Some say that it isn't wise to buy a
movie's
soundtrack before actually watching the movie. In some cases that is true, but in the case of the forthcoming
Lord of the Rings movie, I could not resist the urge to purchase the
Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack.
Soundtracks are often not considered to be "
real music", because of the
format's
limitations: the
sound must match with the
picture, not vice versa, and without the picture the sound is usually reduced into
pompous repeating patterns and
artificial-sounding changes in
tempo and in
style.
In spite of all this, after a week of intense listening I find myself enjoying the soundtrack quite much. The music fits well in the atmosphere of
Tolkien's writings, and most of the songs have same titles as the
chapters in the
book, which makes synchronizing the story with music quite easy. Reading the book with the
appropriate song playing in the background gives the experience a new meaning: possibly because I haven't yet seen the
film I have begun to consider the soundtrack as a soundtrack of the book. At the
bridge of Khazad-Dum, the music is intense and the magnificient theme rises to
epic proportions. The following song,
Lothlorien, is in stark contrast: it is slow,
melancholic, quiet and -- not so surprisingly -- sung in
Elven. Why use only one sense when you can use two?
The soundtrack has some
drawbacks: some songs sound so similar that they are almost
indistinguishable, the universal theme (although good) is performed too often and in places where it clearly doesn't belong, and the choir
sings some Elven songs too vaguely, which makes following the
lyrics difficult.
The music is
composed,
orchestrated and
conducted by
Howard Shore, and two songs are composed and performed by
Enya. Enya's voice
divides opinions: I like it, but I know many who do not. The soundtrack comes with different cover pages, of which I naturally chose
Liv Tyler as
Arwen. Some other examples in the local store had
Bilbo,
Gandalf,
Saruman,
Aragorn and the
Hobbits in their cover pages.
From my previous experience I know that watching the movie after first listening the soundtrack is somewhat
unsettling: because you know how the music will change, you also have some insight into what happens next in the movie. However, it is not always a bad thing. As the
plot is quite
well-known already, I don't hope to see too much surprises in the movie.