Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Lathriel
I don't really like the beginning of this track.
|
I, for one, just love it. The combination of the choir singing triplets while the brass are playing eight and sixteenth notes sounds magnificent, like something big is going to happen. We sure are dealing with the climax of the trilogy here.
"Here at the end; The end of all things." "I cannot reach you I cannot let you leave me."
On screen, we can see and hear the actors, but their dialogue can be heard also through the lyrics of this track. . . Ooh, isn't this almost like in an opera?
I think it's a very nice touch to use one of Tolkien's own compositions here (The Eagles) when all the effort, different characters and their journeys are tied together. However, my favourite poem in this track is "The Mountain of Fire".
Here at the end;
The end of all things.
The air is aflame,
All the world is on fire!
Wow.
It may be just me, but I think that there's something similar in the little brass solos in this track, The End of All Things, at 1:47ish, and back where it all started, in The Prophecy, somewhere around one minute. The latter is much softer, well, a gentle image, a
prophecy, of what it will become in the End. I don't know if this connection (if there is one, that is) is intentional, but to me it's just another jewel that makes the score so wonderful.
There were Howard Shore's comments about this track, too, in the Music from the Movies magazine and I'd like to quote here extracts from the interview.
"
When Gollum gets The Ring, this is Renée Fleming's second aria; your dynamic approach to this seems to be the key to this part of the film."
"You hear the full two hundred piece choir and orchestra and then it just stops and you hear Renée accapella. Two hundred pieces to only one voice, to highlight the moment.
The biggest orchestration in the film is really right in that section of Mount Doom where Frodo decides not to destroy The Ring. He's standing on the edge of the Crack of Doom and Sam is saying, "Throw it in, destroy it, destroy it!" and Frodo in anguish decides that he's not going to destroy it and he tears it from its chain around his neck. Then Gollum finally leaps on Frodo and gets The Ring. I created musical contrast to highlight the fact that Gollum now has The Ring. It's a specific shot; it's an overhead shot of Gollum holding The Ring up over his head. It's a joyous moment.
Renée's solo lasts four or five bars, and then the orchestra enters and the score starts to build back up again. The choir actually comes back when Frodo regains his strength after losing The Ring. As Frodo approaches Gollum the chorus comes back in and there's this massive sound, it's the climax of the movie, that's when Frodo struggles with Gollum and pushes him over the ledge into the lava with The Ring. This scene was incredibly important for me. This is a very iconic scene in the movie and the book, so you had to be prepared to write that. It took three years to write that piece."
Edit: Page 7!
