. But I've listened to them so many times they're not new and fresh for me anymore. I'm not trying to say one is better or worse; just that one contains 30-40 motifs and the other probably only half a dozen. I admire the skill involved and the sheer rareness of a musical work that can juggle that many motifs.

I don't know half the themes half as well as I should like and I like less than half the themes half as well as they deserve?

BTW, is it possible for a composer to compose TOO MANY themes and motifs that it all get jumbled up that one theme starts to sound like another and that clearly identifying them becomes much more (unnecessarily) challenging? <-- Epic run-on sentence.

-Erik-

There are a ton of small motifs as well as several pleasant major themes in that score, but its nowhere near the complexity of Shore's Middle-Earth scores. I'm quite sad that Desplat did not get the opportunity to continue to develop the musical world he was starting to build there.

I cant' remember a lick of them!

-Erik-

Maybe they didn't lick you well enough? Ah, drop it Erik, you're just a plain listener.

Look, I do love it when little motifs are hidden now and then.... stuff like Young's G-O-D motif in Hellbound: Hellraiser II send shivers down my spine. But if I need to really search for major motifs or supposed themes in a score because the theme is played every fifth note or something stupid like that then I'm not interested. I appreciate the creativity but... am I being hypocritical now?

-Erik-

Sigh.

I don't particularly like the HOBBIT scores so far. But I must stand up a little with Scribe. I am unlikely to ever discover the apparent musical treasures of this new score, or even its predecessor, because -- and I think I can speak for a few critics of it here -- the music doesn't work enough on me at a gut level to want to know more. For much the same reason, the apparent thematic treasures of Djawadi's GAME OF THRONES are somewhat lost of me. Emotional impact so often is the foot by which deeper interest squeezes through the door. If Djawadi's score in context is a set of synthy swells and rumbles dying not to be heard, then these HOBBIT scores are a good match for the impressive production design of the films. Yes, all that writing etched into the back wall is in idiomatic Second Age Sindarin -- but -- what's happening in the foreground is too dull for me for that to lift my interest. Shore may have worked in an endless set of thematic ideas (surely the only way to keep it interesting given the scene scoring is all shades of 'danger, mystery, gravitas, light, etc'), but it mostly pummels away grimly like a sort of primitive Zimmer BATMAN score: loud, ubiquitous, and obvious. There is no subtext, only a surface narrative. It rarely lifts scenes into interesting territory, mostly just playing a back and forth of dramatic stakes. (I hazard a guess that the influence of fading up and down completely homogenous ambient score in LOVELY BONES has had an impact, particularly since Jackson doesn't use Shore's music with the kind of thematic fastidiousness that would actually have an affect on an audience.) Since the story skeletons of these films are so protracted, any wonder those stakes just aren't as compelling?

But yes, all that writing on the back wall is in idiomatic Second Age Sindarin, and there are a 100+ motifs there, and it's not wrong that they're there because the music fails for me (and clearly many others) on basic appeal. I've had my own equivalents of these kind of conversations. Erik's little stab at GOLDEN COMPASS is pretty cheeky. Desplat does it though -- he balances intricate thematic structure with a music that more clearly approaches listenability in scores like PAINTED VEIL, DEATHLY HALLOWS part 1 and SYRIANA. Gordon's MOBY DICK is a masterclass in this. Shire's ZODIAC somehow got it in a tiny score, Golijov's YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH and Iglesias's TINKER TAILOR. We're not necessarily talking about easy listening classics. But perhaps all I'm saying is I like detail when I like the thing that's detailed. In that cognitive fallacy, I'm certainly not alone. (Note D's curious remark on liking Erik now because they agree -- if that isn't an example of that at work, I don't know what is. )

So keep it up Scribe. Even if I marvel that you have the patience for it.

Do I summarize your essay correctly with saying that you either like a score or you don't?

Bollocks, out of all that discussion this is what you extracted? My comment, which was in the lighter spirit i tried to infuse (but failed obviously) among the deadly boring (to me) discussion, doesn't suggest that I have problems with anyone. I generally find Erik more laid back than the past, and i agree with him more frequent now, that's why i said what i said, but it doesn't have anything to do with Matt or anyone else.

I don't think Shore's Hobbit 2 is anywhere that complex and i heard it 5-6 times already, that doesn't mean i don't like it because Matt does.

I suspect that brooding mood that Shore creates so masterful has something distinctly German about it. This could well be the score of a Nibelungen movie.

But that's a meta-fallacy.
Of course you could hear the detail if (1) you were so inclined and (2) if it were there.

You're simply not interested enough in the detail.
Otherwise you'd pay the attention required to (try and) hear it.

But like myself and many others, you find the meat simply isn't interesting enough to start detailing the spices used in cooking it.

It's not a cognitive fallacy. It's an emotional response.