Howard Shore page

'That's the interesting thing about film music - you write it and it's performed and recorded and usually that's it.'

Personal quote

Howard Shore has become somewhat a favorite of all people. Before the fact that he composed The Lord of the Rings movies, Shore was however considered to be a cult favorite for the fans only who followed his work. Howard Shore was indeed no favorite of mine either but his scores all dealt around either a very depressing or shocking movie which had no other business then to produce that same feeling on screen. However, Shore was always seen as the dark, bleak composer and his somewhat lighter efforts (Big, Mrs. Doubtfire or emotional ones like Philadelphia) were all forgotten because he was a moody composer and nothing more. For fans' delight, The Lord of the Rings proved the massive thematic talent Shore possessed. However, his die hard fans suddenly commented that people suddenly took interest in Shore only because of LOTR and didn't respect his work before that. They are both right, but nonetheless its Shore's massive challenge in LOTR that put some of the best film music on earth on CD. His darker scores proved to be more the effective listen on disc.

Biography

Howard Shore was born on October 18, 1946 in Toronto, Canada and entered the world of film music in 1978. Yet then he was already working as a musical director on Saturday Night Life (1975 - 1980). From then on, Shore became a frequent face on the movies of fellow Canadian director David Cronenberg; scoring Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly (which has a wonderful dark foreboding main theme, one of my all time favorites), Naked Lunch, M Butterfly, Crash and Existenz. Easily, Shore is most widely known and respected for his dark and difficult style of composing, he received acclaim with Jonathan Demme's winning movie The Silence of the Lambs as David Fincher's equally respected Seven. Yet, Howard Shore is capable of a lot more and lighter efforts such as Big and Mrs. Doubtfire or emotionally laden such as Philadelphia are equally his handiwork. Other efforts include Dogma and The Cell which both offer Shore an immense task of musical display as the eagerly awaited and astonishing work on The Fellowship of the Ring, the first chapter of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was then of course earned that the score won the 2001 Oscar for best original score. Yet his The Two Towers is so much better and should have received the only Oscar this year. The final chapter The Return of the King closed the saga of in grand order and both movie and score were accepted with the highest praise. It is fair to say that since now, Shore has become one of movie music's most beloved composers. Further The Aviator was a solid score a History of Violence a lonely return to David Cronenberg's genre, Soul of the Ultimate Nation a gothic masterpiece for the video game franchise (his first ever in the business) and he scored another masterful telling of Scorsese namely The Departed with a personal touch.

July, 1998

Good film music is very integrated into the movie, and I think that was a movie where all of the cylinders were working at the same force. Peter's cinematography, David's direction, my composition, Carol Speers' art direction, Jeremy Irons' performance. It was everything at the same level. That's really what makes a good film.
(on Dead Ringers)

March, 1999

The movie explores that idea on another level - not in music, but in reality, what's real and what's virtual - and the attempt was to do something similar to that musically. What I did through the recording was to create certain sounds and certain perspectives that you wouldn't normally hear.
(on Existenz)

March, 1999

The constant searching for new ways of using film music was one of things I was most interested in. I have tried more conventional forms as well, just for the fun of it.
(overall impression)

March, 1999

There is considerable dramatic latitude to writing film music but, in terms of pure music, of what you would write for a record or a concert hall, there's a lot more room.
(overall impression)

November 11, 2003

The full score is quite a lot longer than what is represented on the CD. The goal wasn't to present highlights; it was to present a very listenable 72 minutes, which is as much as I can fit on one CD safely.
(on The Return of the King)