Hobbiton is an important place for The Lord of the Rings. So, what makes The Lord of the Rings sound so distinctively like The Lord of the Rings? What gives this inimitable film trilogy such a unique place in film music history? 1. Quite an achievement when you consider it was also the first fantasy film to win Best Picture, ever. Nor do they fully encapsulate what a phenomenon these films were - the third film, Return of the King still stands alongside Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997) as having won the most Academy Awards in history. Such numbers, however, don’t quite do Shore’s Rings achievement justice. Shore - a former Saturday Night Live musical director - wrote well over one hundred separate musical themes for these films, and for their hobbits, elves, and dwarves. Howard Shore’s scores for Peter Jackson’s three Rings films ( Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, The Two Towers in 2002, and Return of the King in 2003) are so complex they stand practically alone in film music history. I once described the music for The Lord of the Rings as epochal.
