[Beanamir of Gondor]

The author of that first website certainly made a point bringing in John Williams: he and Howard Shore really are the only two composers who've had that much space to create themes. I probably would have thanked my gods or whoever watched over me, if I were a film composer offered the chance to score the LotR films, or the PotC films, or Star Wars.

Williams also managed to do themes in several other movies, much shorter ones! For instance, take Hook, with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman. You would probably only recognize the themes after multiple viewings, but there are definitely four or five seperate themes: for Peter and the journey to Neverland, for Tinkerbell and fairies, for the pirates and Captain Hook, for the Lost Boys... even a short one for Maggie and Jack Banning.

That's not to say, of course, that Howard Shore didn't do a fantastic job at layering theme upon theme in LotR, even long after introducing those strains for the first time: he literally had all the time in the world to work with those themes, and unlike another film, their creation was 18 months of simultaneous filming, and he could create the scores all at once, rather than going back over what he'd done for starts. Several tracks from [I]Return of the King[/B] (my first thought is "The Fields of Pelennor") include strains from the Rohirrim, Gondor, the Elves, and sometimes even the Hobbits, though the new Hobbit theme is mostly reserved for Frodo and Sam. Sometimes you have to listen carefully, but they're all present.

Be back later. Great thread.