The great composer Howard Shore was behind the breathtaking film scores for Peter Jackon’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. The musician wanted to bring J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth to life through music and he certainly succeeded. By no means an exhaustive list, here my My Top 10 Favorite Songs And Scores From The Middle Earth Film Franchise:

Into The West

It is done. The journey is over and it is time to rest. Then why does it feel like a beginning?

Smaug

How do you put an evil dragon to music?

Evenstar

The romance between Aragorn and Arwen is pivotal to the plot of the trilogy.

Minas Morgul

Headquarters to the Witch-King, this city was possessed by evil.

Gandalf The White

A Wizard and ally, Gandalf the Gray might have fallen, but he returned as Gandalf the White.

Misty Mountains

Thorin and the dwarves long to return to the Lonely Mountain, singing of the path that can take them there.

The Ride of the Rohirrim

Orcs are sieging Minas Tirith, overtaking its soldiers. Gandalf is cornered by the Witch-King. All seem helpless, but then… a horn in the distance. The Riders of Rohan have arrived.

The Three Hunters

Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are the trail of their kidnapped friends, but danger is everywhere.

The Last Goodbye

A unique one on this list, Shore mainly supervised the composition for this song while Billy Boyd, who plays Pippin, wrote and sang the song that concludes The Hobbit trilogy.

The Ring Goes South

Already experiencing so much, Frodo and the Fellowship take off on their journey to destroy the Ring of Power.

‘’The use of the themes and the leitmotifs were used for clarity in storytelling. Tolkien’s world is considered to be one of the most complex fantasy worlds ever created,” Howard Shore said in 2021. “Not everybody who sees the films may have read the books and have understood all the different characters, cultures and objects. The music was used to help clarify this complex story.’’

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