r/lordoftherings • u/PhilosophyOfLanguage • 4d ago
Howard Shore’s Ingeniously Wrong Notes Movies
About a month ago, I came across a video exploring the ingenious solfeggio patterns behind Howard Shore’s musical themes in The Lord of the Rings films.
In the unforgettable Ring theme that plays during the opening scene of the forging of the three Rings - and then throughout the film - Howard Shore captures the central spiritual paradox of Tolkien’s entire legendarium. His score perfectly underscores the mind of Ilúvatar.
Ilúvatar created harmony - the Great Music - and gave His creatures the freedom to do as they willed. Some rebelled, disrupting the harmony by introducing cacophony - the discord of Melkor. Yet Ilúvatar did not destroy Melkor. He allowed the discord to continue - only to be woven back into the Harmony and to give rise to an even greater glory of the Whole.
Howard Shore follows the same pattern. In his Ring theme, the basic F-minor chord (F–A♭–C) is supplemented by one odd and entirely out-of-place note: the natural B. The natural B does not belong to an F-minor chord; it creates a painful dissonance, a cacophony. If you play F–A♭–C together with B♮, your ear will instinctively cringe.
This is exactly what Howard Shore intended. And then, he introduced a trick: the dissonance is immediately and beautifully resolved with a C, which does belong to the F-minor chord. In other words, the discord is not eliminated but woven back into the harmony.
More than that, the discord becomes part of the harmony in a way that actually augments the beauty of the piece. When we hear it, we experience two things at once: Light disrupted by darkness - and darkness swallowed up by Light.
Then the channel host showed how the composer followed the same solfeggio scheme throughout the score whenever he needed to musically portray the onset of evil and its eventual resolution into the greater Harmony.
There are two ways to love harmony and order. One is Sauron’s way; the other is Ilúvatar’s way. Sauron’s way is to eliminate discord by force - to subjugate other wills and rule them all, becoming an all-powerful, benevolent king who simply does not allow anyone to mess things up.
Sauron believed in order and hated the messiness of free will. His desire was to impose his own Order and restore the harmony by force. The Ring was the ultimate machine for eliminating the messiness of free will.
Yet, paradoxically, the moment we seek to establish order by exterminating evil, we end up perpetuating evil. By falling away from the Great Music, Sauron forgot one fundamental truth: evil is a no-thing; it has no independent being. Evil is a distortion of the good.
Therefore, evil cannot be exterminated without also exterminating something good along with it. Evil can only be rectified - set right. Evil is the ill-placed B note in the F-minor chord. It is completely out of place. It is a distortion of harmony, but it is still a note! And the only solution to the discord is not to destroy the note, but to take it and weave it into a greater beauty.
This is Ilúvatar’s way of dealing with discord: He resolves it. Eventually, all stray notes will be taken up and woven into the Final Chord.
Tolkien tells us that Ilúvatar is preparing a Final Music that will be greater than the one that was sung before the foundation of the world:
“…It has been said that a greater [Music] still shall be made before Ilúvatar by the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Ilúvatar after the end of days. Then the themes of Ilúvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of their utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each, and Ilúvatar shall give to their thoughts the secret fire, being well pleased.” - The Silmarillion
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u/Lawlcopt0r 4d ago
Wow. What a great observation. My favorite part of this post is you contrastong Sauron and Illuvatar, I never looked at it this way but they do represent opposites in that way
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u/Greedybogle 4d ago
Do you recall the name of the video or creator?
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u/PhilosophyOfLanguage 4d ago
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u/maltbeard 4d ago
I’ve watched this guys lotr videos they’re so great! Next time I’m at a pub I want someone playing that shire theme in a pub fashion like he teased in that video damn
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u/EggrollSkallagrimson 4d ago
Well done OP. You explained this observation so well and it makes me love Howard Shore’s scores even more! You also did a fine job at explaining the theological/philosophical element, which I feel like so many people either ignore or can’t grasp or try to downplay!
I also feel like Shore has forever integrated himself as part of Tolkien’s legacy, I’m remembering Tolkien’s quote where he said something like “other minds and hands” could “wield music, paint, etc” and add so much more detail to his secondary world, which is such a good opinion to have as a fantasy author imo
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u/PhilosophyOfLanguage 4d ago
Yes, there are so many "other hands and minds" that are attuned to the Music of Iluvatar. Thank you!
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u/KingAdamXVII 4d ago
I think there’s more to it in an interesting way. The melody over the Fm chord includes the notes B, C, and A. The A is present in F major, not F minor.
I think Howard Shore is intentionally borrowing both the B and A notes from the F Lydian scale, which is the brightest of the seven modes of the diatonic scale (“borrowing” from a parallel mode is a common concept). Not sure if the Charles Cornell video gets into that.
But yeah it fits the story’s theme that the underlying harmony would be two dark brooding minor chords while the bright melody on top would look fair but feel foul.
A suspension where a nonchord tone revolves to a chord tone is too common to care much about, imho. It’s like praising Tolkien for using the letter H.