The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been making waves as the latest entry into the canon of live-action adaptations of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. While Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is considered to be one of the best film trilogies of all time, the first season of The Rings of Power has been praised as a solid start to the new Middle-Earth series, complete with beautiful visuals, epic stories, and dynamic characters. The Rings of Power is a prequel of sorts to The Lord of the Rings, as the Prime Video series is set during the Second Age, as Sauron rises to power as the successor to the first Dark Lord of Middle-Earth, Morgoth.
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The worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien are some of the most expansive and sweeping in all of fiction. As such, the world building of The Rings of Power, as well as Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, is one of the key aspects of the series. A crucial part of developing the world of Middle-Earth on screen is how it sounds, not just in terms of the sound design but also with the music of the world. Howard Shore worked as the composer for both the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit trilogies, and while he contributed the main theme of the opening title sequence to The Rings of Power, composer Bear McCreary took over as the central composer behind the series.
Although The Rings of Power is technically a different continuity from Jackson’s films (for complicated legal reasons), the series has gone out of its way to evoke much of the same feel and atmosphere of those beloved films. The music is one example of how, as McCreary crafted a score for the series that evokes the same regality and epic-ness of Shore’s original score, while still providing plenty of new and exciting ideas. In a series full of beauty, McCreary’s music has been one of the standout elements, and the composer deserves immense recognition for his work.
Following Howard Shore
New Line Cinema
Following Howard Shore is no easy task, especially when it comes to his works in the world of Middle-Earth. So many of his themes and songs from Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films have become some of the most iconic and recognizable film scores of the 21st century. Whether it be his quaintly warming theme for The Shire in “Concerning Hobbits,” the ethereal choirs of his “Rivendell” theme, the heart-pounding and anxiety-inducing drums of the Uruk-Hai or any other musical motif throughout his “Lord of the Rings” scores, there’s no doubt that they are some of the finest theatrical scores of all time. Across that trilogy, Shore was nominated for three Academy Awards, and he deservedly won all three of them. Even with the “Hobbit” films, while the movies themselves were not of the same quality, Shore’s music continued to deliver nothing but brilliance.
For any other composer, entering the world of Middle-Earth has to be an incredibly daunting task, because no matter what they do, their work will be held up to the high bar set by Shore’s lauded work on The Lord of the Rings. Bear McCreary, however, has more than proven that he is up to the task. He has composed plenty of ambitious large-scale musical scores before, as his work ranges from the likes of The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica, to the God of War video games, Godzilla: King of the Monsters and more. Prior to his work on The Rings of Power, he was already a renowned composer with multiple Emmy nominations, as well as an Emmy win for Da Vinci’s Demons in 2013 and a BAFTA win in 2019 for his work on God of War.
One of the great benefits McCreary had going into The Rings of Power would be that, despite some fans’ desires to pit the composers against each other, the two would be working together to establish the musical landscape for the series. McCreary isn’t competing with Shore, but rather continuing to carry his torch. Shore tackled the music for the opening title sequence of the show, which establishes the world and invites the audience into it. Meanwhile, it is McCreary’s score that really fills in all the finer details of the world of Middle-Earth in The Rings of Power.
The Sound of Middle-Earth
Prime Video
McCreary is continuing Shore’s legacy of creating the sound of Middle-Earth by incorporating many of the same compositional elements and instrumentation that Shore used in the original films. Although none of the same specific themes and motifs carry over from the films, McCreary’s score for The Rings of Power evokes much of the same atmosphere of Shore’s work. It’s a grand, meticulously designed and beautiful score that paints images of flowing rivers, epic battles and unexpected adventures. Instead of taking the sound of Tolkien’s world in an entirely new direction, McCreary was smart and created his score to exist hand-in-hand alongside Shore’s.
The music of the Elves, for instance, incorporates many similar choric embellishments as that which was heard in Jackson’s films. The theme for Galadriel, who serves as one of the key characters in The Rings of Power, contains much of the same natural aesthetic as the “Lothlorien” theme from The Fellowship of the Ring. There are soft angelic choirs that sing in the tongue of an Elvish language; however, the “Galadriel” theme from the series also incorporates more active and heroic elements, such as strings and brass, than “Lothlorien.” That change reflects the different times of Galadriel’s life, contrasting when she was a younger and more stoic Elf of the Second Age to the majesty and mystery of her in the Third Age.
This idea of crafting a similar musical atmosphere to the films but then adjusting it to fit the new time period and characters is carried throughout McCreary’s score. Whether it be the Elven lands of Eregion and Lindon, the Dwarven city of Khazad-dûm or the simple fields of the Harfoots, each area of Middle-Earth in The Rings of Power is wonderfully brought to life through music. They each are developed with their own musical palettes, which helps to develop their individual identities and cultures on-screen. McCreary pulls from both the descriptions in Tolkien’s texts and the works of Shore in the previous films to present music for this series that feels fresh and new while still being thoroughly and undeniably like that of Middle-Earth.
New Ideas and Themes
Just because McCreary is evoking much of what has already been established before does not mean that there isn’t plenty of new musical material brought to the table in The Rings of Power. In fact, that’s one of the most impressive things about his score. McCreary is able to convey so much of the same distinct flavor of Middle-Earth while presenting wholly new themes and motifs for the entire series. The composer, who keeps a blog where he explains much of his creative process and mindset, has said that he was contractually unable to directly reference or replicate any material of Shore’s from the films. However, he saw that as a good thing, considering the Second Age is such a drastically different time in Middle-Earth than the Third Age in Jackson’s films. He said, “The tone is very different. I thought, perhaps, I could create a score that would reflect these differences in tone at first, and then evolve over the seasons, a process of continuity, not quotation. I thought to myself: if I do my job right, I’ll one day be able to binge-watch The Rings of Power and go right into Peter Jackson’s movies and feel a sense of continuity.”
He goes on to specifically reference the music of the Dwarves in The Rings of Power. He establishes how the musical elements of Moria and the Dwarves in The Hobbit have a darker and sadder feel to them, as the Dwarves of the Third Age often lived tragic lives. However, the Dwarves of the Second Age in The Rings of Power are at the height of their civilization. They are a mighty and bombastic people, and that difference is shown in the music McCreary composed for them and their home of Khazad-dûm. It’s a lavish and bold theme that utilizes a myriad of booming drums and deep vocal harmonies to convey the hardworking and rugged culture of the Dwarves.
For The Rings of Power, McCreary ended up composing 17 entirely new themes for the score. These new themes ranged from character-specific songs for most of the key players in the story to cultural and regional-inspired themes and even a new specific theme for the rings of power themselves. Each of these new themes is interwoven with one another. They build on one another while the story of The Rings of Power jumps from the Southlands to Lindon and Khazad-dûm to Númenor. As the plot and characters evolve, so too does the music.
McCreary’s score for The Rings of Power is nothing short of astounding. With the group of themes and songs composed for the show’s first season, McCreary has established himself as a worthy successor to the musical crown of Howard Shore. His new themes and motifs are powerful and exciting, while carrying plenty of dramatic weight along with them. Not only does the soundtrack elevate the material it is paired with, but it also just makes for great listening outside the show. It’s a score that can be listened to over and over again, just for the sheer enjoyment of the music.
