“How can you not have fun making music for Middle-earth?” asks composer Bear McCreary after performing a piece from the Season 2 score of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television.
“It’s sort of a limitless palette,” he says. “I work with the biggest orchestra that I’ve ever worked with, but also the biggest choir … the world is so expansive that, as long as I can make it fit into The Lord of the Rings, the showrunners will let me try things out.”
Based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel series, Rings of Power is set thousands of years before the events of the books. During a time of relative peace in the Second Age of Middle-earth, the show captures all the major events of the period from the creation of the Rings of Power to the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron (Charlie Vickers).
A landmark of Tolkien’s work is vocal music, as the author often wrote songs into the material. McCreary says this allowed him to implement multiple choirs, like a children’s choir in London and a “scream choir” in Finland. “It’s like 40 guys and all they do is scream. They’re amazing, and so they’re doing a lot of chants.”
Bear McCreary conducting at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television
JC Olivera/Deadline
With Season 2 and the rise of Sauron, McCreary was excited to musically explore parts of Tolkien’s world that haven’t been adapted to screen. “We go to this part of the map that no adaptation has ever done before, the lands of Rhûn, and I’ve always wanted to write for the Bulgarian women’s choir,” says McCreary. “They are singing in a language Tolkien himself devised, so they had to learn it phonetically. But they brought all the beautiful, unique things that come with that kind of music.”
McCreary came to Sound & Screen event to talk about Season 2 but says he is excited for Season 3, which he says is “gearing up.” “There’s going to be some new sounds. That’s all I can say right now, but I’m very excited to take the plot of Season 2 and continue pushing the boundaries,” he says. “I want to bring everything back and then just keep going, man.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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