Fantastical Stories and The Music that Creates Them: An Exploration of the Rings of Power and the Film Scoring Canon

Some of Isabella van Elferen's ideas and notes on the work of fantasy soundtracks are found and explored by Bear McCreary in his new soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power.

Van Elferen notes in her work "Fantasy Music: Epic Soundtracks, Magical Instruments, Musical Metaphysics" across different fantasy stories, there is an odd through-line of music as a force of creation, not just the act of creating music, but music as a force for creating or shaping worlds at a fundamental level. Examples of this idea are found in: Clarke's The Ultimate Melody, Disch's On Wings of Song, Prachett's Discworld series, Lovecraft's The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, and, most notably for the purpose of this piece, Tolkien's Silmarillion. While Rings of Power doesn't depict the creation of the world directly, one of its major antagonistic forces that it references is Morgoth, who went against the song of creation, with the intent of making his own song. Morgoth is clearly a stand-in for Lucifer, which makes sense as Tolkien was a Christian. 

Van Elferen also notes that though much of film scoring techniques are based on the Western classical canon of music, that instrumental elements from other cultures are added in to the orchestra. However, this inclusion of Non-Western instruments is divorced from their original context and stylistic techniques in favor of western centric styles and is frequently used in the music for the purpose of "othering" either places or people from the western styles used for protagonists. I do find this concept painful but important to recognize. That being said, if it is coming from a place of respectful inclusion and representing more of the world's music beyond the western canon in a way that may lead to people seeking out more of certain instruments and styles, I think it can be used for creating beautiful music and adding depth to the fictional world. Film scoring is never truly a subversion of what came before, it is an exploration of what can be done in service of the story and world. 

Howard Shore, who composed and conducted the music for both the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit series of films, created the opening theme for Rings of Power. His work created the sound of Middle Earth and to see him still having a hand in the music of this continuation of Tolkien's work I think helped to cement this new series as not just a cash grab, but a true love of this fictional world and its stories. But I also think that McCreary took his personal experience and some of the language of Shore's compositions and created a new part of the LOTR musical canon that fits incredibly well with what came before.

To actually talk about McCreary's work for a moment, he created new character themes and melodies for both new characters and already existing ones. A major reason for creating new themes for existing characters is because Rings of Power is hundreds of years before the events of the Lord of the Rings series and thus the characters are not going to be the same as they would be all those years later. Another reason for this is to not just rehash Shore's themes, but to create a new musical identity for the world and these characters.