Musical scenery: Utopia vs. Arcadia in The lord of the rings (dir. Peter Jackson)

• Authors: Marchwica Wojciech M.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

One of the most impressive component of MiddleEarth in the original novel by J.R.R. Tolkien was detailed scenography – creation of world with a full geographical, cultural and artistic description. P. Jackson in his film version re-created this imaginative world with great care and precision. It has however constructed another scenography – the added value which could not appear in any novel – musical one. Music in any movie plays very important role. It can emphasise or modify the action, or in can suggest the movie’s structure. Music also can influence the viewer’s subconscious with different patterns denotating various cultural spheres or symbols. The excellent example of the latter is music for The Lord of the Rings by Howard Shore. The analysis of composer’s idea opens the new dimension of the movie – besides the action, scenography, costumes, movie props or sound landscape. The pieces describing various parts or heroes of MiddleEarth have been composed with use of deliberately chosen instruments, motives, scales or styles. Such a combination creates the various musical worlds which are subconsciously recognised by viewers – even those musically unprepared. One of the most interesting musical cliché created by H. Shore is a musical Arcadia or Utopia. The composer’s consideration of various musical imaginative worlds accomplish the action of the movie and the its scenery. It is however important to notice there is no one way of creation the “musical Utopia”. Composer not only uses different musical elements to generate various effects – what is quite obvious – but also selects separate elements of music as precisely as possible, to create diverse worlds. It is worth to discuss the method and the music vocabulary of such composer’s activities concerning worlds as dissimilar as Elfish world contrary to the Shire. Such the opposition can be seen as the Utopia versus Arcadia. The example of “old human civilization” will be – within the above construction – Rohirrim musical culture. H. Shore uses not only the elements of various musical styles but also creates the subconscious links between a range ofmusical elements and elements of imaginative world.

Keywords

EN

musical scenery, The Lord of the Ring, film music, musical Arcadia, Tolkien

• Journal: Musica Iagellonica
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 9
• Pages: 127-142

Contributors

author

Marchwica Wojciech M.