Projecting Tolkien's musical worlds

Explaining the meaning or affect of a piece of music is by no means an easy task. However, some success has been found through the work of Philip Tagg, whose technique consists of breaking down a musical example into minimal units of musical meaning (called musemes), comparing those units to other musical examples possessing sociomusical connotations, and demonstrating a transfer of musical affect from the music possessing sociomusical connotations to the object of analysis. This work expands Tagg’s techniques in an attempt to analyze the musical affect of Howard Shore’s film score for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. After a discussion of J. R. R. Tolkien’s description of the cultures of the inhabitants found in Middle-earth, this work dissects the thematic material of Shore’s score, focusing on his incorporation of the music and culture of Tolkien’s text into his film score through instrumentation and style, as well as utilizing musematic analysis to argue the musical affect of Shore’s major themes that is projected on the audience. This book is directed toward any individual, musician or film enthusiast, who appreciates the ability for a film score to heighten the overall movie experience.